Day 190: Horsing Around.

Yours truly, a 12-year-old criminal in a badass jacket.

Like so many little girls, I was horse-crazy. I read books about them (Golden Cloud: Palomino of Sunset Hill rules to this day). I drew them in my notebooks. I dreamed about them. I begged for one of my own. I wanted to be a jockey (don't you dare laugh. I was short and tiny back then). And every summer, I went away to camp and learned how to ride.

Later, when I was in college, I taught horseback riding at one of the camps I'd gone to - the same camp where I met Garp. I have wonderful memories of rounding up the camp's 21 horses every morning - there's nothing like waking up at dawn in the Colorado Rockies to make you feel good about being alive.

Over the years, I always seemed to find ways to ride. When I moved to L.A., for instance, there was a place called the Circle K over in Burbank. You could take a horse out for a couple of hours in Griffith Park - by yourself, no guide - for a very reasonable rate. When insurance issues forced them to shut down maybe eight years ago, that was that, and I haven't ridden since.

I guess that's why I was so happy to discover the horses that live at the top of Elysian Park. Every morning, I take my dogs up the trail, and three-quarters of the way through, I arrive at the bottom of a vaguely daunting incline (some mornings it's way more daunting than others). I try to ascend this stretch as quickly as possible, and what keeps me going every time is the knowledge that the horses are waiting at the top. I usually just look at them and smile as I walk past, but sometimes, I go over and talk to them.

I'm often tempted to hop the fence and ride them - after all, that's what my best friend Kathy and I used to do when we were kids.

Kathy lived near a run-down, 15-acre piece of farm property, and on that property were a couple of horses (a dark bay mare and a ragged old shetland pony paint mix named Nancy). We knew the girl whose father owned the place, but they lived in town, and the property was dilapidated and almost always abandoned.

Kathy and I used to sneak in and go for joy rides several times a week - no bridles, no saddles, no nothing. We'd just hop on, get the horses going to a full gallop, and hang on for dear life. They'd run wherever they wanted to - we were just passengers.

The junior Maude hair is what kills me. Really. It literally hurts to post this picture - and if it didn't give such a great sense of the property, I wouldn't.

This went on for several months, to the point where we felt like the place was ours. We'd play in the old barn, hang out with the horses, and spend hours talking about how we'd have stables of our own someday. Nice stables.

And then, one afternoon, everything changed. Kathy and I were walking up to the barn, obliviously chatting away, when all of a sudden, a man with a shotgun stepped out of the barn and aimed it straight at us. He told us to get the hell off the property and never come back ... and he meant it.

We almost shit ourselves, and couldn't get back over the fence fast enough. I'm telling you, I was terrified.

Needless to say, we never went back again. It was a sad loss of innocence that fittingly preceeded a summer I refer to as "The Summer of Soda Pop" (but that's another entry).

I doubt I'll ever hop the fence at Elysian and take the buckskin I fancy on a joy ride, but I certainly like to think about it. In the meantime, I guess I'll settle for taking a quartered apple in my pocket and bribing him for a little attention. Hopefully, no one will shoot me for that.

Hopefully.

The buckskin who lives at the top of Elysian Park: