I didn’t want her to think I was a bad or sloppy rider, which is the thought that had been antagonizing my morphined-up mind for several days. But the diminutive woman merely nodded her head, and before I knew it, she had me sitting up in bed, back brace strapped around me. I fiddled with a few of the latches and hooks on the damn thing and said it looked like some kind of medieval torture device. She laughed. And then so did I.

What else can you do when you’re broken in half?

She told me with the same brisk cheerfulness you’d expect from an English nanny that we were going to take a walk down the hallway. My face must have betrayed my reticence, because she might as well have told me that we were going to run a marathon. She wrapped a big cotton band around my waist and held firm to the loose end with a capable looking hand. I could see her bicep bulging beneath the sleeve of her uniform. In fact, her whole body was as wiry as a Doberman Pinscher’s beneath her scrubs. It crossed my mind that you'd have to be built like that to do this for a living. For a moment, all of the good working strength of the body that I'd taken for granted for thirty years seemed irretrievable. Lost. Gone. Then she said, "Come on, let's do this." And I stepped onto the floor from the hospital bed. The physical therapist walked me up and down the hospital corridor as if I were a colicky horse. One slow step at a time across acres of sparkling linoleum. I took a sip of water from the fountain near the nurse's station in between laps.

Nearly each time I saw the neurologist, he told me that I was very lucky to be walking. He said I’d probably be a little shorter with the compression fractures of two vertebrae. "I can deal with that", I told him. "The walking thing's what I've been concerned about. "

I spent a year in physical therapy. A year strapped in a big white brace from pelvis to chin, although I managed to sneak it off every now and then to try and feel normal. At the beginning, the therapists had me exercising in a swimming pool at the same time the spa held the senior citizen’s water aerobic class. Those blue haired ladies moved like aquatic prima ballerinas compared to me as I doggedly marched up and down between the painted lines on the blue concrete floor of the pool, swinging my arms through the lukewarm water, eyes and nostrils stinging from the excess of chlorine. I remember looking at this frail body that couldn't possibly be mine in the locker room mirror and biting back a flood of tears.

As I got stronger, the physical therapists introduced me to yoga, although they didn’t tell me it was yoga at the time. I didn’t have a word for it for several years, but I’ve been doing it ever since. Thirteen months after the accident, I bought myself a four-year-old appaloosa mare and began to ride again. Very slowly, at first, until soon we were exploring the barrancas and the bosque (wiki) together. I was back in the saddle once more.

And just last weekend at vaulting practice, I managed a spigot (kind of a standing splits riding on the horse's outside shoulder in front of the surcingle) at a canter for the very first time. Actually, I did it twice! I rushed home after practice just to tell my husband what his 44-year-old wife can do and got a big "w-o-w." It's nice to have a fan club at home.

There’s an awful lot in between here and there. And the journey continues.

Flickr Photo Credits: kasia_hc; Rock_and_Racehorses