by Julia Wendell
399 pages, with glossary of equine terms
2009 Galileo Books
Zen And The Art Of
Horse Maintenance
book review by Chris Lareau
Thirty-five years ago, a philosopher got down to the nitty-gritty of mechanics and wrote "Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values." The unusual book by Robert Pirsig was written as a novel but was basically a memoir that sold five million copies.
Wendell's unusual memoir published this year is also an inquiry, but this time the narrative is delivered through the filter of an accomplished poet and instead of detailing the minutiae of two-wheeled rockets it is about the four-legged variety. The juxtaposition of learned literature and nuts-and-bolts by Pirsig now has an addition to this type of genre. Rather than contemplating something as elusive as Truth, Wendell picks one aspect of life, Victory (paradoxically, a word that never appears in the book), and gives us its anatomical details as perhaps no one but a poet could ever do.
Back in 1974, you didn't need to know the difference between a cam-shaft and a carburetor to enjoy Pirsig's book, nor do you now need to know the difference between a horse's hock and a coffin bone to profit from Wendell's tome.
"This book is not just about the sport of eventing," Julia Wendell announces in her tell-all diary of an amateur competitor in a dangerous sport that is based on military cavalry traditions. It's for those who have "committed themselves to becoming the best they could be in the face of many obstacles, real and imagined." The title, "Finding My Distance" is a technical term which refers to the perfect compromise of vertical speed and horizontal power needed to successfully navigate hurdles on horseback. In "eventing" the horse doesn't really know when the next fence is coming up or how high it is. Somehow the rider instantaneously signals this critical information to her equestrian partner. Or else.
Not enough speed and you lose the race, much less complete it. Too much speed means disaster for horse and rider. For many competitors, this is a losing proposition.
Animal expert Dr. Temple Grandin, who transformed our nation's livestock industry in the 1990's, says that riding horses can be "twenty times more dangerous than riding motorcycles." In her book, 'Animals Make Us Human," Grandin cites "one injury for every five hours of amateur racing over jumps" and even "one injury for each hour of cross-country eventing." Wendell does this for 15 years.
Goodness. That's a lot of hours.
Mayhem ensues. Her husband Barrett gets his hand kicked off. Her riding coach gets paralyzed from the shoulders down. Wendell gets hospitalized. Horses die. The book makes NASCAR look like a walk through the park.
The "real and imagined" adversities Wendell chronicles make a great analogy for "all those who've taken up some endeavor with passion" if you can imagine what it's like to fly through the air stuck on a twleve-hundred pound missile with hundreds of spectators watching every slip-up, every tragedy, and occasional triumph.
She knows what her horses are capable of and that it is the equine's imagination that's just as important as its soundness and horrendous strength. Ask too much and the horse will balk, or worse, try to obey and then injure itself and rider, sometimes permanently. Somewhere in between two extremes lies the middle road and the champion we all want to be, Wendell seems to imply by example. In the face of heart-wrenching, devastating setbacks she never fails to see that victory is right in front of her, not in the past or the future. Surprisingly, it commonly occurs right after she's had the daylights knocked out of her. Like all good art, there is an underlying humor in a lot of her writing.
While a lot of people may have found it tedious to plow through the epistemological musings of Robert Pirsig's "motorcycle maintenance", rest assured that Wendell's "distance" is written by someone who has mastered the English language. The former university English professor has an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. This makes her observations that much more accessible to the general public. Local readers will get a kick out of reading about growing up in her home town of Warren, Pennsylvania, as well as the challenges of being a mother and wife. And being a daughter in a family that once owned the area's largest employer, the United Refining Company.
More than just a field report, "Finding My Distance" is a personal celebration of why people like to win, how we go about it, the technology we exploit, and the heart of victory, which is heart itself. It's not something that gets splashed across the front page of the local newspaper. It is something felt, remembered, and cherished.
Taking a 25th place in one 3-day event turns out not to be a defeat. Within the competition, Wendell thrills the crowd with a spectacular cross-country effort. It is exhilirating and inspiring:
"I pinch myself to make sure that I'm feeling what I'm feeling," she writes about the joy it brought her. "If I live to be a hundred, I'm quite sure I will never feel this way again."
At the end of "Finding My Distance," she confesses, "I'm still looking for it." It doesn't mean she has lost anything. Au contraire, she is looking forward to finding it over and over again.
Those of us of like spirit can start by reading her book once. Or twice.
Chris Lareau is the editor of AlleghenyAlmanac.com.
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