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What is a bio, but a way to invent oneself? At a recent
reading from Our National Parks (a book I did with my
husband, photographer David Muench) in Yellowstone National Park, I
wondered if I was inventing the person who had written that text.
Although my writing comes out of my life, in that reading, I
was also creating my life.
This letter was intended to present a brief bio, and to thank you
for wonderful, insightful letters over the years. But the idea of
what a bio means – that is, who am I ? – has taken over. Years
ago, before the publication of Greetings From Wisdom,
Montana, I provided the publisher with biographical information.
“My biography begins here,” I wrote, “where I am finally learning to
ride a horse.” I thought it was a wiseass remark, but now I see it
as a truth. I believe we do begin our lives where we see our
dreams beginning. My father, a superb horseman, put me on a horse
when I was two. I was so frightened he took me off. From then on I
longed for horses, and was terrified of them.
That seems a pivotal event in my life, the thrust into activities
that draw me, but scare me. By doing the things that scare me,
I have experienced both triumph and beauty. Never again have I
gotten off the horse.
Still, it was not until I moved from New York City to Montana in
the early1980s, that I got back on a literal horse. In Beginning
Equitation at Montana State University, I rode a horse named Babs
Barmaid. “She’s a special for cowards,” the instructor assured me. I
learned to take care of a horse. When I told my editor at the
Wall Street Journal’s Leisure & Arts Page that I had been
cleaning my horse’s feet, he said, “Does your mother know what
you’re doing?” I loved the look on my instructor’s face when,
in the Intermediate Equitation final exam, I performed advanced
moves perfectly. It was time to take my education on the trail, ride
a horse in wilderness, prove I knew what I knew.
My first trip in the Yellowstone backcountry, during the
wildfires of 1988, cemented my passion for riding, for Yellowstone,
for deep connection with a horse. Companions on the trail,
caretakers of one another, my horse and I became equally dependent
on one another. With a horse, you go beyond understanding
that the wellbeing of all creatures, all life, is in your own hands.
You live it. My book, A Chorus of Buffalo, was
possible only because of the time on horseback in Yellowstone’s
backcountry, experiencing bison in a wild setting. My most recent
book, Ask Now The Beasts, evolved out of my experience with
my horse, Ace, and the mules I pulled in the seven years I
worked as a guide and wrangler in Yellowstone.
And yes, I told my mother I was cleaning my horse’s hooves.
My parents came to live with me in Montana when they were in
their 90s. One morning, as I was leaving to help load horses into
the trailer so I could drive the whole rig to Yellowstone for a week
long trip, she looked at me with her gorgeous eyes and said, “My
beautiful daughter is a wrangler.” My mother was a city girl. She
had provided me with piano lessons, dance classes and elocution. I
think I was supposed to go on the stage. I think what my bio says is
that I have come a long way. I suspect it is what all our bios say .
. .
Listen to
an interview with Ruth
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Ruth Rudner