Earlier this week I sent a quick Teams message to my boss, letting her know I wouldn’t be in to work on Thursday…and probably Friday as well. A friend of a friend had watched her horse trot away from her, eight miles up the side of Mt. Adams, leaving her on foot in the wilderness and sans mount. I hadn’t yet met Melissa in person; it was only through a mutual friend’s Facebook post I knew about her plight at all. I spent two days on the mountain with her and a few other folks, combing the high mountain trails and meadows looking for her mare. Unfortunately as of this writing she’s still up on the mountain, but there are still plenty of folks helping her search and keeping her spirits up…and a whole bunch of super wrong folks encouraging illegal drone use.

It’s October, so that means it’s The Sweaty Equestrian’s Rider Reset Challenge month. This is a program where we all focus together on getting our fitness and nutrition wrangled back into order after the long summer’s adventures and life happenings, supporting each other through weekly Zoom calls and encouraging posts in a private Facebook group. So much of fitness is staying consistent and turning workouts and healthier eating into routine; so much of getting into that routine is community support, especially of folks with the same motivations as you. I joined a local gym a few years ago, but stopped going after two months, partly because the community of folks, however lovely,  didn’t understand the unique goals and drive of an equestrian.

I recently attended our first ever jumping clinic, held by a trainer new to the area. I dipped my toes into showing this summer, with another one coming up this weekend, plus a working equitation clinic with someone who was just in Spain representing the USA at the international championships for the sport. All these shows and clinics I heard about through friends…and Facebook postings. I felt comfortable driving hundreds of miles to attend an endurance ride out of region because of connections made via social media. It’s partly due to social media, folks sharing videos via Youtube, blogs and ride stories on Facebook that I’m training for Tevis at all. When I’m looking for the latest information regarding my next endurance ride, it’s to Facebook I open to check.

My husband, most of my closest and best friends, my dog and my horse, all came to me via social media. A solid chunk of what I learned about endurance and writings which have expanded my horsemanship, so much of the tack I use, I’ve all been exposed to via social media, and largely Facebook. These days, when it’s full of terrifyingly angry and violent bots and real people just spitting mad that folks like me and my parents and my friends exist in peace, AI slop that’s just another point of misinformation and division, constant ads remind us that we’re just the product, not the customers… it’s hard not to chuck the phone at the wall and mutter things like maybe the Plain people have it closer to correct in some ways.

I really do miss Myspace, or the old days of Livejournal and AIM status messages. I just want the Facebook of old, vague booking and all. I have so many varied friends I can’t keep them all on the same text thread, the family one is occasionally messy enough now that the teenagers are old enough to be included! I just want a place to share with all the folks in my circle what I’m up to; so friends can join me at my next show, commiserate over a tough work week, share advice when our ponies try our souls and our patience with their shenanigans, enjoy pretty photos of our adventures; a mini bulletin board of our lives, without the bots and the slop and the constant pressure to buy things. Where I can still learn from and discover new folks outside my immediate orbit, on horsemanship and social justice and local politics and whatever the heck ODOT is up to now.

I do want my own words to be heard and shared and discussed, without a vomit of vitriol coming my way over rainbows or weight on un-Godliness or the apparently unforgivable fact I have the audacity to *check notes* live in Oregon. I don’t want to have a whole conversation with my blood pressure every time I open an app to check the address of an event, only to get pulled into a comment section full of folks advocating doing something god-awful to horses. It’s probably telling that I’ve drawn a firm line that my son cannot have social media; he can communicate with his friends via texting, Google meets and old fashioned phone calls. It’s hard enough some days to be an adult dealing with what social media has become, for good and ill; even at 15, he’s learning to drive but not to handle that morass, not yet.

I know my friends and most of my wider orbit aren’t the issue; but there’s only so much we all can do when the maladapted billionaires are in charge. This winter I’m going to take some better examples and try to connect and maintain friendships and community a little bit less via FB; taking the example of a friend’s recent soup contest to celebrate her birthday. It was a fabulous time, meeting new folks and enjoying non-horse based time with friends over delicious food. This idea is not some kind of revelation; it just requires more effort for the time and place I find myself in, and it’s high time I started making it.

To that end, local to PDX folks: Save Sunday, the 6th of December! Tarma and I have been together for five years now, and it’s high time we fully celebrated how incredible those years have been, and honor the memory of a certain golden gelding who left us all too soon. If you have any ideas besides drinks at the barn (not the best idea in December, alas) I’d love the suggestions!