The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America

by Elizabeth Letts

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.  As it opens, 62-year-old Annie Wilkins goes to the hospital with a bout of pneumonia.  While there recovering, her Uncle Waldo is sent to a care home where he dies.  When Annie returns home the doctor tells her to live restfully.  She has a farm to take care of, now without the help of her uncle, and she doesn’t have enough money to pay taxes on the farm to keep it.  She decides to buy a horse and ride to California to fulfill the dream her mother had of visiting the state.  (And she chooses an interesting way to earn money for the horse.)  She buys Tarzan, a Morgan horse, packs up her possessions—at least what she believes she’ll need on the trip—and with her little dog, Dépêche-toi, they set off from Minot, Maine, in November, 1954. 

The book recounts Annie's travels, negotiating highways with her horse, her interactions with those she meets along the way including those who give her shelter and help, and incorporates a bit of history of some of the places she stayed.  Through the book we get an idea of what it was like living in America in the mid-1950s.  One of the themes Letts brings up several times is the change in outlook from the view of a safe America to one of uncertainty about strangers vs. potential acquaintances/neighbors/friends that was happening at that time in America.  (See quotes p. 55 and p. 9.)

Also, books and movie mentioned:  The Last of the Saddle Tramps by Annie Wilkins; November Grass by Judy Van Der Veer; and the movie, “Saddle Tramp.”

Quotes
“The unexpected could always be a shock, but sometimes it was the expected, the predictable, the resigned acceptance of whatever bad thing was coming your way that could end up dragging you down.”    p. 34  ¶1

“The feeling of deep connection was becoming less common in this postwar period, which, for many Americans, was a time of increasing xenophobia.  In 1952, Congress has passed the McCarran-Walter Act, reinforcing racially based quotas introduced in the 1920s, in part due to anti-Semitic bigotry and fears of communism.  Senator Joseph McCarthy had whipped up the fear of Communist infiltrators with his inflammatory rhetoric.  ‘Man the watchtowers of the nation,’ he scolded.  ‘Be vigilant day and night.’  Being vigilant was generally the opposite of being neighborly.  In a world of connection, bonds of friendship and kinship made every stranger a potential acquaintance.  The world of vigilance suggested the opposite:  every stranger might bring danger.”    p. 55  ¶1

Annie’s favorite poem, attributed to Walter Wintle:
      If you think you are beaten, you are;
      If you think you dare not, you don’t.
      If you’d like to win, but you think you can’t,
      It’s almost a cinch you won’t.
    
      If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost,
      For out in the world we find
      Success begins with a fellow’s will—
      And it’s all in the state of mind.    p. 91

“And isn’t this just how life is anyway?  You could plan, but you couldn’t control much, except your own two feet and which way you chose to point them....  On they trudged, hoping that around some bend they would see a welcoming light.
  “And isn’t that what hope is?  Not a wish, not a specific thing that you pray will be delivered to you, but merely an expectation that whatever dark, sleety side of the road you might find yourself on will not last forever.”    p. 117-118

“The coming of television and mass media to America had an unexpected effect:  it was bringing stories of crime from all over America right to people’s doorsteps.”    p. 119  ¶3

“In the words of Henry Ward Beecher, ‘The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.’”   p. 146  ¶5

“Because that’s the thing about the future.  You can’t get there by imagining.  You can only get there one step at a time, and the hardest part is taking that first step.”    p. 213  ¶2

Annie crossed the mighty mountains and wondered if they were no bigger than molehills.  “Sometimes life is just like that, Annie thought.  You can be so worried about the challenge in front of you that you fail to realize that you’ve been chipping away at it all along.”    p. 222  ¶2

Learn more about and see photos of Annie Wilkins here.

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