Long Rider

The Sunlit Project and UNUM Magazine present HER JOURNEY, a narratology mapping the unique and universally-shared experiences of women’s extraordinary journeys.

“This Sunlit Project developed during the worldwide pandemic over my kitchen table, but the idea of mapping women’s journeys began with my own, as a migratory mother, driving a thousand miles westward. I encountered commonalities and differences within the Hero’s Journey, a mythologically-informed template that identifies the classic elements of a “journey” - a call to something more, obstacles, a supreme ordeal, transformation and more - but it overwhelmingly centers a male archetype. Thus, HER JOURNEY seeks to lift the “her” in the Hero’s Journey and identify what makes it uniquely and universally female.”
-Sun Cooper

A singular rider surveys a sweeping landscape from horseback. The image is iconic to America; but this time, the rider isn’t emerging out of a Hollywood Western or a Great American Novel. This is real-life Lady Long Rider, Bernice Ende. Her signature wide straw brim wards off the kind of relentless weathering that comes from riding full days under the sun. The worldwide Long Riders’ Guild defines a long rider as someone who has ridden more than 1,000 continuous miles on a single equestrian journey. From 2005 till now, she has exceeded that distance thirty times over.

Long riders are rare today; still rarer it seems, a traveler who doesn’t construct a feed or a following. Bernice camps without internet, almost full time. I had traced her map where I could, following snippets on social media where someone had driven past her on a highway or hiked across her campsite. She navigates her way through urban cities and untamed lands at 4 miles per hour, and fences have taken on the grievances they inspired in the Old West. She has encountered grizzlies and snowstorms, outrun a tornado, had a stranger pull a gun on her, and has foraged for her own food and shelter daily. The day Bernice Ende set out to ride her Fjords – a strong horse breed from the mountains of Norway – across the country and beyond, she was fifty-years-wise. At a time in life when people are usually settling in, Bernice Ende was starting out on her most extraordinary journey.

I wanted to ask this long rider how far her journey had followed or diverted from the classic Hero’s Journey template, established by famed mythologist and professor Joseph Campbell. In his monomyth, he identified a universal pattern in which one receives a call to adventure, sets out into the unknown, meets resistance, finds help and mentors along the way, overcomes obstacles and a supreme ordeal, undergoes a transformation, and returns home changed. When I finally got ahold of Bernice, she agreed to get on the phone with me one Wednesday afternoon, and while I sat at my kitchen table and she bunked in someone’s barn, we began to map a narrative that speaks to obstacles, transformations, and riding into unknowns.

At a time in life when people are usually settling in, Bernice Ende was starting out on her most extraordinary journey.

The Lady Long Rider Book Tour Mobile. Image by Nancy Dodd Studio

SC: Are you afraid?

BE: I couldn’t possibly do this if I was afraid. It would kill me.

This question is the most often asked of her, as every woman who has ever traveled alone inevitably will be. Her second most asked questions are how old are you and do you carry a gun? The frequency of the ageist question is an embarrassing commentary on our society and, frankly, a waste of a question to ask a human being who has ridden horseback around the world. As to the second, yes, Bernice carries a gun. “I carry a gun not because I’m afraid but because I’m aware of the world I live in.”

SC: We know any journey worth taking will carry some risk, and long riding itself is considered quite dangerous. I love that you didn’t seem to heed your skeptics; but sometimes when we encounter obstacles in our journey, the resistance claims a voice in our head. It then becomes both an external and internal ordeal. What was your supreme ordeal as you crossed America on horseback?

BE: Of all the dangers I encountered, she pauses. (I think about bears, tornadoes, freezing weather, and armed strangers). Instead Bernice says, it always comes down to fear itself. I was constantly dealing with the fear factor. Fear is that voice in my head. What if I can’t do this? Fear is the wildest animal.

I couldn’t possibly do this if I was afraid. It would kill me.

SC: Would you describe your long ride as a call to adventure?

BE: It was more like a nightmare I rode into. Really, I ask? Her voice is husky, like someone whose vocal pipes have been blown through by the four corners of the wind. On a journey like this, you face the darkness of your own soul. I was really looking more for a way of life rather than an adventure. I’ve thought about this a lot. I don’t think of myself as an adventurer. If I am, we all are. It’s a state of mind. We all undertake our own long rides. Life changes. Before all this, I was a ballerina.

I let that sink in. The archetype shifts from iconic male grit to iconic female beauty. I feel the immediate tension between the two. The horse and rider is emblazoned on American consciousness as distinctly masculine. I once wrote for a nationwide Western publication that consistently featured a cowboy on its cover. How often my editor and I had hoped to finally see an image of a cowgirl on the cover. After all, over half of its readership were women. I wrote a letter. I made a point to submit photos of incredibly-skilled and interesting horsewomen while on my assignments. It deflated me when the very last issue canonized none other than John Wayne, a Hollywood film star with documented racist and misogynist behavior. Perhaps elevating a woman like Bernice Ende is my way of reconciling my own frustration with the cowboy stereotype. The revelation that Bernice was a former ballerina and dance instructor steered our conversation in a different direction.

SC: Women have long encountered expectations to look and be a certain way as obstacles. You have openly shared about your condition of alopecia before, would you be willing to talk about how that has shaped your own response to the cultural expectation of beauty for women?

When Bernice tells me I’m the first interviewer to ask her about this, she thanks me. It is a testament to another obstacle that women run up against, she says, not only the expectations but the taboos constructed around female beauty.

BE: This is really important, alopecia happened to me after my divorce. It was very severe. I was ashamed I no longer had my long, beautiful brown hair. I covered it with scarves. I realized later that it was a gift in that it kept me from going right back into another relationship. It was instrumental in changing the course of my path.

I don’t think of myself as an adventurer. If I am, we all are. It’s a state of mind.”

Bernice asks me if I know about the Coma Berenices – literally translated as “Bernice’s Hair” – a constellation in the Northern Hemisphere. The story is about a woman who gives up her hair to the gods if they will return her king. In the same way, Bernice says, I gave up the illusion of beauty for strength.

Later, I think about where this archetype fits in Joseph Campbell’s monomyth. It doesn’t. Campbell once famously said, “Women don’t need to make the journey; they are the place that everyone is trying to get to.” Without getting into the issues inherent in this statement, statistics make a very compelling observation. National Geographic studies show more women travel than men. In the Solo Travel Survey (October 2019), an “astounding 85% of solo travelers are women.” A woman undertaking her own journey should be an established archetype after these kind of statistics. So, the question then becomes where are these women going and why?

BE: During my first ride, I had decided I wanted to get to New Mexico. I couldn’t take my hands off the reins because my horse wanted to return home to familiar pasture. For two weeks, I never let go of my horse. My legs collapsed under me when I got off my horse. I cried while we rode. All I could think of was one step after another. But by the time I rode into New Mexico and reached the end of my first ride, I felt as if – at 50-years-old – I had crawled into my own skin for the first time.

30,000 miles into Bernice’s journey. Somewhere Southwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico. 2019. Image by: Nancy Dodd Studio

SC: Incredible. It speaks to the concept of coming home to yourself. What helped you reach this point of transformation?

BE: Losing my hair was a deeply-felt loss, a loss of identity as a woman. I went through a process of grief. In the end I realized this – one of the reasons why it’s hard to pick up leadership is because we have to give up certain illusions of beauty. If we think about being pretty, it shapes our capabilities. When you become a leader, you get dirty, the-on-your-face-and-under-your- fingernails-kind-of-dirty.

In the days after, I think long and hard about loss, identity, and ownership of our own skin. In adventures, men rightly gain battle scars. They are celebrated as signs of strength, even considered sexually appealing. Women’s scars are viewed differently. The cancer patient who loses her hair? A veteran who loses her leg? A mother with stretch marks? What standards of beauty would we sacrifice in exchange for strength? I touch the faint scar on my breast; having and nursing a child changed my body, but this scar is easily hidden. Not so with hair. Bernice’s loss was visible. Ironically, the constellation Bernice refers to was once visibly identified as the tuft at the end of a lion’s tail. It wasn’t until the 16th century that Coma Berenice – “Bernice’s Hair” – was elevated to a constellation in her own right.

SC: How different are you from the woman who first had the vision to go on this journey and where you are now?

BE: When I first began riding, I did have the images of Rogers and Cassidy in my head. And then I realized how different it was to be out there, a woman riding. I don’t want to be a man out there riding. I want to retain what it means to me to be a woman. I have a long way to go to understand this question. How we reshape these images to make it who we are. It has been a big ball of self-discovery. Long riders were always men. There was no woman that said I could do this. I had to create it myself.

Bernice Ende and her horses, Montana Spirit and Liska Pearl. Image by Nancy Dodd Studio

SC: Speaking to the Hero’s Journey where the central character is classically male, how different has your journey been for you as a woman, as the Lady Long Rider?

BE: It’s very different. The way people approach me, us. Women encounter fences men do not. Also, what is available to us. When I first joined the Long Riders Guild, there weren’t any female mentors for me. We just aren’t expected to belong to adventure. I also think women carry a greater understanding. We simply see the world differently than men do. How could we not? I think this is why women are such good leaders. We are the first teachers. It enables us to have a really deep understanding of humanity.

SC: How different does the world look to you now from horseback?

BE: Horses take away the walls and houses and corral and all the things that divide us. Life becomes more intimate and unique. Distance is so great. Time and space has slowed down. I live on about $3 a day. Navigate my way with state maps. I choose my routes based on the elements, food, people, and what is available. I’m reluctant to say whether I’m right or wrong; but this life was a trade-off. I gave up a lot. My world is riding in and out of homes and towns and worlds. Traveling by horseback is an iconic, romantic image; but as a single woman traveling, it is different. It’s not like anything else. It’s like nothing else.

When COVID-19 changes our world, this same question surfaces again. It’s been months since I last talked with Bernice, and reaching a long rider who travels without internet in the middle of a pandemic feels near impossible. But a letter finds its way to my inbox …

I’m relieved to hear she is camping out somewhere in Santa Fe tucked “in a grove of juniper trees with the horses nearby and a sweeping view to the Western horizon.” She’s been off the horses for two months with a leg injury. She’s on the path to recovery, and a new documentary about her journey has been released this May. When her biography was published, Bernice drove a truck and trailer for her book tour. The pandemic changed all that, but she says she will be heading to Montana soon. She has taken a moment to talk about the pandemic, and though our world has changed, I find it inspiriting that her words haven’t.

BE: I have often times said, the one word that best describes a long ride is uncertainty. Not knowing where the water would come from. Where will I camp? Will there be grass for the horses? Day after day of uncertainty. I got used to it. Having to recover my mind again and again from doubt, racing off like a runaway horse. Struggling inwardly with stillness, trusting in life, humbly accepting and appreciating that which did come my way … Hopefully, in these days, you will find yourself asking, ‘What is really important? How much do I need? How has this shaped or changed myself and/or my family?’ … One thing that never left me even in those long riding days that seemed so hard and endless was ‘Will this never end?’ I always knew that I would make it. I never lost faith in my ability of completing the journey. Eventually, everything changes. We are all of us in this together. We’re such remarkably strong creatures, women are.

Find more info on Bernice at www.EndeOfTheTrail.com and a full length documentary about Bernice can be purchased at www.LadyLongRider.com

About the author: Sun Cooper is a migratory mother, published author, and multicultural literary consultant. Her work and collaborations have appeared in People Magazine, Rolling Stone, National Geographic, Hill Lily, American Cowboy, Southern Writers, and Severine. With her amalgamation of Cherokee, French, Basque and American West ancestry, she identifies as a storyteller, mother, and sojourner who asks for the wisdom of ancient paths while migrating her own. You can find her at www.sunliterary.com/thesunlitproject.com

Guest UserJuly 25, 2020