My award winning photography - which includes over 60 covers - has appeared in more than 34 different magazines.
I'm the author of five books and numerous e-short stories, all available on Amazon.
Published details can be found here.
The following are just a few writing samples of horse stories, profiles, and event recaps from various publications over the years
Egypt: Riding the King of All Horses
“Come over and ride with us!” said Paul, over the phone.
I walked the half mile along the canal road and down a dusty lane to Paul’s stables, imagining our fun ride galloping in the desert by pyramids. These were two of the main reasons I'd returned to Egypt: the horses and the pyramids.
Paul's Egyptian grooms were busy tacking horses for the four of us. "You’ll ride Borcan,” Paul said.
I stopped short as my daydreams rapidly evaporated. Borcan!
My nerves fluttered at the thought: Borcan, the blustery, formidable, woman-hating, breast-biting (“He’s bitten three breasts so far,” Paul declared adoringly) white stallion in the paddock next to the sweet chestnut stallion Shams, whom Paul would be riding. Jeannie would be aboard a young filly, and Paul would give a riding lesson to Katherina, aboard Prince.
The Breast-Biter himself was already tacked up and standing at his paddock fence, with his lips peeled back to expose his enormous nine-year-old teeth, which were grabbing one of his reins and clamping down tightly, grinding the rubber till it squeaked in protest, exhibiting what he’d do to me if he managed to get a hold of my breast. Clearly a demonstration of equine foreplay.
Let's see: a ride in the desert with a young filly, a green rider, and two stallions . . . one of whom was this fearsome biter that I would be riding. Was this a good idea? These thoughts waved big red flags in my head, but I was too timid to voice my concerns aloud, because I desperately wanted to ride in the desert again!...
Read the rest here.
It is not for the faint of heart: a hundred hard-won miles of rock, dust, elevation, uphill (19,000 cumulative feet of climbing), downhill (22,000 cumulative feet of descending), imposing mountains, plunging canyons, wild rivers, wilderness, extreme heat, suffocating humidity, extraordinary effort, and luck - good or bad, all in various doses, riding your horse - or mule - across the Sierra Nevada mountains, in the dark and the light and the dark, all done within a 24 hour time limit. In 2010, Time magazine listed the Tevis Cup as one of the Top Ten Endurance Competitions in the world.
Starting at Robie Park near Truckee, California, and finishing in Auburn, California, the Western States Tevis trail follows a historic route of the Placer County Emigrant Road built in 1855, through the Granite Chief Wilderness, past historic mines and over old toll trails, and across the American River. Much of the trail traverses roadless and austere wilderness, reachable only by foot or horseback or helicopter, so for much of the ride, if anything untoward happens, you are on your own.
The Tevis Cup is an arduous ride - to say the least - for an equine and rider. You and your mount can never relax or let up. Discounting the two hour-hold vet checks, you have to keep on the move, steadily, for 100 miles, despite the rocks and bogs and cliffs and weather and fatigue and darkness. And no matter how good a rider you are, or how talented your equine is, you have only a little better than 50% chance of finishing the ride. If you do finish, it's likely that 50% of finishers will do so in the last 75 minutes.
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Sometimes in life, you can never imagine where the twists and turns will take you.
Just five years ago, Shane Lesher had never considered the sport of Endurance riding, much less the 100-mile Tevis Cup. Nor had he ever sat astride a mule.
Read more here.
Not many people would consider climbing aboard a horse soon after breaking ribs. But not everybody is Suzanne Hayes, who won the Big Horn 100 endurance ride just six weeks after a fall that resulted in 10 broken ribs (some in multiple places), two fractured vertebrae, a punctured lung and a lacerated liver, and that led to her spending five days in the ICU and 10 more days in the hospital.
In fact, the 67-year-old Arlee, Mont., native was already discussing the possibility of riding the Big Horn—one of the toughest 100-mile endurance rides in the country— with her trauma doctors in the emergency room when they ticked off all the damage.
“I told them, ‘Well, I’ve got a really big 100-mile ride in six weeks,’” Hayes recalls. “‘I’m hoping that we can still plan on that.’ They looked at me like, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’”
Her accident happened while riding a young horse on a routine training ride. The horse stopped in a creek a quarter-mile from home to drink when he sud- denly bolted, violently ejecting Hayes. (Hayes and her husband later determined he’d received an electric shock on his sensitive nose from a live fence wire that had fallen into the creek nearby.)
COMPROMISED!
The Big Horn is one of the last old-fashioned 100-mile races.
“It’s a really difficult 100, and it takes a lot of perseverance to get through it,” says
Hayes. “You have to pay attention because it’s so remote. I just really like tough rides.” Riding the Big Horn in such a compromised state didn’t seem like a far-fetched idea
to this experienced high-mileage endurance rider. So many factors went into forging ahead with the plan that it appeared the obvious choice, the way Hayes explains it.
Read more here.
2020 Arabian Horse Life: "2019 AERC National Championships"
by Merri Melde
The AERC National Championships rotate around the nine U.S. regions each year. This year's edition took place October 31 and November 1 in the Mojave desert outside Ridgecrest, Calif., over a course that originated in the 1970s as the Twenty Mule Team Endurance ride.
Started and managed until 2007 by AERC Hall of Famer Jackie Bumgardner and her husband Jim, the ride continued with ride managers Robert and Melissa Ribley through 2015, and Brian and Valorie Reeves through 2019. This year's National Championships were managed by the Ribleys and assisted by the Reeves and a crack support crew of volunteers, who ably handled more than 100 starters each day in the Championship rides and additional open rides...
Read more here.
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2017 Endurance News: "2017 AERC National Championships"
by Merri Melde
Wahatoya is the Native American name of the two 12,000 and 13,000 foot peaks on the eastern front of the southern Colorado Rockies that have traditional and religious significance to the Comanche and Ute tribes. the Spanish called them Los Combres Espanolos.
Ride Manager Tennessee Lane calls them home. When she left her career in molecular biology two years ago and moved here, she was coming back to her family and back to her ranching roots.
She also calls the area "God's Country," and with its scenery and challenging mountain trails, it was the perfect place to host the 2017 AERC National Championships on August 18 to 20. The ride fell at a busy time: two weeks after Tennessee won the Tevis Cup aboard Rusty Toth's Auli Farwa (she trained him over these trails for a couple of months before Tevis), which was two weeks after she hosted her second ride this year, the two-day July Spanish Peaks. Needless to say, she's been busy. "I'll catch up on my sleep this winter!" said Tennessee...
Read more here.
by Merri Melde
Since 1955, the Tevis Cup has been the Holy Grail for endurance riders around the world. The iconic 100-mile ride from Lake Tahoe to Auburn, California, is a grueling test for horse and rider with a 24-hour time limit.
For Auburn's Diana Hiiesalu, the Tevis Cup has been a dream come true in more ways than one. Tevis Cup fever gripped her when, in the late-1980s, she saw an Arabian Horse World cover of a horse climbing over the famous cliff in the ride. "When I saw this Cougar Rock photo and read the accompanying article I felt this incredible rush of wanting to be there. Getting there was a minor detail, because I already was a Tevis Rider in my heart..."
Read more here.
Idaho Magazine: "Oreana: Where the Deer and the Antelope Play"
Story and photos by Merri Melde
"Oreana - Population 8, Maybe 9." That hand-painted sign tacked to a telephone pole greeted me as I drove down the hill into the little community of Oreana for the first time in 2005. I'd come to this fairly isolated corner of Owyhee County in southwestern Idaho to visit some endurance horse-riding friends for a week. I stayed on for a month. It took that short a time for the high desert sagebrush country to get under my skin, because two years later, I was back to stay.
That humorous population sign, painted by an Oreana resident I came to know, wasn't far from the truth. There's no store or post office, neither city hall nor town council nor mayor of Oreana. Technically it's not even a town, but an unincorporated community. Since its beginnings in the late-1800s, the Oreana community has generally encompassed the valleys of Bates, Pickett, Hart, Catherine, Browns, and Castle Creeks, while carrying the same zip code as the nearest "unincorporated census-designated place" of Murphy, twenty miles away by road, and the seat of Owyhee County...
Read more here.
Endurance News: "Enduring"
*This is also an excerpt from a chapter in my book, Soul Deep in Horses*
by Merri Melde
It's all Al's fault. The blistering sun. The pitch dark. The sweltering heat, blinding dust, terrifying thunderstorms, and the stinging sleet. Deadly rattlesnakes, biting gnats, icy rivers, treacherous rocks, killer bogs, and perilous cliffs. Thirst, hunger, windburn, sunburn, frozen fingers. Sweat and tears and despair. The bruises, scrapes, sore muscles, and smashed toes.
The shattered bones.
The godawful rides that last forever. The crazy horses that pull your arms out of their sockets for 50 miles. The crotchety horses that buck and toss you on your shoulder. The horse that bolts. The horse that tries to die on you.
It's all Al's fault...
Read more here.
Trail Blazer Magazine: City of Rocks National Reserve: A Treasure of a Trail
Story and photos by Merri Melde
Gold fever was one of the main driving forces behind the flood of emigrants that traveled overland to the West in the mid-1800s. Others were looking for a new beginning in life. Some craved adventure. Over a quarter million of them found their way along the California Trail and laid eyes on the City of Rocks in what is now southern Idaho, at the southern end of the Albion Mountains.
The park's name came from the description of James Wilkins, an emigrant passing through in 1849, who was impressed enough by the beauty of the landscape to write about it: "We encamped at the city of the rocks, a noted place from the granitic rocks rising abruptly out of the ground. They are in a romantic valley clustered together, which gives them the appearance of a city..."
Read more here.
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