Blog / 2026 / As American as Riding a Horse

When I was a kid, my father insisted that I learn to ride a horse. I didn’t grow up in a rural area, so, for a few months when I was twelvish, we regularly made the trek out to the country so I could learn about these large animals.

He told me that being familiar with horses was part of being American.

My father was born in 1924 and raised on a homestead in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. During his childhood, he walked for several miles every day to attend a one-room schoolhouse where he was taught to read by an older student, a lesson which Papa acknowledged was good for both of them.

Horses were part of his youth, and he thought these animals should be part of mine as well. It was only a decade or so later, as I worked on this project, that I understood that his idea about horses as an element of the American identity was unusual, shaped by his specific upbringing.

Defining “American” is always that peculiar—just like defining what it means to be a part of any country. We each have our own very individualized ideas about what’s important to any given nationality.

A century after my father was born, as undertrained and overly emotional federal agents surround schools, harrass kids, grab five-year-olds to use as bait to draw their parents into custody, and murder us with impunity, one question in particular haunts me.

What will children growing up in the US today think of as quintessentially American?