Summertime is perhaps the best season of the year for basking in nostalgic Southern traditions. With school out, our hectic modern pace slows down just a tad, making room for the pastimes of yesteryear. Many of these traditions are rooted in our region’s rural history, where recreation was fairly basic and centered on the land. One example is the simple pleasure of taking horses swimming in a farm pond on a hot day.

We featured the Midlands’ historic riding academies this past September, one of which was Hickory Top in Eastover. Sherrerd Hartness, who took lessons there in high school, remembers that in the summertime heat, they usually ditched their saddles and all just rode the trails bareback. She bought a palomino quarter horse named Gold when she started there, which she remembers thinking was a rather dumb name. “Just wait until summer, and you will understand why,” she was told. Sherrerd discovered that the name had more meaning than just the beautiful sheen underneath her winter coat.

“The first warm day I rode her towards the pond, she started speeding up,” Sherrerd recollects. “She was headstrong, and I could not stop her as she made a beeline straight to the water. All the other kids behind me were laughing — they hadn’t told me about this quirk of hers because they knew I’d be freaked out, which was correct! When she hit the water, she plunged in, head and all, and kept swimming with her head under. I was terrified and thought she was drowning, and I was afraid to let go of her mane in case I got caught under her legs and drowned too. She finally came surging back out, having the time of her life. All summer long that was her routine, and I finally knew why she was worth her weight in gold. She was awesome!”

I too well remember the first day I took my childhood horse, Dunbrack, on a country swim — we went to a pond in the middle of a hayfield, and as he walked in, he also went straight under. Like Sherrerd, we thought he was drowning since he had never swum before, but he soon came back up, surging through the water in great humps like a dolphin! He finally got it figured out and, unlike Gold, did not intentionally swim underwater after that. I remember loving the feeling of being pulled around by his lead line — it was like being dragged through the water by a little motorboat!

Wylie Bell has taken swimming with her horses to the next level by traveling with them to Daufuskie Island for excursions on the beach. Turn to page 52 for some truly breathtaking photography, as well as her stories and tips for equine water adventures. It is a tradition worth continuing!