103-Year-Old Nebraskan checks off bucket list dream by riding horse again

KEARNEY, Neb. — Helen Brooks is proving it’s never too late to check something off your bucket list.

Just weeks after celebrating her 103rd birthday, Brooks climbed back into the saddle to ride a horse again— something she says she had been hoping to do for years.

“Well, it was something I wanted to do, but it's a lot bigger horse than I anticipated,” Brooks said with a smile. “But it was okay.”

For Brooks, horses have been part of life for as long as she can remember. She grew up on a farm near Tryon, which is north of North Platte, where horseback riding wasn’t just recreation— it was part of everyday life.

“We rode horses before we were big enough to walk,” said Brooks.

As a child Brooks and her siblings often rode horses to school, a trip of roughly two and a half miles each way. Sometimes several children would ride together on the same horse.

"We'd ride three or four on a horse to go to school and back,” she said.

Life on the farm meant plenty of chores, too. Brooks recalled spending weekends helping gather cow chips, which were used as fuel.

“Every weekend when it wasn’t storming, we were out picking chips,” she said.

One of her favorite memories involves a beloved family horse that she owned as a teenager.

“A family I worked for when I was a teenager gave a horse to me,” Brooks said. “I rode it from their house to our house a lot, which was probably 20 miles.”

The recent ride brought back decades of memories.

“I’ve just been wanting to ride a horse for a long time,” said Brooks.

Helen says she hasn’t decided what adventure might come next, but her family believes with her adventurous spirit it likely won’t take long for her to find another.

Christine Wilson, of Christine horseback riding, assisted Brooks with her recent journey.

Wilson recently opened a new large-animal non profit called Hooves of Hope.