Our fickle existence
75 miles per hour winds on October 8, 2017 in bone dry conditions started the Tubbs and Nuns fires, the deadliest fires in California history. 42 people died, more than 8,000 structures burned, thousands of acres went up in flames. By 6 am on Monday, October 9th, my phone was dinging with messages and ringing constantly. I've heard from neighboring barns literally running from the fire, frantically loading horses amongst flying embers. When I walked out to my car, 40 miles to the South, ashes were raining down, the air was thick with smoke. Once I drove up the small dead end road up the mountain to the barn, police cars were racing downwards, stopping to tell me that this area was under mandatory evacuation. I said 'I know, I'm just helping to evacuate our barn.' They said 'ok, but then get out!'. Meanwhile I had texted a friend who hurried over with a trailer. Trailers lined up, husbands came along, barn cats were caught, tack rooms emptied, horses loaded easily, and a long string of trailers left down the road and across the county line.
Meanwhile the Sears fire was burning across the street from the other barn at which I work, but was thankfully controlled relatively quickly.
We brought our horses to a generous barn about 40 minutes West, away from the fires and with slightly better air quality. I've never seen so many trailers on the road. The following week and half was spent watching in horror the unfolding tragedy, meeting people at the barn whose houses had burned, hearing stories of people running for their lives in the middle of the night, engulfed by fire, with no warning whatsoever. I helped coordinate equine evacuations form evacuation zones for the non-profit I work with. Spending time caring for the horses and walking them, the smoke still too thick to work them, (on some days, it was worse than the air of Beijing), gave us all some sense of normalcy. I had, for the first time in my life, asthma symptoms. But I was lucky, our barn(s) were spared, my apartment was fine.
The firefighters finally got the upper hand, some much needed rain materialized, and our horses returned home. Things went back to normal fairly quickly, with the exception of a lingering hyperawareness of our fleeting, non-guaranteed existence.
Then I got on a plane for a long planned trip to Germany, visiting with family as well as getting to meet Anja Beran Yes, THE Anja Beran (www.anjaberan.de). Her beautiful facility Gut Rosenhof, which is home to 50 horses (mostly stallions), and a host of other critters, including retired circus animals such as lamas and a camel, is situated on hill in the woods of the Ostallgau region of Bavaria. To say watching her teach and work with riders and horses was inspiring is an understatement. Her calm, methodical approach built trust and enabled everyone to retain and improve. She emphasizes the gymnasticising effect of all exercises, teaching the horse calmly and slowly to be a able to balance and bend his joints, to step elegantly and stay sound for years to come. She has 30 year old horses in the barn who look perfectly fit and healthy, and are still able to work. All horses learn to piaffe and passage, not as an end goal, but as a means of strengthening and suppling. The kind of riding I saw is adhering to the same classical principles that guide my own riding and training, which I want to continue master into the finest details. I will definitely be participating in Anja Beran's workshops going forward.
It was a strange and beautiful parallel reality to the inferno that had raged unmercifully just weeks earlier in my chosen home. Back on my regular work schedule, I feel deeply gratified by the effect that this kind of correct riding has on the horses, regardless of their previous training or primary job. Sometimes I wake up thinking that it's totally crazy to continue trying to make a living in the volatile business of riding horses, but as soon as I sit on a horse, it's the only thing that makes perfect sense.
