Getting ready to head off for a five-day intensive horsemanship clinic feels like it takes just about the same amount of momentum I envision it must have taken NASA to launch a space shuttle. I've hardly hauled my trailer since my accident, and visions of tires blowing and of brakes not working dance in my head. The trailer isn't the only thing that has to shake the dust off. It's been four years since my last clinic with Harry Whitney, which had been the first since my accident, and there's a lot of inertia to overcome. I brought Satin, my black mare 'comeback' horse, then and now together we're heading back once again: a few years later than I'd hoped but we're going.
The pre-flight check is finally done and all systems are a-go. I've got my guilty secret going with me: crunchy Cheetos. Cheetos are a food I'd never buy for my every day 'real life' (even I am not sure what that my real life actually looks like) but I can hardly head out for a long road-trip without a bag of their delicious hyper-orangeness riding shotgun. It's almost like I can't pull a trailer without them. We load up and we're off. Kind of. After making four unexpected U-turns deep in the belly of Stockton (the sorry result of a short-cut gone awry which caused me to have to make a series of very impressive U-turns -if I may say so myself- while pulling a three-horse trailer) but finally, six highway and gravel road hours later, I am actually there.
This trip has been so long awaited and during the countdown to this day I've been excited/terrified, a compound word I invented myself because I seem to need to use it quite a lot. There are very few things I push myself to do that don't somehow feel like a combination of both - sheer unadulterated excitement mixed with a 'holy crap, am I really doing this??' mild kind of terror. Not like diving with great white sharks, but still enough to send a tingly frisson of electricity zinging through my body.
Stephanie, Jeanne, and Melba are standing in the yard waving their arms and directing me to a great spot to park, right by the porta potties. Last arrivers can't be choosers but it is a nice level spot and easy to navigate and I semi-calmly park, all the while wanting to jump out of the cab as fast as possible and hug them all. So many of us haven't seen each other for years. Actual years, and in some cases maybe even five. I wrote about these soul sisters in my book Broken, Tales of a Titanium Cowgirl. Some of us have been friends for over fifteen years and some of us have actually only met via Facebook and I have to shake my head to remind myself that Facebook and real life are not actually the same thing. We've created such a cool cyber-place of friendship galvanized by our mutual love for the horse, and it's metamorphosed into friendships all over the country.
We've found so much laughter too, and our messages back and forth involve sharing horse wisdom as well as funny and often more than slightly irreverent conversations (we're fairly confident the NSA is reading our messages and laughing along with us, or perhaps now that I think about it, they may be writing us up) on an almost daily basis for so long that it feels surreal to recognize that some of us have only met virtually. Virtual or not, now that we're all actually in the same place for the same clinic it feels like a giant reunion. We're all high on the friendship and the full hearts, a good buzz like if you mixed the sugar high you get from cotton candy with the thrill of new cowboy boots and topped it off with a shot of fizzing joy and then shook it all together into one happy hug-a-thon of reunion and soul-full recognition.
Day 1 begins with introductions and Harry asks us to share where we are with our horses. As we begin to speak we all seem to recognize at the same time that as we talk about our horse we are also talking about ourselves and our own 'wonderings' most of all.
There were plenty of laughs as well as revelations, as there always seem to be both at a Harry Whitney clinic.
Two of my favorites from the day:
Opening your eyes to what the motions of good emotions
of your horse look like, versus what the motions of bad emotions look like. If you really know what you're looking at, they are there clear as day, as tell-tale signals, if we only develop the eyes to see. It's no easy task to develop those eyes, that's becoming quite clear. Harry's spent a lifetime at this and he's good. Watching him interact with each of our horses is extraordinary and I see how far I have to go.
Harry's grasp of the language of the horse is so vast, so broad, and so deep it is profoundly moving. We all stood together gathered around the fire that evening listening to Harry talk, and I think we shared a moment of mutual realization that this journey of horsemanship may take a while.
Like a lifetime.
My second favorite 'aha!' moment is more of a tongue -in- cheek laugh, which Harry has an abundance of..."Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment."
Boy, can I attest to that 😂
Looking forward to the next four days more than I can say.
