The "Eyes" Have It

I had an interesting discussion with my boss this week.  We were discussing how to properly negotiate a turn on a motorcycle (don’t ask me why), when he piped up with, “the key is where you’re looking.”  Truer words are rarely spoken.

Of course, as horseback riders, we know the importance of where we look.  If you’ve ever taken a lesson with me you’ve heard it at least three times.  You go where you look.  If you look down, you’re headed over your horse’s ears.  If you look around the corner to your jump, you’ll find a good spot.  If you keep your eyes soft and aware of the other riders around you, you won’t end up body checking your best friend with your 1000 pound equine.  Looking where you want to go when riding is as essential as wearing your helmet.

Never missing an opportunity to talk horses, I explained to my boss that the phenomenon he observed while riding motorcycles, was actually pretty common.  Not only with horses, but skiing, snowboarding, sailing, driving, you get the idea. 

My boss is a wise man.  I should have seen him steering the conversation from the very beginning.  Like a master chess player, he was looking four moves ahead when he started talking about motorcycles.  By starting my brain down the right path, he was able to sit back while I came to the conclusion he intended from the beginning.  The key is where you’re looking, not just in sports, but in all of life.

At work, if we’re always looking at what we can’t do or what we have to do to get by, we never see the possibility of what we’re capable of.  The cannot’s and have to’s cloud the potential horizon.

Lately I’ve been very focused on all the obstacles and not how to overcome them.  I know from jumping that staring down the intimidating fence isn’t going to get me safely over it.  We have to plan our approaches, think and ride positively and keep those eyes focused on the far side.  We can do the same with the obstacles facing us in life.  It isn’t really a Fresh Perspective, just a repurposed one. 

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird.  It would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg.  We are like eggs at present.  And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg.  We must be hatched or go bad.”
                                                                                        -          C.S. Lewis

It’s time to break the shell that’s been caging me.  I’ve been riding Nutmeg in the morning to beat the heat and beat the exhaustion I always feel after work.  Admiral has been working in the evenings, since it’s much easier to find the motivation to long line than ride.  Fingers are crossed.  The husband has been making motions toward riding again.  We cleaned the cobwebs out of his helmet last night.  Maybe more than one shell is preparing to crack.

 

Ego on the Rocks

“Make your ego porous.  Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing.  Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.”

                                                                                                -          Rainer Maria Rilke

There was a time when I would rather have bitten off my hand then get off my horse and hand him to the clinician.  My Ego has taken quite a beating since then.  I’ve failed two United States Pony Club “B” ratings, I’ve failed two Driver’s license tests (don’t worry, I really am a safe driver, especially with horses in tow), I failed to maintain a 4.0, I’ve failed to diagnose simple ailments like abscesses or crooked hips.  I fail daily at being an organized ambitious professional and housewife, but I’m growing okay with my failings and that’s helping me grow again.

I used to think I was hot stuff.  After all, I was riding six plus horses a day and lived in my trainer’s pocket.  I think I had a case of Proximity Ego.  Just because I was near great people, I assumed I was great too.  It took many failures to teach me that I don’t have all the answers.  Even today I have a hard time admitting to that one, but my horses are always right there to remind me.

After Admiral broke his stifle last summer, I promised him we’d start back at the beginning and pick up the pieces we missed the first two times (another failure on my part).  At the clinic last weekend, it hit me why I so prefer riding Nutmeg.  On Admiral I’m constantly pushing buttons that aren’t there expecting them to have some result.  So now we’re installing buttons.

Soften is the button on which we are currently working.  Soften in your rib cage.  Soften in your mouth.  Soften your back.  Soften your neck.  Heck, I’d take softened lips (and so far, that’s what I’ve managed to get, but it’s a start).  I always thought I should return Admiral to longe line work, but he was so unbalanced that the work was never productive.  It was anything but a way to improve his softness.  Last weekend I tossed my ego aside and turned the dear boy over to a more educated set of hands.

To pad my pride a bit, she didn’t magically find the soft button either.  It’s something we really will have to install.  Too bad horses don’t come with lifetime upgrades and spare parts kits.  The process is going to take tools outside of my current set, but she taught me to use the first one.  Slowly but surely, we’re opening a place in all his stiffness to let the soft button in.  At the same time, I’m being reminded to let the softness back into me.

When life gets difficult, we have a tendency to put up walls of protection.  We block out what we don’t want to hear.  We push back against change.  With all our rigidity, neither the bad nor the good can penetrate our shells.  By letting our ego rule, we miss opportunities to learn.  In an education starved time of life, I can’t afford to miss those opportunities.

I have an Ego problem.  It isn’t going to change on its own.  I need to recognize others for what they have to offer and that starts by learning to listen more and talk less.  Get off my high horse if I’m asked.  Would you like to join me at Ego’s Anonymous?  Just remember to check the Ego at the door and I’m sure you’ll gain a Fresh Perspective.

I'd Rather be Riding...

It’s been a tough couple of weeks.  I’ve watched friends attend an family reunion annual clinic and venture off to horse shows and events in Chicago and St. Louis.   Social Media is amazing that way.  It’s like you’re enjoying the event with them, but you’re a state or more away.  As handy as it is, I’d rather be there riding.

I’m getting plenty of time in the barn at least.  This was going to be the year that we quit building the barn/house and started enjoying the fruits of our labors.  Seems it’s not to be.  When we returned from vacation, Nutmeg’s super sensitive white leg was having a bad flair-up of scratches.  It was swollen and hot.  Not good.  So I’ve been treating them, every day, twice a day, for at least 30 minutes.  I can’t complain about not spending enough time in the barn, but that time squatting with a hose just isn’t what I had in mind.  I’d rather be riding.

All is not lost, although I’ve probably been treating the wrong thing for weeks.  Seems the scratches were a problem, just not the problem causing the swelling.  She has probably strained that fetlock joint slightly.  Oh bother.  So I have a new plan of attack.  More rest and more icing and cold hosing.  Plus, I’ve ordered a fun new addition to our eventing gear, a self-cooling, self-adhesive wrap.  Hope it works.  I did always want a real (breaks constantly and costs lots of money) event horse…Really I did, but I’d rather be riding her.

That leaves me with Admiral to ride while Nutmeg ices and time (ha!  What’s that?) to break the pony to drive.  Admiral is headed to the Remember to Dream Therapeutic Riding Center’s dressage schooling show fundraiser later this month after a dressage clinic this weekend.  I’m sure he’s thrilled.  He loves all the petting and attention at the shows, just not the actual working part.  As for me, yeah, I’d rather be riding.

I really am going to work on breaking the pony to drive this summer, next summer, sometime in the next five years.  He’s getting fat.  He needs a job.  Oh, and he’s becoming an opinionated little cuss.  Time to teach him that he too must occasionally earn his keep.  Plus, driving is fun and we have tons of gravel roads to explore.  Oh but I’d rather be riding.

You probably got the point four paragraphs ago.  I am once again wallowing in self-pity while my three gorgeous horses look at me with imploring eyes.  So why don’t I get around to it already?  It’s too easy to play the blame game I guess.  I don’t have time.  Work has me working, imagine that!  My horse isn’t sound.  We’re between shows…. You get the idea.  They are all horrible excuses and constantly blaming things that are seemingly outside of my control isn’t helping me get back in the saddle. 

I’m fighting an unpleasant mental battle this spring.  Do I want it badly enough to put my petty blame game aside?  Is riding what I really want or am I happy with time away from work, time spent in the barn?  Do I want to ride badly enough that I’ll ride whatever, not just the superb animals I’ve grown accustom to?  If not, do I really deserve to be riding at all?  It’s not a fun game.  It’s not a good game.  I’m searching for a Fresh Perspective, but instead of finding it, I’m typing this monologue when I’d reall rather be riding.

I'd rather be riding her!

 

Island, Oh Island, Where for art Thou?

I’ve been asked for a more detailed account of our sojourn to the Bahamas.  You may need a bottle of rum to get through it all, but here we go.

Dear friends of ours have family connections on Lubbers Quarters, a smallish (that’s the technical term, it is bigger than a “rock” after all) island in the Abaco (ah-bah-ko) Islands.  Joining with them and several other good friends scattered across the U.S. we rented a house, rented a boat, and found plane tickets that would land us in Marsh Harbor. 

It’s a great feeling to see a crashed airplane as you’re coming into land…  Thankfully our fate was not so tragic.  We landed over The Marls, which to my uneducated eye looked a lot like either a flooded desert or a drained marsh.  I’m really not sure which.

Our boat rental company picked us up (by boat of course) at Marsh Harbor and took us across some very choppy water to Hope Town.  Covered in salt spray and thoroughly shaken and maybe a little stirred, we were given a quick tour of the boat then set loose on the poor people of Hope Town.

Boats don’t go in a straight line very well.  Even if your driver is completely rum free.  Plus touchy throttles and slow tail to nose (stern to bow, sorry, I’ll always be more of a horse person than boat person) response made our going stressful to say the least.  An enormous thanks to whichever member of our team remember that the pro controlled the throttle with tiny knuckle bumps.  By day three, I kind of got the hang of the throttle. 

 

Parking (docking) was a disaster.  Bless our hosts for not rolling on the ground laughing at us.  We had no idea what we were doing or where we were going and after getting into two tight slips that weren’t our own, I’m amazed we didn’t sink our boat right there or at least scuff our prop.  It took a lot of team work, but we finally made into our space on the dock.

Hint: If you have trouble getting parked between the painted lines in a parking lot, boating is not for you...

Things were downhill in a good way from there.  We loaded up the golf carts (the main form of transportation around Lubbers Quarters) and headed to Gone Bananas, a name I found oddly appropriate.  I mean, who in their right mind would fly from a landlocked state to the middle of the ocean and plan to spend a week on an island getting groceries by boat?!?

Groceries by Boat



Gone Bananas was stunning offering all the amenities you could want, minus having the entire island wrapped in mosquito netting.  With access to several beaches, docks, and seemingly endless stretches of wade-able waters we were home free.  We wandered the island, fished, tormented hermit crabs, poked around for sea creatures of every sort and generally just relaxed.

 

Going Fishing

 

 

 

We sampled the local fare at Lubbers Landing and enjoyed the Full Moon party at Cracker P’s.  We also enjoyed a breath taking view and scrumptious dinner with our hosts at Harbor Inn in Hope Town.  In between evenings out, we did our best to catch our dinner and managed to cook-up some amazing Trigger fish (if you can get it skinned, it is like nothing I have ever tasted) and fry some conch.

Dinner party!

Conch Carving

Our snorkeling and diving adventure with Froggies didn’t go quite as planned.  The reefs we explored were not well sheltered and the sea was a bit rough.  One of our group ended up sea sick and another had a nasty salt imbalance issue that pretty well put him on his butt.  Unfortunately, they didn’t miss much.  The Lionfish have been very hard on the reef fish.  We were told that they are rebuilding, but there wasn’t much aquatic life on our adventures.  The divers had a brief run in with a shark and I about head butted a barracuda.  That was the extent of it.

We did take a day to explorer on our own.  Our hosts pointed out a few good spots and gave me careful directions for getting there and back safely.  We swam with the turtles in Tilloo Pond, although all we ever saw were heads poking up out of the water.  The water made us incredibly buoyant, so even though the turtles were hiding we had a delightful time.  We also spent time combing Tilloo Bank for sand dollars, sea biscuits, star fish and conch.

What is this?

In between adventures, we enjoyed thunderstorm after thunderstorm.  It gave everyone a chance to recharge, stay out of the sun and it filled the rain barrels (the only source of water on the island).  For me it was a blessed chance to stay in bed during a thunderstorm.  I love listening to the rain, but my job forces me to work whenever there is bad weather.  Oh how I’ve missed just listening to the rain!

 

So that was our vacation.  We got to spend time with friends we never get to see, do cool things we never get to do, and eat stuff we never get to eat.  There may have been a fair bit of rum drinking among some of the party members as well.  It was just what a vacation should be and everyone arrived home safe and sound.  Now it’s back to normal life, driving cars instead of boats, waking up to alarm clocks and living according to someone else’s time schedule.  Ah for island time again, but that’s why they call it vacation.