Between 1980 and the late 1990's, I must have travelled through the nearby gate thousands of times, headed to the stable up the hill. Dropped off by our parents, and left to our own devices for long summer days and afternoons after school, my friends and I virtually lived here in Portuguese Bend. We took countless day-long rides through the hills, worked through hundreds of lessons preparing for neighborhood horse shows, cleaned mountains of tack, groomed our horses for hours simply to be near them, sat at the ring for long afternoons watching our heroes ride, and adopted horses whose owners seemed to have left them here only to forget them. The barn was my sanctuary, and the people here were my first family away from family.
Years later, in March of 2014, I brought my husband and my own children down for a visit, the first for all of them. For me, it looked the same, it smelled the same, and for the half an hour that we wandered around, it felt the same. My beloved horses are long gone, of course, but while walking past the familiar barns, they all came back to me; Windsong, the Arabian mare who was my first horse when I was in the third grade; she was gracefully beautiful, but ten times more horse than I should have been riding at the time. In the early days, she bucked me off an average of two times a day, usually when there was a peacock present. She taught me how to ride a buck and how to stick in the saddle. She taught me perseverance. Notions, my patient rock of a gelding who would jump anything no matter how badly I approached a fence. He endured Halloween costumes that no horse should have to be subjected to, and carried me through miles and miles of horse show days and trail rides. He taught me about trust and loyalty. Huey was the 'fancy' show horse that I traded in Notions for, in a brief attempt to make the leap to higher competition. He taught me that not all that glitters is gold, and that relationships have always been more important to me than prizes. Finally, when I returned here in my college years, there was Desperado, the horse of my life. With me for over twenty years, he taught me that an animal can sometimes know you better than you know yourself. In his later years, he lived in my backyard until the age of 31, living long enough to give both of my children their first rides. Horses have been a huge part of my life and of making me who I am today. This place, the barn up the hill with the beautiful white courtyard that makes it onto so many greeting cards and paintings of local artists, was where that all began.
How could I NOT hide a cache here? Enjoy the hunt and the views!