by Roxanne Bok
The next day I awoke still rattled. I hoped my Monday morning yoga class would sort me out and help me conquer my fear about riding again, or having anyone I deeply care about ride at all. It was a back-bending yoga day, my most challenging. During the preparatory poses, I grew increasingly nauseous. Michael intuited my discomfort and said “That’s it for you, hit the showers.” In yoga that means Supta Baddhakonasana, a passive, restorative pose I gratefully reclined into for the rest of the class. Still, I felt lousy all day. Michael explained that any trauma, like a fall, is subversive for the body, and that arching backwards in particular releases built-up toxins from the liver and internal organs. I guess I had toxined to the hilt over the weekend, a horse bender.
THE NEXT WEEKEND Bobbi was judging a dressage event far from home. I faced riding alone, me and Bandi, or not at all. My window of opportunity was Sunday, high noon. The barn was quiet, and in solitude I tacked up Bandi. As we exited the barn door rain started but stopped before I could cop the wet as an excuse to cancel. Bandi was as mellow as he has always been, up until the weekend of the show. Grateful, I still realized that my rides on this animal, maybe even any animal, forever would be different. I know that I am not the exception to the rule, and neither is Bobbi. If we ride, we will fall off, will and skill notwithstanding.
Is my fear overplayed, I wondered? Am I a coward or is riding a crazy idea? Should I fight against my aging body and mind’s tendency to avoid risks that seemed miniscule when I was younger? Maybe this is wisdom talking? Sitting, trotting, cantering and jumping on the slippery back of a one-thousand-pound prey animal, hard-wired to flee danger justifies caution, no question. And I bet I could spend a lifetime finding that truly bombproof horse. Those “safe ones” don’t have any “go” left in them, a frustration of another kind. And, dollars-to-donuts, it will still find enough energy to spook.
My internal debates churning, I gathered power in numbers. Plenty of people ride, and plenty deal with spookier and naughtier horses than Bandi could ever be. And check out those cowboys on the broncos; in comparison this is child’s play. Like so many aspects of living, it’s a mind and confidence game as much as one of skill. Live in the moment, keep loose and confident, take falls in stride, leave anxiety at the door, don’t anticipate the worst, expect the best, and accept whatever happens. Become a monk in a saddle. Can I get there? Right now, any jig on Bandi’s part makes me want to bolt for the hills. That Bandi immediately senses my unease renders me more uneasy and vice versa into a vicious cycle, a closed loop of haywire circuitry. But if I cave now, next thing I know, I’ll cower against more fears—give up skiing (knee and head breakage), tennis (wrist and elbow breakage), yoga (back breakage), driving (full-body breakage)—and I’m an old woman with a death grip on a purse taking baby steps to the drug store on my one outing of the day, my cane thrusting, my paranoid eyes darting around for muggers.
No: better to stretch myself, body, mind and will. Reach toward the hardest tasks so merely hard ones seem a cakewalk. Risk lives everywhere and must be embraced as an antidote to premature old age.
Right.
But then again, acres of doctors’ offices and hospital wards brim with middle-aged weekend warriors refusing to accept the inevitable.
Right, again.
Where’s the middle ground? Does equestrianism ride this envelope or limn lunacy?
Maybe I should equate the devastating quadriplegia-inducing fall with the statistically more likely car accident. I don’t think about a crash every time I press the gas pedal. I know many couples who fly separately to ensure one survives to parent even though highways prove more dangerous than runways. But all of these scenarios are unlikely. I may break a collarbone, or twist my spine a bit, but probably won’t kill myself. I will emerge braver, more confident, able to leap tall fences in a single bound, “Look, out in the ring, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Roxanne Bok, no longer lily-livered, but eager, strong and not shaking like a leaf.”
Or, I could just quit, responsibly accepting riding as self-indulgent when I have two youngsters to raise. But what about the kids? Once I fell off that likelihood for them loomed real and inevitable. Cars we must contend with, unless you’re Amish—but a ton of irrepressible muscle and energy with a small, obstinate brain and no automatic transmission or front and side airbags, we can skip.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Devil Is in the Details
BY NOVEMBER, winter nipped at heels and hooves and “finished” remained a dirty word. The barn and outbuildings were all re-built and painted, although there was no end to the hanging of hooks and racks and shelves and myriad doohickeys necessary to organize a functional animal- and equipment-filled space. The main barn was a gut job in the end, and when we stripped down an un-insulated building with a dirt floor it begged the question of what was saved. Not much: inside, all surfaces now shined with golden new wood patched between the few stately old pine planks that remembered history and experience. Scott still joked that we could display the few bits of original lumber on one wall in the tack room, and his crack wasn’t far off.
Painstakingly, all thirty-seven stall floors were dug out to a depth of two feet in order to excavate the accumulated manure packed down from years of poor or no maintenance. We pitied the determined, brow-mopping guys who, with pickaxes, chipped away at this compressed “concrete” for weeks on end. But now cement floors with thick rubber runners span the formerly dirt alleys, and a stone base under a cushiony mat carpets each stall. New “touch slide” doors with black coated bars and working hardware replaced the rusted, bent metal on all doors and windows. Footing beams throughout were replaced where rotted from inadequate mucking and drainage. Toasty warm tack and viewing rooms now boasted clean, damp-proof tile floors. The piece de resistance, a heated indoor ring, while not huge at 80 x 150 feet (the ideal is at least 100 x 200), whet our riding appetites with mostly patinaed old wood that warmly glows in the morning and evening light, lovely new-paned windows that preserve the old barn look, and no dented metal anywhere in sight.
We resisted the lure of the increasingly popular steel barn, an economical and perhaps greener route, though a material colder in temperature and atmosphere. The new roof is asphalt shingle—a lot of asphalt—in keeping with the softer, quieter to rain and hail, and no doubt leakier standard. However, we did yield to one newer technology. Eschewing the dusty, must-be-watered-regularly-or-you’ll-choke-to-death dirt footing, ours is “dust free,” a secret concoction of wax and sand and who knows what else that took three days with a special churning vehicle, not unlike a mini-Zamboni, to install.
“Is it a softer landing for us?” I inquired after hearing the price.
“Unfortunately it’s probably no more cushiony than grass,” Bobbi shook her head.
“Well, buy me that Velcro saddle, then,” I joked as I wrote the check.
The out-building foundations had been shored up with one hundred and twenty-six bags of concrete, refurbished with new wood and the same green roofing and brown paint trimmed with cream to match the main barn. Gary, our contractor, was rightly proud of his work. He reveled in our weekly tour, and Scott and I delighted in exploring each transformation, ostentatious or modest, the three of us lingering to drink it in. He was a rugged fairy godfather to our big pumpkin, and I appreciated the magic craftsmanship that resulted in barn doors with hidden hardware and grooved wall panels that joined with invisible seams.
“You do beautiful work, Gary.”
“You’ve allowed me to do my job,” he graciously replied.
The smell of sawdust promised a new start for this old barn that now radiated a palpable lightness, freed from the dreary dank of the last decades. Scott and I realized how happy such transformations make us and how right it felt to rehabilitate a farm, speaking both to his farming roots and my solidarity with animals. Our barn walk-abouts dissolved any remaining rancor from our fight about my riding, which we left alone to find its own way. Time management is tricky f
or both of us, especially when we can’t resist projects that push us well beyond a reasonable fullness, but we’d work it out. Eventually the farm would heal the land and us.
Outside, beyond the double-sized riding rings still under artistic management by Kenny, the round gazebo beckoned as a prime destination. Originally used to showcase young, untrained horses, its one hundred feet circumference impressively radiated without any center support, but it leaned like the tower of Pisa. Gary hoisted and reinforced the sagging frame and halved the sides to waist height. We splurged on blue stone flooring to evoke a shaded terrace. Indulging aesthetics now, my plans percolated a rapid boil: ring the inside with teak benches and lighting and fill the middle with tables and chairs. Not only will it shelter us from the summer sun and thunderstorms, but also afford perfect viewing of the outdoor arena, the barn, the fields and the hills beyond. During shows, vendors can hawk their wares, and I envisioned breezy summer dinner parties with soft notes wafting around men with ascots and women in spaghetti-strapped, ruffled dresses dancing barefoot in the grass. A dreamy Ralph Lauren scene had carried me away perhaps, but to think that we’d considered taking down this lilting relic that now reigned as the crowning centerpiece.
In our earliest imaginings for this project Scott and I had just hoped for cheap and cheerful. But with Mrs. Johnson’s legacy, Gary’s touches, Bobbi’s horse knowledge and our funding, Weatogue Stables emerged deeply beautiful in the way that form follows function. We uncovered the farm’s original blueprints that beckoned us that extra mile, and we followed its design. Deceptively simple and re-colored to blend into the New England landscape, the farm re-birthed unpretentious and welcoming, an enterprise that will wear more comfortable with use and age. The disdain I initially heaped on the former owner, I supplanted with respect for the flow of the grounds and the layout of the barns, and I can now understand its former healthy life. I saw that Mrs. Johnson got it right: horses were everything to her, and she sacrificed much for her dream, but sometimes even your all is not enough. Many worthy farms arc a belled trajectory, with heartbreak obliterating success. I hoped we would fare better longer, and that Mrs. Johnson would find some pleasure in El-Arabia’s resurrection as a boarding stable rather than a subdivision.
Our fencing man finally showed up, months late, but flew along faster than we could believe with 11,000 thousand feet of new wood. I apologized to our neighbors for the days of post pounding, 1,710 to be exact, only to be encored by weeks of hammering on the four boards in between each and every one. Mike still disappeared occasionally, but snapped to when, frustrated, we dictated a deadline for a particular section. Perpetually jolly, he was hard to yell at.
“Have you heard from Mike, yet?” Scott asked every week.
“No,” I’d sheepishly reply, feeling responsible.
“We still have to get the fencing all painted before winter, you know.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was already too late; the wood too “green” to take the stain. We wouldn’t see the finishing touch of ink-black outlining the paddocks until spring.
“And just why is that huge mountain of dirt still lurking in the middle of the fields?”
I shrugged. I had no good answer other than Kenny was on the project part-time, a cost-saving measure to us. The topsoil mountain built from what is now the outdoor riding ring was half gone, but the unsightly rest sprouted tall weeds like a steroidal Chia Pet.
“I think that guy likes his job a little too much,” Scott said testily. “This can’t be right.”
I also questioned Kenny’s progress, but I wanted to pacify my impatient husband who was tired of all the mud. He understands the bushy look in wild spaces, but likes good grooming in his landscapes. Likewise, I’ll never see my husband in a beard; I think he distrusts wooly guys.
“I don’t know... drainage is complicated? If we get it right, proper elevations will rid that huge pasture of standing water—you know, what Elliot calls the skating rink? Plus, Bobbi rightly concluded that the last bit of driveway and parking area closer to the barn shouldn’t be finished off until all the heavy equipment is gone?” I smiled my reasons and met his eyes in anticipation of a funny rejoinder. He squinted back he wasn’t buying, but graciously let it go.
Underlying site work is expensive and necessary, but hardly aesthetically gratifying. In our farmed valley, streams, culverts and drainage pipes all pour the rain from our expansive barn roof and out of the pastures into the many streams running from the hills neatly into the Housatonic River. Many of these waterways have been enhanced by farmers of old, and Kenny busily tapped and redirected them yet again for our own purposes. Excavation also continued to run septic and water lines from the barn (which never had a bathroom), an undertaking held hostage by the mostly obliging building inspector, and what also prevented us working on the little cottage meant to house an on-site stable hand.
Thankfully, to hydrate our aesthetic thirst, the Italian stone masons arrived to lay the flooring in the gazebo and to snug a walled patio into the nook outside the main barn’s tack room. They worked by hand: chipping, lugging, pounding. New England stone is beautiful and echoes olden times, and the artistry hasn’t changed. I added the last minute, view-encompassing patio with Scott in mind, just in case he decides not to ride. At least he can comfortably survey his land.
Well, maybe.
“You know if Kenny doesn’t sort out all that dirt we’ll never get the grass seed down. You know what it’s like around here in the spring.” He frowned.
“I DO know. I’ll have Bobbi talk to him again.”
I had hoped my commiseration would appease, but undoubtedly we were facing vast tracts of mud-in-waiting. Our restlessness met some consolation in the new (though raw) fencing that contoured the paddocks and delineated the pathways throughout. The entire property finally cohered as “farm.” Where the line of fencing meets the river and our northern boundary, we’d left enough room to mow a bridle path. Between this late addition, the open fields to the east and south, and the adjoining twenty acres of woods, we’d have plenty of territory to explore nature from our mounts. I looked forward to this more than anything else and pictured Scott, Elliot, Jane and me on our own safe, contented horses enjoying a family ride. It was a dream that seemed distantly within reach, once the farm was complete and if we all learned to ride well enough.
Preserving open space excited Scott and me, but underutilized farmland quickly reverts to brush and woodland. Hayfields must be cut and tended, and openness guarded. While a return to tree cover is generally desirable, Connecticut sports more forest now than one hundred years ago when entire mountains of trees were cut, round-stacked and slow-burned into charcoal to fuel the iron industry. Salisbury’s strong iron ore was its heritage, significantly contributing to the Revolutionary and Civil Wars mostly in the form of canons, balls, guns and anchors. Much of this region’s beauty relies on patches of open agricultural views that followed in industry’s wake, but such vistas are shrinking as farms disappear.
That said, Scott is a tree hugger, and our farm lacked shade. Only a few ancient, questionable oaks graced the property, and these sat on the road or distant along the far fence line. On one of our more exciting days at the renewing Weatogue Stables we attended the installation of fifteen thirty-foot sugar maples to line the main driveway into the farm. They arrived in threes each laid out long on, and carefully tied to the bed of a trailer, five Gullivers among the Lilliputians. Their six-foot root balls were neatly burlap-wrapped and tied for protection—massive gifts of nature. Our landscaper Mari staggered their planting in two pseudo-organically unlined rows.
“I really wanted you to see them with some leaves before the winter set in,” Mari told me as I practically wept at the graceful sweep of their branches, inviting arms that waved us in with every breeze and rustled benedictions in our wakes.
“This really makes the farm,” I said, collecting myself. “They’re tremendous!”
“I know.
I went with the bigger ones because of the scale of this place. The land, the barn—I was afraid the twenty-footers would look like lollipops.”
My mind wandered to the added cost of these giants, but deemed them worthy.
“Just think how much grander they’ll be in ten more years,” Scott mused, characteristically comfortable with delayed gratification and long-term investment.
But I knew he was pleased. Wealth has its privileges, as the old advertisement said, this time in the form of mature trees. We had long since stopped trying to contain all the “requirements” into some kind of meaningful budget. The overruns serially exceeded our re-padded projections, but so had the transformation. Our deepening satisfaction was such that, dangerously, we felt compelled to tack on whatever marginally made sense. Like kids in a candy store, the addicting sugar fueling a reckless overdrive, we simply couldn’t get enough. At least I couldn’t, and more restrained Scott was not enough of a killjoy to rein me in. And I knew the added touches satisfied such that even if Scott never climbed aboard a horse, he would enjoy this farm.
On one hand, I newly appreciated his generosity of spirit even though the Weatogue Stables business model of personal indulgence and land conservancy didn’t fit his hard-headed capitalistic parameters. On the other, we both worried about what it messaged the kids. Regularly, we tried to keep ourselves and our kids thankful for Scott’s business acumen that affords us an exciting NYC life and a refuge in bucolic Salisbury. Scott and I remember that money doesn’t grow on trees having come from little, but our kids have only ever known prosperity. They can’t help but take a lot for granted. We understand, but it pains us, more so since we can’t resist the fruits of his labor—nice homes, pricey vacations, horses and a farm we don’t have to kill ourselves working. Is personal philanthropy and talking them to death about the harder roads of others on our own block and around the globe enough or are our kids lost to Mammon devoid of their own bootstraps?