Letter to My Parents

Dear Mom and Dad,

I'm reading a nonfiction book by Richard Louv called Last Child in the Woods, and it's the kind of experience that I love from a book: Reading it awakens truths in me that I already knew, somewhere, but hadn't yet articulated.  It's bringing back memories I'd long since forgotten from my childhood; a perfect invocation in this season of wintertime reflection.

The program here at Sanborn, especially the HTOEC School Weeks outdoor education curriculum and philosophy, is very much in line with the concepts in this book.  Reading it affirms what I'm doing with my life (teaching children how to connect with the outdoor world) and helps me to realize how timely and essential this work is.

So much of today's youth spend a majority of their time plugged in, on phones, in front of a TV, sitting at a computer or playing video games.  There's the obesity problem.  Natural spaces are diminishing and a culture of fear often prevents parents from allowing their children to venture outside unsupervised.  Kids are forgetting--or never learning--how to BE in the outdoors.  There are more and more studies showing a direct correlation between less time spent in unstructured outdoor play and an increase in mental, physical, and emotional illness.  This shift away from the natural world is devastating to our society on so many levels.

So, among all this, I write to thank you for allowing nature and unstructured, imaginative play to be a formative part of my childhood.  Maybe you weren't aware, as a parent, of exactly what I was doing as I explored the neighborhood, and perhaps that's part of the beauty of it.  I want to thank you for letting me run loose around Windbury Court to play with friends.  On any given afternoon, we would jump down into neighbors' window wells to collect toads in an old bucket; we'd explore the spooky forest behind the Burkes house to see who was bravest; I'd pick berries (even though you'd told me not to) to taste their bitterness then come home with stained fingertips.  Thank you for watching with me in wonder as pheasants and foxes crossed the church lot behind out house at dusk.  Thanks for trusting that a ring of the cowbell you mounted on the front porch would bring me home for dinner.

When we moved to Orchard Valley, ours was one of the first newly developed lots, and I thank you for re-installing the cowbell on that front porch and again letting me run free.  Thanks, Dad, for not getting too angry when I sneaked your hammer from the tool bench and ran across the vacant lots to the big oak tree next to the Baneks, where the neighbor kids and I constructed a tree fort using the 2x4s and nails we found on construction sites.  Thanks for taking us sledding down the hills of the golf course when it snowed.  Thanks for letting the dogs run without leashes, us behind them.  We moved to Orchard Valley at the perfect time--before the open space of those lots was developed--and we moved away just as houses began to close in.

Thank you for the farm.  Even now, years later, I haven't found the words to encapsulate that time through junior high and high school.  Summer days on the back of my horse in the sunshine, watching fields and fields of cornstalks sway in the wind.  Those memories still soothe me today.

When developers snatched up the endless seas of farmland surrounding our five acres, and when we had to move, too, it was like a piece of me was lost--for a very, very long time.  College, the city, traveling ... I kept searching, but nothing seemed to fill that void.

And now, thank you for Colorado.  Mom and Dad, you are the reason I am here.  I guess I should thank Own Your Own Mountain dot com, too, eh Dad?  Having escaped the city and now rediscovering my Self, I'm happy as I was as a child in the woods.  There's magic in this environment, space for growth and a re-kindling of what I lost when I alienated myself from horses and from nature.

And now I have a job that values this essential connection to nature as much as I do.  I spend my days igniting wonder in kids who normally spend their days plugged in.  The shift that happens out here is profound, and their lives, I truly hope, are changed by it.

Howard Gardner talks about the eight intelligences (and possibly more--see his paper titled A Multiplicity of Intelligences).  One is the Naturalist Intelligence.  Because of you, I think that's me.  You guys instilled in me a deep love of the natural world, and now, since you've exposed me to Colorado, I've found it again.  Thank you.

Love,
Jessie

Aspen Stand

I sit in this small aspen grove
My book and pen in hand
Taking a moment to absorb
Reflecting on the land

The wind picks up its haunting voice
Whispering through the trees
And I can't help but wonder if
Its message is for me

Far too much time I've spent the past
Cooped up inside all day

And gradually those forest voices

Start to drift away

Preoccupied with this and that
I'd spend my life inside
Until a profound part of me--
My Natural Self--died

The only way to get it back
And feel again like me
Is to take some time, like today,
To lean against a tree.

The voices of the forest, now,
Even as I sit here
They rise in volume and in voice
To captivate my ear

A promise to myself I make--
One with this aspen stand--
I shall never lose sight of me
And me in nature's land

Overcivilized

“Horses help overcivilized people reconnect with the wisdom and rhythms of the natural world.”   —Linda Kohanov

Pete, my wintertime project horse, tried out his new bridle today.

Before deciding to work as a wrangler at Sanborn, I hadn’t been on a horse in over four years. 

I practically grew up on horseback, riding in a rigorous lesson program since I was eight, owning and caring for horses on our small acreage all throughout high school, then attending my first year of college in Missouri to pursue Equestrian Science.  Unsatisfied by the small, rural town of Fulton, Missouri, I decided I needed a healthy dose of the civilized life, so I moved into the heart of Chicago and changed my major to Nonfiction Writing.  Living on the twenty-eighth story of a downtown apartment building, I cut horses out of my life entirely and took to sitting in cafes for long hours in front of a computer, sipping tea and glancing over the top of my books in an aloof, sophisticated manner.  I’d convinced myself that I loved the city, that I didn’t miss my country-girl upbringing, and that this new lifestyle was making me a better person.

Meanwhile, sitting in the library or any number of my favorite coffee shops, my hands lost their calluses.  There was no dirt beneath my fingernails.  My body became soft; my brain was the only defined muscle.  Then, slowly, without my awareness, it became over-defined.  I found myself unable to fall asleep.  My writing assignments were never good enough for me, even though my stellar 4.0 GPA would seem to prove otherwise.  I maintained the maximum course load, worked part-time, ran a writer’s group, and served as the president of a club I’d started with my roommate.  I worked insanely on my writing, obsessing in front of a computer, researching articles online until I couldn’t see straight.  I didn’t know it at the time, but there was a lack of something in my life I attempted to fill that void by trying harder, doing more, being smarter.  Still feeling empty, I began to turn inward, withdrawing from friends and family.  There were some days I only got out of bed to feed my cat.

In my last year of college, I was diagnosed with a Generalized Anxiety Disorder and suffered severe depression.  My doctor told me that I’d be on medication for the rest of my life.  This news was debilitating; how could I be one of those people?  I’d done everything right: I’d tried my hardest, I’d gone above and beyond most of my peers.

After graduation, I moved back in with my parents, unable to afford my life in the city.  Things did not improve.  I just wanted to be happy, but didn’t know how.  My mom asked me one day why I didn’t go visit the stable I’d taken lessons at as a kid.  I’d been unconsciously avoiding the barns I’d grown up at, for fear of the feeling of loss that gripped me each time I happened upon even so much as a picture of a horse.  The idea was unappealing.  But then she mentioned Sanborn, a western camp she’d learned about through a friend at work.  Apparently there was horseback riding there.  It was near my mom and dad’s new retirement home in Colorado.  We set up a visit for late December.

Meanwhile, I went back to the barn.  I didn’t even ride, just stood outside the stalls, gazing in at horses munching hay.  The sounds and sweet, dusty smell enveloped me.  Suddenly, I felt home.  The void in my heart felt full again, and my future seemed obvious.  I couldn’t get to Sanborn soon enough.

While working with kids and horses as a wrangler at High Trails symbolizes for me a Great Return to a life I’d rejected for something more civilized, it has also taught me much more.  In an increasingly sophisticated world, where over eighteen percent of Americans suffer from anxiety and depression in a given year, horse-human interactions serve as the best kind of medicine.  Apart from nature, there has been an over-intellectualizing of the self, a denial of the value of being present and authentic.  It’s so easy, interacting in society, to put on a mask and function as that false self.  Interacting with horses who don’t buy into the false image forces people—adults and kids alike—to be who they are, fully present, fully in the moment.  Horses inspire an authenticity that prescription medicine can’t replicate.

Getting Lune and Fiona ready for their Gymkhana event, Summer 2009

Photo by Jessie Spehar

The connections I witnessed last summer between campers and horses were profound.  There were some girls who couldn’t wait till the next time they got to ride.  It was not just some young girl fantasy coming true; it was a re-realization of the self, an invitation to exist spontaneously, creatively.  Perhaps they could not articulate it, but those girls felt more alive—more themselves—in the presence of horses.

Looking back, I wasn’t wrong when I assumed I’d become a more complete person by moving into the city and immersing myself in what I perceived to be important.  I needed to witness the darkness of a life where images of busyness, over-achievement and hyper-intellect are so heavily praised, so that I could find a balance and become aware of how fortunate a life with horses truly is.  Now, looking forward to the enhancement of next summer’s riding program (I will be Head Wrangler for the girls camp), I am eager to share this horse-wisdom with the girls.  It is my hope that they, too, can experience and cultivate an awareness of the grounding effect horses have on our species, so that they can embark on their worldly pursuits as authentic, joyful, and whole people.

One happy camper!

If you desire more information about the horse-human dynamic, I urge you to take a look at Linda Kohanov’s nonfiction book, Riding Between the Worlds.  It has been tremendously enlightening for me.

Breathe

Tonight

the sun sets.

Its yellow illuminating Pikes Peak

as though this were its last chance

to show humans

its truest expression

of beauty.

What if it were you

with one last chance

or one last day:

What would you do

to die

fulfilled?

If it were me,

I’d show you a love

so deep

you would cry

spontaneous tears of joy

and you would be full as me.

In fact, here,

I’ll show it to you now

Open your heart to the sky

and breathe.

November in Colorado

Here are some photos from the lovely Colorado trip I took with my parents in November.

And, of course, you must know it was far more incredible in person.