Saturday, July 21, 2007

Ride down memory lane


Today, we downloaded the soundtrack for "The Man from Snowy River" which was perhaps the most influential movie of my childhood. It was, after all, the first movie I remember seeing in the theater! It was definitely the catalyst for sparking our fascination with the Equine.

I think we had a fairly atypical childhood, in some ways... horses were an integral part of our lives, our imaginations were active and we had many outlets with which to express our interest in horses. We wore out two pairs of stick horses (that our aunt had lovingly made for us) and "rode" them who knows how far. In fact, at one point my parents had to tell me to stop cantering my stick horse so much, because it was hurting the "horse's" growing tendons. I was only allowed to trot for two whole weeks! :-)

Snowy River also inspired some of my more daring - and incredibly stupid - moves on horseback. I once rode our horse, Billy, straight down the face of a hill which was difficult for a person to traverse on foot. Providentially we survived without major mishap, my fantasy was fulfilled and fear was conquered.

In addition, my most favorite song to play on the piano was "Jessica's Theme" from Snowy River. It was the only song where I could get lost in the music and make less mistakes because I wasn't distracted by the semantics. I knew the scenes reflected in the music.

I realized recently, in looking through my old journals, that it was through my love and understanding of horses that I first learned to understand myself better. I always had difficulty expressing what I was feeling and thinking, but if I started talking about horses (and the things I thought about my horse), it was almost a segue into the emotional me that was slowly developing and being discovered. I wonder how many people have things like that in their lives that help them to discover and express the relational/emotional part of themselves or how many have never had an outlet for that discovery or expression.

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