NSLM Visitor Services Associate posted: " It might come as a surprise to learn that before he became number 40, former President Ronald Reagan was an avid outdoorsman and enthusiastic equestrian with a great love of horses. Anyone who has ever been on a horse understands that whether you sit ato"
It might come as a surprise to learn that before he became number 40, former President Ronald Reagan was an avid outdoorsman and enthusiastic equestrian with a great love of horses. Anyone who has ever been on a horse understands that whether you sit atop a plucky pony or mount a steady steed, a change occurs. Anything becomes possible. The view is different, the air more clean. An adventure awaits—somewhere.
In the introduction to the book, Man and the Horse, Diana Vreeland states:
Through the periods of history the horse has heralded the arrival of the great event. He has carried the hero of the hour—Alexander, Caesar, Washington, Bolivar—along the paths of discovery and conflict and together they have returned triumphant – and history continues. A man mounted on his horse is twice the man he is on the ground. Indeed, the Arabs tell us that one aspect of earthly paradise is to be astride a horse… Such a man holds the reins of power and progress in his hands…[1]
Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798 - 1863) Arab Horseman Giving a Signal, 1851, oil on canvas, 22 x 18 1/4 inches, Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., Chrysler Museum of Art
That goes for women too. When asked what she loves about being on a horse, Reid O'Connor, Director of Development here at the NSLM, said:
The second I get on a horse, it is the only thing I am able to think about—everything else just sort of melts away… There is something about the warmth of the horse, listening to it breathe, the smell of the leather, and the rhythm of the movement…
Empress Catharine II (the Great) by Karl George Melville, 1787, model for a monument, Pegasus and the Arts, Fig. 15, p. 23
President Reagan had a ranch called Rancho del Cielo—Ranch in the Sky —in the mountains near Santa Barbara. He loved to go trail riding and would take daily treks with family members or bodyguard Agent John Barletta. Sitting astride his "constant mount El Alamein" was Reagan's happy place. "He admired their power and soul. It was on the back of a horse that he felt centered.…"[2]
Of the ranch, Barletta said "He always swore that if it wasn't heaven, it was in the same zip code." It was to the ranch that Reagan first wanted to go after the assassination attempt on March 30, 1981. Barletta recalls:
Mrs. Reagan was not keen on the idea of him riding while he was still recovering… She was so protective of the President. If you messed with him, you got it from her. She is an incredible lady, and they had a love that was unlike anything I've ever seen… She told him, 'there's no running, there's no jumping, you walk.' Then, Mrs. Reagan looks at me and says, 'do you have that John?' You bet I did… In typical fashion, President Reagan looks at me a ways down the trail and says, 'This would be a good spot for a nice trot.' I said 'Mr. President, you know what Mrs. Reagan said.' He looked back at me and said, 'Yeah but who's going to tell her,'" Barletta remembers with a laugh. "So trot we did, and it was the best medicine for him."[3]
For good reason, Elaine S. Marshall, past dean of the BYU College of Nursing, shared a personal epiphany from her journey to understanding the nature of healing in her devotional address titled "Learning the Healer's Art":
On that first day as a nurse, I assumed cure, care, and healing to be synonymous. I have learned they are not the same. Healing is not cure. Cure is clean, quick, and done—often under anesthesia. The antibiotic kills the pathogen; the scalpel cuts out the malignancy; the medications resolve the distorted chemistry. Healing, however, is often a lifelong process of recovery and growth in spite of, maybe because of, enduring physical, emotional, or spiritual assault. It requires time. We may pray for cure when we really need healing. Whether for cell reconstruction, for nerve and muscle rehabilitation, for emotional recovery, or for spiritual forgiveness, healing needs work and time and energy… Healing is active. It requires all the energy for your entire being. You have to be there, fully awake, aware, and participating when it happens.[4]
In her book on trail riding, Audrey Pavia explains it this way:
There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man. Winston Churchill wrote those words in the last century, and he knew what he was talking about. Horses enchant us, move us, and heal us. We are awed by their beauty, their power, and most of all, their willingness to be our partners, no matter what we ask of them.[5]
English or Western, beginner of Olympian, with friends or entirely alone, to safely commune with a member of the Equus family, you can't afford not to be "fully awake, aware, and participating". They command respect and return it in kind. Like the surfer whose highest goal is to be one with the wave, so the rider who achieves oneness with the horse is rewarded with healing to the soul and a companion for life.
An example of such a partnership in the extreme is the Tevis Cup in northern California, one of the oldest and "most challenging endurance rides in the world" that "covers 100 miles of rugged eastern Sierra mountain country, spanning from Lake Tahoe to Auburn… The winning rider of the race is the one who completes the 100 miles in the shortest amount of time with a sound and healthy horse."[6] For the endurance rider, it is the consummate prize.
Tevis Cup competitor, Trail Riding: A Complete Guide, p. 190Ronald Reagan on the cover of The Long Goodbye
There are other endurance races that require a different type of charger—one, daughter Patti Davis seeks in her memoir The Long Goodbye, and another, her father is already on. She tells of the last years of Reagan's life coping with the ravages of Alzheimer's disease. Heightened by the added challenges of fame, she reveals the complicated nature of the parent-child relationship, and the way even devastating illness can illuminate the past and help a family come full circle to find healing in reconciliation. It is replete with reminiscences recounting the passage back to her parents even as her father is slowly traveling away from her on a pilgrimage all his own, riding a horse that will not be returning:
It was the day before my father's eighty-fifth birthday. At twilight, as I left the beach to go see my parents, the lines from an old Robbie Robertson song ran through my mind: "Don't leave me alone at twilight, twilight is the loneliest time of day." There is a solitariness, an isolation, to what my family is going through right now. The world is aware of our situation, yet we draw the curtains protectively around my father, preserving his dignity, his privacy, and our own. My mother told me that she's been having dreams about the ranch – not the one I grew up on, but the one they own now….She said, "I dream about the weekends we used to spend there–riding, sitting by the fireplace–the way it was before.…[7]
For Christmas of 1995, Davis gave her father the book Horses of the Sun by Robert Vavra:
My father retreated into the book as I had hoped he would. I could only wonder about the memories that were stirred up; his face had the same serene look that it used to have when we rode together at the ranch, when he was doing what he loved so much–riding his horse along trails and hillsides, exulting in that magical communion between human and animal.[8]
from Horses of the Sun, pp. 134, 82, 192, respectively
Ronald Reagan died on June 5, 2004; his years of solitary dreaming, a captive to twilight, were finally over. He shed the Don Quixote trappings of Alzheimer's disease to return a hero riding home on Pegasus. Son Ronald Reagan Jr.'s eulogy describes a more bucolic image:
Golden fields will spread beneath a blue dome of a western sky. Live oaks will shadow the rolling hillsides. And someplace, flowing from years long past, a river will wind toward the sea. Across those fields, he will ride a gray mare he calls Nancy D. They will sail over jumps he has built with his own hands. He [sic] will, at the river, carry him over the shining stones. He will rest in the shade of the trees….[9]
It is a fitting place for the gentle man from Tampico, Illinois.[10]
MiRan Powell is a professional actress in the DC/MD/VA area. She has appeared at The Kennedy Center, Studio Theatre, 1st STAGE, and Spooky Action Theater among others. Stage highlights include originating the roles of Mina in the world premiere of Neil LaBute's adaptation of Dracula and Hideko in the world premiere of Gretty Good Time at the Kennedy Center. Other favorites include Elvira in BlitheSpirit, Agave in The Bacchae, Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Helen Sutherland in The Pitmen Painters. Her work in local film still runs for the DMV, the Department of Homeland Security, the AARN, and House of Cards. MiRan attended Smith College and received her B.A. in Theatre Arts from BYU Provo. She resides in Upperville, Virginia with her family, and is happily engaged in her new role as Visitor Services Associate at NSLM.
[1] Diana Vreeland, "Introduction," Man and the Horse, eds. Alexander MacKay-Smith, Jean R. Druesedow, and Thomas Ryder (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Simon and Schuster, 1984), 8.
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