11 March 2016
I’ve been spending a lot of time on horseback lately; I’ve also been spending a lot of time on a quad bike, which feels very satisfyingly Mad Max-esque.
As an offshoot of this, I have been finding myself frequently riding on the back of the aforementioned quad bike, sucking up piles of horse shit with a massive trailer-hitched vacuum that was manufactured, apparently, for the specific purpose of sucking up piles of horse shit. Who knew.
The context for all of this, before we continue: I’m in Queenstown, way down on New Zealand’s South Island, working as a guide at Ben Lomond Horse Treks outside of town on Moke Lake. This place and this job are both vastly different from where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing in the rest of New Zealand, and it is the most at home I’ve felt since I left California. I’m living in a bed-and-breakfast with the other girls I work with, and it’s probably the fanciest accommodations I’ve had yet: a big old house with wood floors and a huge kitchen and views of the lake and the jagged, shadowed mountains that characterize the area and brought Middle Earth to life on the big screen.
The workdays here are not easy – we get up before sunrise and arrive at the station by 8:00 in the morning to bring up our 28 horses into their day paddock and feed them breakfast, and we usually don’t get home until 6:00 at the earliest. All day we take care of every aspect of the horse trekking business: catching, grooming, feeding, and tacking up horses and leading the treks, of course, but also a myriad of other jobs that keep the whole place running: fixing broken fence lines, hiking up canyons to clear the filter at the spring so we can have clean water in our hoses, polishing saddles, and cutting back the seemingly impenetrable forest of native bush which features long, thin thorns so large and so sharp that the Maori people traditionally used them for tattooing.
It is the most physically demanding work I’ve done in a while, and absolutely the most satisfying – I’m outside, working with my hands, getting things done that need to be done that have a clear purpose, and at the end of the day I feel like I’ve truly accomplished something worthwhile. Definitely better than washing the endless dishes of endless backpackers.
At the heart of all this work, of course, are the horses and the treks themselves, and both have proved to be both challenging and rewarding in turn. For someone like me, whose daily life for nearly fifteen years revolved solely around horses, being able to ride again feels like coming home. My favorite moments here are quiet moments in the saddle, when the clients I’m leading are safe and secure and happy on their horses, when I can relax a little and just enjoy the feeling of a horse underneath me and beautiful mountains around me and cold wind that hints at an approaching winter on my face.
There is truly something so magical about being on horseback in a place like this: the mountains, looming and set against a clear blue sky, feel like sleeping giants surrounding the golden windy valley; the water in the rivers seems clearer and the pebbles in the riverbed more colorful; every detail, every sound and smell, is pulled into sharp focus and the world is simply richer and more alive than it could ever be from a car. To be surrounded by dirt and rock and water and trees and sharp animal life and to truly feel all of it and feel like a part of it is such a visceral experience and one of greatest powers this place has. And this place is undoubtedly powerful – about every other person I’ve met here has told me the same story: they came just for a visit, and ended up staying much longer, some even for years, some permanently, simply because “there’s just something about being here.”
As a side note – to my family, who is probably now deeply concerned that I will stay in Queenstown forever and never return to California: don’t worry. I’m definitely coming home. Maybe. Eventually.
The central aspect of my job here, which is to lead treks on horseback through the valley where the horses live, is difficult in a way no other job has been. Imagine, for a moment, this scenario: six people arrive at the station. They all want to ride a horse while they’re here in New Zealand; understandable, as there is no better way to see the countryside. They are all foreigners, and only one of them speaks passable English. None of them have ever been on a horse before; most of them probably have exactly zero sense of what it even requires to ride a horse. Two of them are wearing shorts. You must now explain to these six people how to safely ride a horse (“These are your reins. They are like a steering wheel in a car. Please do not let go of your reins while you are riding.”). And the grand finale – you put these six people on horses, who despite their general well-trained behavior are still, at their core, unpredictable animals, and for the next two hours you lead them up and down hills, across rivers, through stands of native bush, all the while taking care of your own horse and making sure everyone arrives back at the station safe and happy.
This is about as easy as it sounds.
Of course, not all the treks are like this – we get a wide variety of people from different places with different levels of riding experience, and some treks are easier than others. Some, however, are as difficult as you would imagine based on the scenario I just described. The first several days were some of my most overwhelming days, and I absolutely felt daunted and doubtful that I could continue to do a job that’s 50% customer service, 50% wilderness rescue guide – but at this point, it feels much more comfortable and some of my most stressful and irritating situations can now be looked upon as prime comic relief.
A few of my favorite treks so far, for your entertainment:
1. The trek where I got off my horse no less than five times in thirty minutes to drag a client’s horse back onto the trail from where he was happily eating grass in the bushes, because her version of directional control involved pointing and telling the horse to “go back to the trail, please, horse.”
“I don’t have any control over my kids, either!” she told me brightly as I led her off the hillside for the fifth time.
2. The trek where everyone was happily moseying along until I heard a faint “Excuse me?” and turned around to see the woman in the back completely sideways on her horse – her saddle had apparently been slowly slipping to the left, and rather than alerting me to that fact ahead of time, she waited until both she and the saddle were literally parallel to the ground. I didn’t even have time to use my Calm And Capable Guide Voice to tell her what to do before she plopped onto the ground underneath her horse, who (thankfully) simply stopped moving. Cue me, sweating and attempting to hang onto three horses at once and disentangle a fourth from his saddle, whilst also attempting to not lose my shit and make sure no one else lost their shit (or their horse). We all made it back safely after that, somehow, and the girl that fell off asked to take a picture with me after the ride was over. Weird.
3. The trek where one of the riders was supposedly experienced, and so my boss told me to split the group up and send the rest back with her while I took the experienced rider out for a canter across the pasture. The lady spoke extremely limited English, and I noticed that she was holding her reins with her palms facing up – which, for those of you who are not horse people, is the exact wrong way to be holding your reins, and which was a major red flag. But she seemed confident, so off we went for a canter – and in the midst of attempting to control my own horse, who wasn’t having any of it, I looked behind me to check on her and discovered that instead of following me her horse had instead bolted at a full gallop the other way across the paddock, straight back to the barn. It was an absolute disaster: me, sweating (again) and trying (again) to not lose my shit, attempting to stay on my generally ill-behaved and excessively jolty horse, trying not to lose my radio, swearing and chasing after a runaway horse carrying a paying client, screaming at the top of my lungs to “PULL BACK ON YOUR REINS PULL BACK ON YOUR REINS STOP YOUR HORSE PLEASE STOP PULL BACK ON – “
When I caught up to her, disheveled and panting and short a radio, I asked her if she was okay.
“Oh yes!” she said, cheerfully. “It was a little bouncy though.”
Things like this are just part of dealing with the volatile combination of horse + beginner rider, and I actually feel like I’m becoming a much more confident and capable rider and person as a result of rolling with the punches and dealing with whatever comes up on the rides. In truth, though, the hard treks are largely outnumbered by the easy ones – but they’re way less funny to tell as a story later (“Once upon a time, no one panicked or fell and the guide didn’t have to get off her horse even once and the scenery was beautiful and everyone got back to the station safely and on time. The end.”).
Anyways, for the next few foreseeable weeks, you’ll find me right here in Queenstown, riding horses and fixing fences and vacuuming up piles of shit and happy as could be. Until next time, as always, safe travels – and if you happen to come out for a horse trek, I promise I won’t write about you later.
-Sierra
SGBRSH 