Seeing Sunny Segovia Through Gray Ears

The U.S. team of from left: Angela Moore on Cubana, support team member Celia Spillmann, Paula Nelson on Ideal, Lauren Spillmann on Kenia, Mary Harcourt, and Stephanie Church on Marinus completed the TREC World Championships in Spain aboard borrowed horses.

e author completes the TREC World Championships in Spain and forms a partnership she will remember forever.

By STEPHANIE L. CHURCH

“Oh, no! You’ve gone and got a holiday crush!” my friend Malene declared, her eyes tearing with empathy as I stroked Marinus’ neck and attempted to hold back my own waterworks. I’d be saying goodbye to Marinus the Spaniard within the hour. He and I had spent nearly every waking moment of the previous 10 days together, and we’d already walked through good times and bad— but mostly overwhelmingly good.

He was tall and handsome, and as we stood together in line for the closing ceremony parade of countries, he turned to glance at me—and sank his teeth into the American ag beside us.

Marinus was not a man with a quirky sense of humor, but rather a cheeky 6-year-old rose gray oroughbred-crosslooking sport horse. He was my leased mount for the world championships of a sport called TREC.

Marinus was the bravest and most willing young horse I’d been paired with in decades. He was no stranger to the show jumping arena or the arid, rocky terrain around Segovia, Spain, but there were aspects of TREC that were new to him. And there were also gaps in my knowledge and experience, so we’d worked hard together in the previous week to prepare ourselves for one of the more challenging experiences of our lives.

What Is TREC?

Navigating cross-country obstacles as part of the TREC Trail Obstacle Course was the final challenge for Stephanie Church and Marinus at the world championships. e acronym TREC stands for Techniques de Randonnée Equestre en Compétition, which translates roughly to Horseback Riding Techniques in Competition. e French designed this three-phase sport to test the skills of equestrian tourism guides. Its signature phase, the mounted orienteering phase (POR), involves navigating almost 30 miles of unfamiliar territory using a route copied from a master map.

A rider heads out at a designated speed with a watch, map, compass and required safety gear in saddlebags, but no GPS permitted. ere are checkpoints along the way, where judges check time and direction before the rider takes o at the next directed speed. e goal is to navigate the course accurately and to hit the optimum time. e second phase is Control of Paces (COP or MA), which involves cantering a 200-meter path as quickly as possible, and then returning at the walk as fast as possible, without breaking gait. is demonstrates communication between horse and rider, adjustability of gait and nesse. e nal phase, the Trail Obstacle Course (PTV), is a hybrid of a training- to preliminary-level cross-country course and a trail class on steroids. It’s a timed course with 16 obstacles selected from a list of 32. e horse-and-rider pairs go over traditional cross-country jump combinations in addition to challenges such as ducking under “low branches,” a series of poles set 20 centimeters higher than your horse’s withers, or stopping in a chalk-marked circle, taking your hands o the reins, and keeping a horse immobile with only voice and core, seat and leg. e sport is popular and the riders competitive, in Europe. People ride TREC over there the way eventers, dressage riders or hunter/jumpers do here. So how on earth did I end up EDDI WABNITZ PHOTO riding among the elite of the sport? It’s a tale of being in the right place at the right time.

Why Not?

Way back in 1997, I was a junior at Averett University (then College) in Virginia, and conversations between the French and Virginia Tourism board led to a team from Averett traveling to France, training for a week in TREC with the sport’s originators, and then competing in the world championships in Saint-Pierre-d’Albigny.

My big accomplishment there was nailing my mount’s shoe back on about halfway through the POR—while I was lost—using a fence tool as a hammer, and clinchers and duct tape to cover the sharp edges. We found our way and nished sound, with all four shoes, and the French farrier was impressed with my work.

Our team completed the event upright, intact and smiling.

We brought TREC back to the United States, putting on a clinic and a small TREC event the following year. Our team leader and college riding program director at the time, Mary Harcourt, planted the seed of TREC in her home state of North Carolina and kept it watered, and since then many others have discovered the sport and become competitors, ambassadors and o cials.

Nineteen years later, TREC USA has a dedicated group of members based mainly in North Carolina and Virginia who train and compete in local and regional events. Every four years or so, TREC USA organizes a team for the world championships, and they nd suitable horses to lease, organize training and housing, and then compete. e U.S. team is usually the only one with leased horses, making us the underdogs.

Mary reached out to me in late March of this year, wondering if I’d be interested in doing TREC again. I’d never been to Spain and hadn’t had the pants scared o me in a few years, so of course I said I’d consider it.

Just to be sure I still enjoyed the sport, I took my mom’s Belgian-Quarter Horse mare, Honey, to a spring training weekend in Virginia with Kim Stoddard, TREC USA President and our eventual team chef d’equipe. Within a few hours, the map reading and pace adjustment came back to me, and I was hooked. Spain it would be.

I hiked with maps for the next several months to prepare for

PHOTO COURTESY OF TREC-USA the orienteering, and I participated in conference calls to select our horses, housing and other details. In late August, a week ahead of our competition start, I arrived in Madrid with one suitcase full of clothing and another full of American-themed team gifts (read: bourbon, because I live in Kentucky) and riding gear for the event.

For the POR phase, riders are required to carry everything from a headlamp and halter to a rst-aid kit and hoof boot, so it was a lot of stu , some of it a bit random. For example, I had no idea what breed or size horse I’d be riding, so I selected a midrange boot size and hoped for the best.

“We stood on cobblestones in the shadow of the Roman aqueduct, listened to speeches in several languages, and watched traditional musicians and dancers perform,” said Stephanie Church (right, on Marinus, with Paula Nelson on Ideal) of the TREC World Championships’ opening ceremony, which took place at the Aqueduct of Segovia.

Part of TREC is the Mastery of Paces phase—cantering a 200-meter path as quickly as possible, and then returning at the walk as fast as possible, without breaking gait—which Stephanie Church negotiated on Marinus.

Make Me A Match

Our leased horses were at Hípica Eresma, a tidy, well-appointed show jumping stable just southeast of Segovia that also o ers riding vacations in the scenic surrounding terrain. Team USA was ve members strong: I’d be riding with Angela Moore, Lauren Spillman and Paula Nelson—all from North Carolina—in the team competition, and Mary would ride as an individual. We were to select six mounts from a pool of possible horses, so we’d have a spare if we ran into compatibility or lameness issues during training.

When Angela and I arrived in Segovia the others had already selected our mounts. Four were school horses, and two belonged to boarders— ve grays and a bay.

Kim and my teammates thought I’d be best suited to Marinus, a boarder-owned horse, mainly because of his size— he’s 16.3, and I am 6' tall—and the fact that I like a horse who is willing but might need a little bit of encouragement and con dence. ey were right. I fell “in like” immediately, splashing through streams and cantering large circles around a sagebrush-dotted eld during our rst ride.

And “in like” was enough to launch our six days of training on obstacles and maps, which included a few hours of riding in the morning, a break for siesta, and then a few more hours of training in the evening.

PHOTO COURTESY OF TREC-USA

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

Our obstacle training sessions were a discovery process. For a relatively young horse, Marinus was brave and bold. And it seemed as if he was getting a kick out of showing me what he could do. For instance, on Day 2 we were practicing “circle of immobility” on the ground successfully: He was standing in the arena or eld with me about six feet away, watching me and minding my verbal cues—because body language isn’t allowed—for him to stand still. He was game to walk and trot under the “low branches.”

But I had a di cult time getting him to trot in hand; it felt a bit like trying to drag a 1,200-pound pony away from shoulder-high grass, with lots of clucking and begging “Vamos, vamos!” (“Come on, come on!”)

Mounting from a mounting block or rise could be tough, as he would swivel away, and, given his height, I didn’t want to always mount from the ground. And he didn’t know why on earth I would want to touch a gate from his back, much less open it, pass through it and close it without letting go.

On the trail, Marinus was fearless. Well, almost. e two things he didn’t like were unnaturally round bushes and certain menacing boulders. It was a bit of a crapshoot guring out which vegetable or mineral would cause him to hit the brakes or scoot sideways, and so it became an exercise of scanning the surroundings for possible bogeys and riding him forward and con dently. A litany of calming “You’ll be nes,” though not in Spanish, eventually forged our bond.

So did menthol drops.

One particular day, on our rst map training ride without help from Rafael Sanchez, who assisted us throughout the week, Paula and I rode for about three hours. We navigated down one pilgrimage trail, across a cattle-spotted eld— complete with giant bull—to another animal trail, under a giant highway bridge, past the distillery—they’re making bourbon there, too—and back to Hípica.

When we arrived at the farm, a teenage girl bounded over to Marinus with a handful of what looked like menthol cough drops. She fed him the treats and hugged Marinus, and I gured out this must be his owner.

He clearly was motivated by these minty morsels, so I bought my own bag and began a twice-daily routine of carrot and mint stretches and learning how to bow. Marinus was a six-trick pony by the time I left.

With each passing day of training, I gured out more of Marinus’ aids—a kissing sound produced an immediate canter from the walk, for instance, whereas my normal leg and seat aids did not—and he gured out what the tall American wanted. Calm lateral work translated to correct execution of the slalom obstacle at the walk, think pole bending, and opening and shutting gates with precision. We still had to shout “Vamos!” and stomp our feet a lot, but eventually Marinus would trot in hand. And I could complete low branches without knocking the poles down with my helmet or ample posterior.

Eventually each time I approached Marinus’ stall, he turned with his ears pricked, as if to ask, “What crazy and/or fun thing are you going to ask me to do today?”

I also learned to anticipate Marinus’ spook-scoot. Change throws him o , as happens with many horses. One day Hípica sta took a front-end loader and moved an existing large log jump closer to another, so we’d have an in-and-out, or a “road crossing,” in TREC terms, to school. Marinus and I were practicing an obstacle course, and as we exited the slalom at the walk, he noticed the spot on the ground where the log used to be. In utter surprise, he leapt into the air and threw in a little buck while he was at it.

I stayed on, did a little s-curve, so as not to cross my path, and rode him through. It wasn’t pretty, but we did it. I recognized how responsive and willing he was, even through the surprises, and “in like” turned to smitten. e solo map training that week was equal parts exhilarating, because we were out alone in the rich golden light of magic hour, and terrifying, because we needed to be back to familiar territory by dark.

I don’t know how many solo treks Marinus had done on his own, but at rst we had di culty moving forward without a peer group. We worked through wobbly moments, marched through the potential spooky spots, and all the while I studied the horizon line and learned landmarks that would help me nd my way during the competition. La Mujer Muerta (“the dead woman”), for instance—a subrange of the Sierra de Guadarrama that looks like the pro le of a sleeping lady—was due south. e one patch of bright green in the desert region, the golf course, was northeast. One part of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route, or Way of St. James, began to feel like home because it was how we would reach other cañadas, or animal paths used for centuries for moving sheep.

“He had to settle, alone, with unfamiliar horses passing or coming near from time to time, and I had to put aside my worries that I would get lost and not make it home before dark,” said Stephanie Church of her borrowed TREC mount Marinus.

Riders, including Mary Harcourt on Mirlot, could orient themselves with a view of the La Mujer Muerta mountain range during the TREC World Championships.

Our team drove around Segovia, and we familiarized ourselves with the surrounding towns and landmarks. We had no idea where the actual POR route would be. We had trained only in the southeast to east portion of the city, but we’d be familiar enough with the lay of the land that we wouldn’t get hopelessly lost.

On our rst solo training ride, Marinus and I took a relaxed canter up a long, slow incline into the Segovia sunset light. I was able to neck rein him with one hand and capture video using my iPhone with the other, something I’m able to do with my own horse. It’s then I knew we were a strong team and were going to be ne, whatever the competition organizers threw at us.

The Test

On the eve of the championship’s start, we arrived to colorful agadorned stables and uniformed teams with horses doing half-pass in the warm-up arenas. e atmosphere was intimidating, but our little team soldiered on with our embroidered navy polos and hats, marching our smart grays and bay into the stable and hanging our own ags. We hacked out and explored some of the avenues to trails that would take us away from the competition site. We had both the castle fortress Alcázar of Segovia (incidentally, one of the inspirations behind the Walt Disney Cinderella Castle) and the stunning gothic-style Segovia cathedral in our sights, and the combination of the two was one of the most stunning vistas I have ever seen on horseback. e next day we passed our vet jogs—imagine lots of foot stomping and “Vamos!” for Marinus—and POR equipment checks. Our support team member, Celia Spillman, braided Marinus’ mane, and we tied her home-crafted red, white and blue pom-poms into Marinus’ and Ideal’s (Paula’s horse) manes for the opening ceremonies. Paula and I joined mounted pairs from other countries and made the hour and a half trek into the streets of Segovia proper. ere we met our other teammates on foot, to crowds cheering and waving ags. We stood on cobblestones in the shadow of the

“Marinus was the bravest and most willing young horse I’d been paired with in decades,” said author Stephanie Church.

STEPHANIE L. CHURCH PHOTO

Roman aqueduct, listened to speeches in several languages, and watched traditional musicians and dancers perform. Marinus’ proud owner watched the festivities from behind the barricade, snapping photos of her big gray. en we marched home, stomach butter ies on full alert for the next morning’s POR.

I won’t lie. Walking into the map room and seeing the o cial route nearly caused me to pass out; I had 20 minutes to copy it onto my own blank, uncreased map with shaky hands and a light head. But as I began to circle landmarks I knew I’d see o in the distance, my con dence grew. Everything from that moment— when I walked outside the map room to meet Kim and Celia and climbed atop Marinus—to about the second hour of our ride was a blur, but I followed the correct route past the motocross area and into unfamiliar territory, where Marinus and I had the biggest test of our new relationship to date.

He had to settle, alone, with unfamiliar horses passing or coming near from time to time—there were four o cial maps, so we couldn’t just follow one another—and I had to put aside my worries that I would get lost and not make it home before dark.

Highlights of our ride included navigating through a long, curved train tunnel, which was completely pitch black inside except for a single light bulb; cantering down an animal path on which we

Saddle Up In Segovia

Would you like to see the Segovia landscape from horseback, but a guided inn-to-inn ride with breaks for Rioja wine sounds like it’s more your style? Hípica Eresma offers the “Segovia: History at a Canter” ride through Equiberia, with knowledgeable and hospitable guides.

Learn more at equiberia-andalucia.com/SegoviaHistoryofaCanter.php. (And please go give Marinus, in the boarder barn, a peppermint for me.)

The young Marinus coped with crowds and flag-holding riders during the opening ceremonies of the TREC World Championships in Spain.

had trained; watching Marinus dunk his entire head at the water trough near Revenga; and trying to creatively consume my sandwich while he danced circles.

Again, there were more beautiful vistas—a few familiar, many not—but all with the La Mujer Muerta in quiet repose nearby, reminding me where due south was. Sure, there were a few scary boulders and unnaturally round bushes to spook about, but Marinus was a champ, willing to go wherever I asked. We met new friends along the way, including Malene, my friend who called my holiday crush on Marinus, and who kept me laughing when I was ready to cry from exhaustion near ride’s completion. e funny thing about TREC POR is that you’re not sure where the route will end—you just keep following the map and, ideally, look forward in expectation. About 7 ½ hours in, Marinus and I were navigating solo across an open space with no clear path on our map. I was having trouble nding the path, and exhaustion turned to frustration. We climbed a hill. I dropped the map. I had to dismount and remount. Marinus was over it. I was over it. But once settled back in my stirrups, map in hand, I took a deep breath and exhaled, acknowledging that Marinus and I were, yes, both rather spent, but we’d be ne and best get moving along. I navigated toward where I thought the correct path was, crested a hill, and I saw Mary and a checkpoint.

As I approached the checkpoint judge, he looked at me with a wide grin and said the two most beautiful words I’d heard all day: “You’re done!” I gured I had at least another hour of map reading ahead of me. I hopped o , burst into tears and gave him a big hug.

STEPHANIE L. CHURCH PHOTO

He laughed and said, “Be happy! You nished! Now go have a cerveza and be happy.”

In the end, Marinus and I found our way, despite missing a couple of checkpoints. Our scores were nowhere near those of the champions, but we nished, and in and of itself that’s an accomplishment.

As I hand-walked him more than a mile to the vet check, where our teammates and support crew awaited, I took a sel e with my point-and-shoot camera to prove we had survived, before an o cial unsealed my phone. (We could carry a phone in case of emergency, but it had to remain sealed for the duration of our ride.)

Cementing The Partnership

e next morning, Marinus and I were both tired, but we gave solid performances in the Mastery of Gait, and then, my favorite, the obstacle course. Marinus impressed me with his performance through the rst “road crossing,” which lurked in the shadows at maxed-out preliminary size. He crossed the broken bridge in the water with no question, cleared the sizeable and spooky ditch without a pause, and I believe we made it through the low branches without knocking any of the poles down with my derriere.

STEPHANIE L. CHURCH PHOTO Author Stephanie Church saw much of the countryside surrounding Segovia through the gray ears of Marinus.

We did our best on some challenging obstacles that tested even the riders who do TREC year-round.

Most importantly, Marinus and I had a blast, and he nished sound and happy, which was my goal. Our nal obstacle was a one-stride road crossing, which Marinus cleared with con dence and scope, nishing with energy to spare. We celebrated with carrots and menthol drops, of course.

As we waited for the closing ceremony festivities to start, my teammates discussed whether any of our horses would be suitable for carrying the U.S. ag. is was one desensitization exercise we had not practiced.

I o ered to try and took the ag slowly from Celia, laying it over my horse’s neck. I don’t know if Marinus was too sleepy to care or just that wonderful, but he didn’t bat an eye. I moved the ag around, so it would make some noise, and then draped it over his hindquarters—still no inching or o er to spook. Within moments we were cantering around the warm-up arena with the stars and stripes billowing behind us, as if he’d been a ag-bearer all his life.

We lined up for the closing ceremonies, and that’s when it hit: the awareness that I’d be saying goodbye soon. ere were held-back tears, inevitable waterworks, and a lap around the arena to the theme from The Magnificent Seven as we celebrated a giant goal met.

Back at the barns I untacked, brushed and then hugged Marinus—who at this point o ered a dramatic bow or carrot stretch anytime I saw him—fed him treats and said goodbye. I bolted out to the parking lot with an armful of gear, thankful it was getting dark so that I could hide my tears.

Goodbyes aren’t my thing. But I walked away knowing I’d have a fun holiday crush to remember. Also, Marinus has an owner who adores him even more than I do—one who will continue to take him on epic rides in that Segovia sunshine— and that’s all that matters.

Learn More About TREC

While TREC is a part of European equestrian culture, it’s still relatively new in the United States. There are regular mounted clinics and competitions in North Carolina and Virginia.

You can join TREC USA and take part in online and in-person clinics, and learn more about bringing TREC to your area at trec-usa.org.

SEEING THE WORLD WITH “Life Between The Ears”

Contributors to the “Life Between e Ears” social media accounts transport us to the world’s most interesting and beautiful places—all viewed from the saddle. Each issue, we share a few of their images.

SAKSUN, FAROE ISLANDS Beinta Jógvansdóttir grew up in the village Saksun on the island of Streymoy—where the picture was taken—but she currently lives in the capital city of the Faroe Islands, Tórshavn.

She’s the first educated farrier on the Faroe Islands. Jógvansdóttir learned the trade in Sweden and then returned to the islands. She keeps her horses in a stable in Tórshavn during the winter and moves them to Saksun in the summer.

“[Saksun] is magical. I’ve ridden there almost every day for my whole life. It never ceases to amaze me how beautiful the area is,” said Jógvansdóttir. “I mostly ride out in the nature. Sometimes I compete with gaited horses but only on a basic level, for fun.”

Jógvansdóttir got her first horse, a mixed breed pony mare, when she was 4. “I started hacking out on my own at the age of 6,” she said. “I’m the only one who was interested in horses in my village, so I rode alone for almost 30 years. It can get a bit lonely riding on your own, so I usually take my other horses along on the rides. They just run along.”

In this photo, Jógvansdóttir is riding Hrímir Frá Stafafelli, a purebred Icelandic horse.

“He was born and raised in Iceland but was sold to Austria, then Denmark, before he ended up with me on the Faroe Islands,” said Jógvansdóttir. “He is a very friendly and sweet horse. His gaits are excellent, so it’s a real treat to ride him, especially in tölt, which is one of the two extra gaits the Icelandic horses have.”

UPPSALA, SWEDEN The gray ears in this photo belong to Silver Dearest, an Arabian mare ridden by Elanor Mowbray Jones. The two completed Fédération Equestre Internationale 120-kilometer endurance rides together before Jones lost “Silver” to a stable accident in August.

“Silver was the most beautiful and sweetest angel ever lent to the earth, and she helped get me through my mom’s battle with breast cancer. I am so incredibly grateful for all the pictures and videos I took on our many adventures together, so that I can carry those memories along with me in my phone and look at them on my walls,” Jones said. “In the wonderful years she was mine, we had time to compete in three countries, ride in countless cities, get second at the Swedish young rider championships, twice we were awarded the prize for best young rider duo in Uppland, and she won a prize for best Swedish endurance mare.”

Jones, who lives in Uppsala, Sweden, often rides with her mother, Sherry. They breed horses and train and compete in dressage and jumping.

“I am an endurance rider with my heart set on someday taking part in the world championships,” said Elanor. “But my mom and I pride ourselves in how multitalented our horses are.”

Elanor and Sherry have four Arabians: Shahina, Arshaq, Nipeta and Popgun. “The picture is taken on a riding path just outside of Uppsala,” said Elanor, 22. “The path used to be an old railroad track that went between Uppsala and Enköping, but the city remade it to be a riding and bicycle path as part of the nature reserve. This particular path is almost completely straight and moderately sandy, so it is perfect for training. Along it there are plenty of other different sorts of great riding paths that one can turn off to, so I used to start off on it every day.I would say that Uppsala is by far the best place to ride in the world.”

Uppsala is the fourth largest city in Sweden and home of Uppsala University, which was founded in 1477 and is the oldest university in Scandinavia. The Fyris River flows through the city, and there’s also a large park, Stadsskogen, which translates into “the town forest.”

Elanor combines riding and competing with her studies at Uppsala University, where she’s getting her bachelor’s degree in biology. She also blogs at enduranceella.wordpress.com.

“I want to become a scientist just like both my wonderful parents, who also love horses,” she said.

MOSCA, COLORADO Zapata Ranch in southern Colorado is a 103,000-acre bison and guest ranch owned by The Nature Conservancy that borders the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. The ranch is home to herds of cattle and bison in different areas. The bison herd is managed as a conservation species, freely roaming 50,000 acres. Jessie Hallstrom took this photo as she rode one of the ranch horses, Cinco, to help move the bison herd to the north side of the ranch before they were shipped to their sister ranch in South Dakota. Hallstrom is the sales and marketing coordinator for Ranchlands, the ranch management company that co-manages Zapata Ranch with The Nature Conservancy. She’s lived and worked there for four years. “Ranchlands is a large-scale ranch management company where we partner with conservation-minded owners to implement ambitious conservation programs that co-exist alongside our own cattle operations,” Hallstrom said. “In addition to our diversified cattle business, we run a series of complementary land-based businesses including hospitality, hunting and fishing, and ecotourism. We currently manage six properties. The Zapata is a very special place to call home.” Hallstrom rides western and doesn’t compete, but she works the livestock on the ranch when necessary and has a Quarter Horse she rides for fun.

MATILDE BRANDT/@MATILDEBRANDT PHOTO 78 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 UNTACKED VESTBY, NORWAY Matilde Brandt and her Friesian gelding Batman are Instagram famous, with more than 222,000 followers, and Brandt chronicles their adventures there and on her blog at matildebrandt.no.

“The place [in this photo] is a forest close to my stable and my favorite hack. We have this amazing track with dense forest on both sides— perfect for a canter in the snow! I have had so many amazing rides on this trail,” said Brandt.

Brandt originally bought Batman to compete in dressage but then started focusing on bridleless and at-liberty work and trick training.

“I combine classical dressage with a tackless approach, but we both enjoy a hack in the Norwegian wilderness—with the bridle still hanging in the stable,” she said. “I do not compete, but I have tried endurance, dressage, jumping and show driving. No competition on the planet will give me the amazing feeling of being completely connected with my horse out in nature, or on a calm morning in the arena playing with collected trot and canter transitions side by side.”

Brandt, 23, works in digital marketing. She has owned Batman, 12, since 2009. “He is my everything,” she said. “I don’t focus much on the riding part, but I can tell you what I love most about Batman! I love his honesty; he is always 100 percent honest with me, and he is my mirror, the mirror of my soul. His personality is beautiful, and he is extremely intelligent and emotionally sensitive.

“We are very connected, and we have been through a lot together, so we know each other well,” she continued. “I can feel how he feels, and he really reflects my emotions. If I have a day with lots of bad energy, he will simply walk away. If I’m sad, he will always be calm and protective. If I’m scared and insecure, he is scared and insecure. If I’m brave, he will be brave.”

ALBERTA, CANADA Louisa Murch-White competes in cutting in Canada, and this photo is through the ears of Mates Special Lady, a 12-year-old Quarter Horse.

“ ‘Lady’ is my first show horse, and for me that has been very special and has created a true partnership between the two of us,” said Murch-White. “Lady is so easy to be around and such a nice horse in general. She’s kind of funny. She’s the queen of the barn and demands everybody’s respect, including the humans. She’ll ‘talk’ at you a lot if you don’t feed her first! From the show pen to trail riding, and everything in between, she takes everything in stride and will do anything you ask of her, which makes her just so special and really one of a kind.”

This photo was taken as Murch-White rode Lady in a field behind the De Winton, Alberta, farm where she works.

“I took the photo during one of those misty, foggy, frosty mornings in Alberta, where you can’t help but think that the frost looks like diamonds on the grass and the trees,” she said. “I always love frost because it just sparkles and catches the light, and I came around the corner of the field to this sight, with the two fences paralleling each other, and how it almost looks like it goes on forever, and thought, ‘How beautiful is this, and how lucky am I?!’ and snapped the photo!”

Murch-White works for a professional cutting horse trainer as a loper.

“I assist in the day-to-day chores and work on the ranch, as well as preparing, grooming and riding the horses in training for my boss,” she said. “I go to shows, where I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to also show my own horse, and I also do all the social media and promotion of our Quarter Horse breeding stallion, Reys From Heaven.”

Murch-White blogs at withawesterntwist.com, documenting her life and adventures in showing cutting horses.

“With A Western Twist is a lifestyle blog that caters to anyone in the horse industry and is a super fun and creative outlet for me at the same time!” she said.

SANDY, UTAH Cody Mullenax works a 9-to-5 job as a product specialist for an engineering company in the mining industry, but he spends every moment he can riding in the Utah backcountry.

“I mainly ride for pleasure; my father’s property sits on the edge of a recreation riding area called Bell Canyon,” he said. “So that’s the most common spot for us to ride, condition horses and break bad habits. When the warmer weather is here, you can typically find us getting lost in the backcountry of Utah’s many mountain ranges. Our favorite tends to be the High Uintas [Wilderness].”

The ears on the left in the photo belong to Woody, Mullenax’s 15-year-old palomino Quarter Horse.

“She’s packed with attitude. What mare isn’t?” he said. “My favorite thing about her is that she’s a mirror image of myself. She presents herself as stubborn, mean, tough and nothin’ to mess with, but on the inside she’s just a softie wanting nothing more than some good chin scratches and horse cookies.

“From the moment I put a saddle on her, she’s tested every aspect of my character, mainly my patience and persistence. But after years of one-upping one another, we reached an agreement that we are both equally stubborn, equally tough and equally resilient,” he added. “And since that agreement, we have made a lot of memorable trips together. Not to say that it’s perfect between us—she’ll still walk me into the occasional low-hanging branch just to make sure I’m awake at the wheel. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The other ears in the photo are Smoke (center) and Alley, and this photo was taken on Antelope Island, Utah, on the White Rock Loop trail.

“Every New Year’s Day my father Larry, fiancé Camille and I come and ride the loop as a New Year’s tradition. It’s typically a day of freezing temps, buffalo encounters and a little hair-of-the-dog from the night before, with plenty of laughable memories along the way. But it’s a perfect way to start off the new year,” Mullenax said.

Sharing Life Between The Ears

Since 2008, Life Between e Ears founder Kristine Dahms has posted stunning photos shot by riders in all corners of the world with one hand on the reins and the other on the shutter. Dahms mines photos with the hashtag #lifebetweentheears, contacts the original poster of the image, then features the photo, complete with educational details about the place that’s portrayed. Life Between e Ears photos appear on a LBTE Facebook page, an Instagram feed, a dedicated website (lifebetweentheears.com), a Twitter feed and a Pinterest page (all under lifebetweentheears account names).

Dahms—who lives in Vashon, Wash., with her Welsh Cob, mini horse, pygmy goats, two dogs and two cats—rides dressage and takes quite a few photos herself on the picturesque Vashon-Maury Island.

Dahms has taken some of the Life Between e Ears images from cyberspace to print, creating three lines of greeting cards with selected photos from her social media pages. A portion of the proceeds from the card sales goes to the Equine Land Conservation Resource (elcr.org). Cards are available at lifebetweentheears.com/retail.