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Deadline to register: February 1st, 2008
EXPLORING THE
LITERATURE
AND LANDSCAPE OF THE HORSE!
Crazy about Writing? Wild about Horses?
Come explore both passions!
 Dates: June 1-6, 2008.
Location: the beautiful Vee Bar Guest Ranch near Laramie,
Wyoming.
Price: $1275.00, includes lodging and meals, writing and riding
instruction, lodging, tack, and your own special horse for the entire 5
days.
Guest Facilitator: Yes, Sheri Griffith will be joining us and
handling the "horsey" aspects of the retreat (along with the
professional Vee Bar wranglers).
Deposit: $300.00 deposit due by February 1st, 2008.
ALL LEVELS OF RIDING AND
WRITING
EXPERIENCE WELCOME!
~ this retreat isn't just about riding horses, and
it isn't just for women ~
It's about developing a deeper understanding of the
horse
and our special relationship with the horse.
As we learn more about how a horse communicates with the world, we
develop a deeper awareness of how we communicate with the world. During
this retreat, not only will we ride horseback across the Vee Bar's
beautiful Wyoming landscape ~ we'll also journey into the mysterious
dimension between the verbal world and the non-verbal world.
 As writers, we reach out to others through the written word. Yet often
our work lacks the energy and vitality necessary to engage the reader.
We often fail to trust our instincts when telling a story. A
horse is an instinctive animal, and the relationship between horse and
human requires an abiding trust and understanding of these instincts.
Humans, too, are instinctive creatures. Yet our instincts can easily
become subverted by the modern technical world in which we live. It is
my hope that by being fully engaged in the immediate, vital, and natural
world of the horse, we will reawaken our own lust for life. This renewed
passion will fuel our writing because it will strengthen the bond that
connects us to the natural world. For 5 days, we will write about, read
about, and be about horses!
 
Our words will move as
gracefully across the page
as the horses move across the
wide open spaces of Wyoming!
Deadline to
register: February 1st, 2008
DOWNLOAD
PDF version of THIS FLYER
DOWNLOAD PDF VEE BAR RANCH BROCHURE
DOWNLOAD PDF version of
SADDLE UP! FLYER
Excerpt from Page's memoir In Search of Kinship:
Romie, my old mare of twenty-six, eased backwards out of the horse
trailer after a 400-mile journey from the family ranch in Colorado to
our new log home in Wyoming. The homesteaded ranch had been in my
husband's family for five generations. If we'd been able to stay, Matt
and Sarah, our young children, would have been the sixth generation.
These family roots were hard for me to comprehend; by the time Mark and
I were married, I'd lived in over 15 different places. Romie, for
twenty-six years, had been my only continual tie to the land.
I led her away from the trailer that day, holding one hand near her
nostrils and speaking intimately to her, saying things I didn't want
anyone else to hear. She raised her head and sniffed, taking in the
scent of this new land. Then she lowered her muzzle and sniffed my hand.
I rubbed her nose and she nickered softly to me, pressing her head
against my chest. I put my cheek on her neck and felt how small it had
become. Her muscular prime was long since gone.
We had brought her here to die. I did not know when, or how, but I knew
that someday her bones would lie among the sage, or in a red dirt
crevice where the sun would bleach them white. Perhaps, though, we would
be graced with a few more years-time enough for Matt and Sarah to climb
upon her bent back and feel her move gently beneath them-time enough for
her to learn where the tender grasses grew. Time enough for us to take
one last ride together.
To me, she was still beautiful. A half-Quarter horse and half-Arab, she
still had the same almond shaped brown eyes, the same feminine face. And
though her red roan-colored body was flecked with gray, her long mane
and tail were still a deep black. Our first summer together, when I was
only fifteen, we had ridden from sunup to sundown, through narrow
canals, wet willow branches whipping the water. We rode the shores of
the South Platte River, on the lookout for quicksand.
One day, Romie's front legs became entangled in barbed-wire. Bleeding,
she trembled, but did not panic. I slid from her bare back and slowly
slipped the wire from her hooves, amazed at her sense of trust. Back at
the stables I rubbed salve on her wounds, then leaned against the barn
sipping an ice-cold bottle of Coke while she ate a mix of oats, barley,
and corn sweetened with molasses. Standing only inches from where I sat,
she lifted her head when she smelled the tart apple I had brought, then
nuzzled me and shamed me into sharing. Together that first year, we
tested the wind of change. She muscled out and grew from filly to mare,
while I turned from young girl to young woman…..
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