February 2009 Member Spotlight - pagelambert

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Name: Page Lambert

Location: Rocky Mountains, just west of Denver, Colorado

What’s your typical day like?   I live in a rustic mountain community and am lucky enough to work at home.  On good days, in between planning retreats, editing client manuscripts and coaching writing clients, I make it down to our community barn to spend time with my Arab gelding, Farside. Then I come back to the house and work on one of my own writing projects.  If it’s a really good day, I’ll get in a short hike down to the meadow or on one of the trails through the pine trees and aspen, or a longer ride on Farside.  This time a year, I’m also talking on the phone several times a day answering questions about the Literature & Landscape of the Horse retreat which will be the end of May at the fabulous Vee Bar Guest Ranch in Wyoming.  Last year’s retreat was a huge success and we had women on the waiting list.  There are some great photos posted on my website, along with all the details about the retreat.  This year, because of the slow economy, we’re extending the deadline to register for the Literature & Landscape of the Horse, but it’s still booking up quickly.  I co-facilitate the retreat with my good friend and horsewoman extraordinaire, Sheri Griffith.  Sheri, who has been professionally outfitting outdoor adventures for 35 years, is also an endurance rider, and helps put on the Moab Valley Endurance Ride in Utah.  It takes place the first weekend in November.

 

















How did you first find horses … or did they find you?  As a little girl, I lived in the same mountain community where I live now.  We had a black and white paint named Bingo.  My mom used to sit my sister and me on his back, with our boxer dog Ben-Ben walking alongside, and take us for rides.  When I was 14 years old, I bought a half-Arab, half –quarter horse strawberry bay 4-year-old mare.  I named her Romie.  You can read about her in my memoir IN SEARCH OF KINSHIP: MODERN PIONEERING ON THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE.  The book is the intimate story of transplanting 6 generations of Colorado ranching roots north to Wyoming, and starting a small family ranch.  We had several ranch horses, but my favorites were Blackie, who we bought from a rodeo cowboy, and Tee, who we bought from neighboring ranchers.  They were inseparable buddies until Black died last year.  I’m no longer on the ranch, so having Farside is such a blessing.
Favorite horse story?  That’s a tough one.  I read THE HEARTS OF HORSES by Molly Gloss last year when I was judging a national writing competition and was blown away by it.  If I had to name a childhood favorite, it would probably be BLACK BEAUTY.  Before the horse retreat in Wyoming, I’ll be compiling a list of everyone’s favorite horse books who is signed up, and I’ll be reading and teaching using excerpts from these books while we’re at the Vee Bar ranch.  It’s great.  For 5 days, we get to live and breathe HORSES!

If you could change one thing within the horse industry, what would that be?
When I lived in Santa Fe for a year and a half, I volunteered at the Santa Fe Horse Shelter and worked closely with several horses there.  It made me realize that we all need to become better informed about the horse slaughter issue.  It’s a complex issue.  I was listening to Dr. Temple Grandin speak the other night (animal behavior specialist and advocate for humane animal handling) about her new book, ANIMALS MAKE US HUMAN.  She is very concerned about the horses that are now being trucked into Mexico because of the ban on U.S. slaughter.  I’ve just started getting more deeply involved in research to more fully understand the issue.  You can read my recent article on Temple Grandin’s new book at www.pagelambert.blogspot.com.

















Other than horses, what else do you enjoy doing for fun?  I also lead River Writing Journeys, so I love being on the river!  I love hanging out with ranch folks whenever I can because I miss our ranch in Wyoming so much.  I’m a Senior Associate with the Children and Nature Network, so I’m also very involved with the movement to reconnect young people to the natural world, and to help rural ranch and farm kids stay connected.  You can read more about what I do on my website, www.pagelambert.com.

Is there a special significance to your avatar?  Well, we haven’t discussed my avatar!  Are you referring to my general view of life?  If so, you’ll find a common thread through all my published writing – whether its fiction, nonfiction, or poetry.  I believe in the wisdom of Nature and her ability to teach humans how to live in harmony with one another.  I believe in the healing nature of animals and their ability to ground us.  I believe that as we have distanced ourselves from nature, we have distanced ourselves from our own spirituality.  That sounds pretty lofty.  What it really means is that I think we learn a lot of important stuff when we get our hands dirty!






















Anything else we should know about you?  Oh, my.  I write with such intimacy that I’m literally an “open book.”  My writing can be found in over 22 different anthologies, and most of what you’ll read will tell you a lot about me.  The anthology, HOME LAND: RANCHING AND A WEST THAT WORKS (which won a 2008 Colorado Book Award) has a long essay of mine which speaks very personally about leaving the ranch.  The January, 09 issue of SOJOURNS magazine has a feature piece of mine in it called “Writing Life,” which in some ways is about writing instruction, but it also includes few personal stories.  Here’s an excerpt from that essay which illustrates the importance of recognizing moments of synchronicity in our lives:

Yesterday a friend trailered one of her endurance horses to me from her home in Utah.  This handsome grey Arabian horse was about to become mine.  A year and a half ago, I could barely walk down a flight of stairs, and now I was literally about to get back in the saddle.  As Sheri lifted my old western saddle onto Farside’s back, a custom-made, hand-tooled, cutting horse saddle given to me by my great aunt in Colorado before she died, I was overcome with emotion.
 
Despite the fact that I feared I would never ride again, I had hauled that saddle with me when I left the ranch in Wyoming, when I moved alone back to Colorado to care for my mother, again with me to Santa Fe, and then back to Colorado where I am now living in the mountain community where, as a toddler, I first rode a horse fifty years ago.  The saddle symbolized hope.

My aunt had cared for my half-Arab mare Romie during my college years.  When I married in 1978, I purchased her home and 40 acres of horse pasture. The year my son was born, 1982, was the same year Farside’s sire Xenophona won the U.S. National Open Cutting Horse Championship. 

If I were writing a novel about a woman learning how to carve out a new life for herself after leaving the land and the animals she loved to care for her dying mother, I might include a scene where she overcomes sorrow and rediscovers a sense of destiny.  I might use something as symbolic as a hand-tooled leather saddle and a horse who would carry her on his elegant grey back into a new and purposeful life.