Christmas Day

Today is a day of peace for the world and me as well. Had my Christmas dinner yesterday with all my children, grandchildren, brother, and nephew. Now I can just eat leftovers and chocolates and go see my horses at the barn. Everyone enjoy the season and I send my love.

Rydall Bank View

Every since my very good friend Dale in Pickford Michigan passed on and left Kiesha, my daughter and I have been looking for a farm. Seems a little strange to own horses and live downtown. We have looked constantly for the past 5 years and never found the right on. Until a year and a half ago. We were driving east of town past the menonites and behind Bruce Mines. We came upon a little town called Rydall Bank. There really isn't anything in the town anymore except a town hall. It used to be a little mining town. We saw a real estate sign so we followed those signs. Drove down this windy dirt road which was very scenic. We passed a beautiful lake and then righton the other side of the lake there was a road and the for sale sign. The property for sale was a huge hill with no buildings. Pretty but not what we needed. But it was so pretty down that road, West Road, being the west end of the lake I thought, that we started driving down it to just look around. That is pretty much how we have looked for our farm, just driving around to see what feels good. We crossed over a bridge over a fairly large river and I knew I was where I wanted to be. I stopped the car in the middle of the road. It is not like there was any traffic on this little road. Ends up there are only 7 houses on it. I jumped out and said, "This is it!!! This is where I want to live!! There was a house close by so I walked up the driveway and knocked on the door. A woman came limping to the door. I said I was sorry to disturb her and she said, Oh don't worry, I just have a bad hip"

Of course, I replied, "I may be able to help you with that. I am a massage therapist", and proceeded to show her some stretches to do. There we are out on her deck doing therapy. Kiesha is in the car shaking her head. I then asked who owned the property across the street. It is a beautiful huge pasture that has the river on one side of it and it overlooks the lake. She said "Oh that property goes with the little house up the hill there". And there sat my future home. There was a "Who lives there?" I asked. little house, double car garage, a barn, chicken coup, 300 foot metal building. "Who lives there?" I asked. "No one." she replied. "It belongs to a guy from Austria, but he just comes over every few years for a day and walks around."

Recap of Gateway Ranch

Totally enjoyed the workshop I went to in Kamloops, BC at the Gateway Ranch with Liz Mitten Ryan from "One With The Herd". It was there where I learned how to communicate with the ALL. My spiritual beliefs were indeed challenged out there and I now resonate with this way of thinking.. I have always connected to animals on a deeper level and my thoughts are now that "God" is not just in us humans. Really that is such an egotistical thought but typical of our species. Just because we speak words, we think we are more intelligent. Maybe if we stopped speaking so much and just listened, we would be more intelligent. We would tune into the subtlties of nature. It is my belief that "God" the spirit, lives in all things on the earth and beyond, in the animals, in the plants, and in the rocks. That is why it is referred to now as the "ALL".

While waiting my turn to work at the Merlin tree with our wonderful shaman Billa, I was journaling sitting on top of a beautiful mountain surrounded by our group of warm, wonderful human beings. My legs were draped over the cliff and there was some sounds below. The whole herd were below us grazing on some grass along with the steer Tesoro, who thinks he is a horse. Horses have an order in which they run with the dominant mare in the lead. As they abruptly started stampeding off, I laughed out loud when I noticed that Tesoro had gone up a notch in the pecking order. He was now second from the last and there was a horse behind him. How cute. You really can be whomever you want to be.


After my session with "Merlin", I felt very peaceful and radiant and at "one with nature". I started writing in my journal again about the day's events while the next workshop person went to Merlin. All of the sudden, I was filled with a feeling of overwhelming fear. And so I wrote, Why am I feeling this fear, this doesn't make any sense? What is this fear? And a voice came in my head that said, "It is your fear of being alone." And so I wrote that in my journal, "it is my fear of being alone". But I was not alone. I was with 10 very nice people. I thought about my life and how I could never figure out why it was that I could travel all through Africa and Europe by myself at 20 years of age by myself with no fear, but could not stand staying at camp by myself for more than a day. I just had to get away sometimes, away from children, away from husbands, away from the 3 businesses we ran. I would get to camp and totally just love it for one day and the next, I would be on the phone trying to get anyone to come visit me. I had a fear of being alone.

As I looked at the page again, I read, "It is your fear of being alone." The word, ALONE literally jumped off the page. I read it again. ALONE, AL ONE. Oh my God! It was my fear of being ALL ONE. It was not my fear of being alone, but my feeling of being all one with God! Wow! This was my message from Merlin. What an AHAA moment as Oprah would say!

Now, I have been planning on moving to Rydall Bank, a little farming community behind Bruce Mines, where I will be a caretaker of a amazing 600 acre farm or ranch. I found this farm one day while I was just driving around with my daughter, looking at property. The property has a river running through it and is surrounded by three lakes. It overlooks Ottertail lake and has a gorgeous hill behind the farmhouse with magnificent rock. Rock Lake is north of the property, and Gordon Lake is East of the property. The problem I have had about moving there was that I have been feeling a little fear of being alone. Guess what. That fear is now gone!! Now I am really looking forward to that time where I can experience peace and solitude and getting in touch with ALL. And of course, hanging out with my horses maybe even healing with my horses..

The other thing I learned at Gateway Ranch was that Liz's horses want to help heal people. It is probably because they are so happy there. They can roam and run anywhere and still come home to an open barn filled with food and shelter if they so desire. The same is true for the 4 dogs and cats at Gateway. They are very loved and very well taken care of.

I had the wonderful opportunity to practice my massage on humans with the help of Liz's horses. Fascinating!!! One beautiful mare chose to work with me. She came to heal. Her name was Crystal. She came of her own free will. The horses at the ranch are free to roam anywhere on the 330 acres but she showed up to work with me. How she would work was to place her head on my client's body where they needed healing. Kind of like Reikki. And just stay there for about 20 minutes.

On one of my clients, she placed her head directly above my client's forehead. I looked into her eyes and there was such peace, like she was meditating. My client had severe neck problems. My hands were under my client's neck and Crystal head was right in front of me. I gently placed my forehead on Crystal's head. Crystal gently put her chin right on my client's forehead. The three of us were connected. A kind of tri-unity, or trinity. My body was just vibrating. Tears of gratitude poured out of my eyes to be allowed to share in this experience. It was so beautiful. Then Crystal pushed my head back a little. I realized she wanted me to traction my client's neck. My fingers went under the lip of her scull and I gently pulled. When I did this, I could see on my client's face that it caused discomfort and after a few minutes Crystal would stop pushing me and I would let up the tractioning. Then we would start again synchronicitly a few times. How powerful is that? It is something we do in craniosacral therapy and this increases the flow of cerebral spinal fluid.

My teacher, Billa, was working on someone beside me at one point. The horse that was working with Billa placed her chin on the client's lower abdomen and stayed there for about 45 minutes. Billa's client just lay there looking quite peaceful. It was like they were both meditating. Billa stepped away and let the horse do her work. I believe her client had some fear issues in life which we store in our abdomen. That is why when we have stressful situations, one of the first thing affected is our stomach and bowels. So incredibly interesting.

Of course, when we move to Rydall Bank in the spring, I will be seeing if any of my horses are interested in doing this kind of work. It is work that I would totally be honoured to do. I know they are so wise and have much to teach us.

Pickford Connection

Having a summer home in Cedarville Michigan for the past years caused me to drive through a little farming community called Pickford. Commonly called Pitchfork Michigan. One farm on the way always had herds of horses running all around the old farmhouse. I thought, "Someday I am going to stop and meet those people". And one day I did. I drove up a long driveway between 2 pastures full of horses and left my van running outside the house to go see if anyone was home. Before I even got into the front porch, I heard this "Come on in!" in a loud voice. So I hesitantly opened the door and there stood this tall white haired man with a beard and blue, blue eyes and a belly looking a little like Santa Clause. "Sit down, sit down. What would you like, coffee, tea, or hot chocolat?" I said some tea would be nice and off he went to the kitchen. As I looked around, it was truly an old bachelor's house. Horse tack and saddles all over the livingroom floor, food under the table, and nothing that matched anything. For 3 hours he told me his life story about how he grew up here with his family, moved to Lansing to work in the car factory, got married, had 5 kids, and then his wife left him for a life of debauchery with drugs and alcohol. He bought some horses to keep his kids busy (so he said but really it was because he loved horses). He would always say he was horse poor, because it cost a lot to keep horses.

When I met him, he had retired and moved back home to Pickford. I explained that my daughters and I all loved horses and that my youngest wanted to buy one. I asked him if the horses outside were palominos. They were beige horses with blond manes. I thought I was being quite smart knowing the breed. Well, he laughed out loud and said they were a little big to be palominos. They were Belgiums. Work horses. Oh, I felt a little silly as he explained they wouldn't be too good for riding. He said he did have one thoug
h that he thought may be able to be ridden. At this point, I think he was feeling a little sorry for my ignorance. By the time I left, we had become good friends. When I returned outside I realized that I forgot to turn my van off. Good job this was a few years before the price of gas jumped.

And so started a long, wonderful relationship with Dale. I remembered his name after that by thinking about Clydesdale's. Kiesha, my youngest daughter, and my granddaughter Kayla, and I would all go down and spend weekends on the farm. Now, there is not much going on in Pickford, so the neighbours would call in the morning because they would see my car and ask who had slept over. And Dale would love to pull there legs and tell them it was his girlfriend from Canada. They would then proceed to ask him where we slept. He loved to lead them on for awhile. And then being the good Christian man that he was, he would explain that it was a 5 bedroom house. Dale taught us a lot about horses, and Kiesha would sleep in the barn awaiting the birth of a new baby horse which she would help deliver and milk the mom to get the baby started.


When Dale died of cancer a few years later, we inherited 5 horses, 3 Belgiums and 2 Standardbreds which Dale got just for Kiesha. The problem we had then was, WHERE DO WE PUT THE HORSES!!! Seeing as we live downtown Sault Ste. Marie, it wasn't too feasible to have them in our back yard. And to pay room and board for 5 horses, especially 3 Belgiums, who eat twice as much as a normal horse, was not a financial possibility. One of my clients offered her barn for our use because she said she would love to look out the windows of her new farmhouse and see horses. But that we would have to go out there (half hour away) to feed them and put them in and out every day. That would be at least a 3 hour a day commitment. Ouchh!! As if I am not busy enough!!!



Then she mentioned that maybe the Mennonites would take care of them. Quite a few families have moved to Desbarats from southern Ontario. They had come over to fix my friend's barn roof and their windmill. Her husband was nominated to go speak with them on my behalf. I waited in the car. Mennonite men do not do business with women usually. He told us that he would think about it and we should come back next week. You learn that nothing happens very quickly in Mennonite world. And so we returned the next week and were told that they would take the horses for a fee which was a fraction of what anyone else charges. My friend's husband, who was acting on my behalf, asked if he would like to talk with me but the mennonite man said no. So horses were moved across the border and that was yet another beventure but not for the telling now. Four years later, we are now great friends with the Mennonites and they even teach us how to make cheese and things.

First entry

So many changes have happened in my life recently and I figured it would be a good thing to get them down on paper. My massage clients are constantly getting the rundown on what is up with my life. I have an active audience right there on my table. And they tell me, "Bev, you give great massages, but I really come for the stories!"

I have always loved horses and have always had them in my life but kind of on the outskirts of my life. I was about 10 when I climbed onto my first horse. My Michigan cousin was lucky enough to live on a farm. He told me just to jump right on that horse. There was no saddle, just the bridle to hold onto. I was immediately thrown off. I remember thinking, "the nerve of that horse " and climbing right back on again. I believe I was thrown off at least 5 times before the horse finally realized that I was serious and decided I wasn't so bad. There is always the possibility that he was just bored hanging around munching on grass. Maybe that was my first beventure. Actually, my mother told me that I used to go to the end of our street to the sandbox when I was 2, take off all my clothes and bury then and then walk home. Maybe that was my first Beventure. I sure have had a life of them since.

My cousin and I and our four legged companions then had an amazing 10 hour day of walking and galloping around the farm discovering for me a whole new life. Being new to this passion, I didn't realize it would be better with long pants on. It took days to get the dirt off that was embedded into my thighs. But I didn't care. It was kind of an exciting tattoo for me. The fact that I could hardly walk for the next few days didn't bother me either. What a day!!!