Picture this:  You're in a fifty-mile endurance ride and find yourself at mile thirty-nine when you suddenly realize you haven’t seen a trail marker for the last three and a half miles and there’s not another rider in sight; your last water stop was ten miles ago and you have no idea how to get to the next vet check....

If you're an endurance rider like I am, you've probably experienced that scenario at least once.  Well, that's the image that sums up the way the current recession feels to me.  And I’ll bet I’m not the only one wandering through the woods with no marker in sight.

Three years ago my husband, Michael, at age forty, decided to make a major career switch.  He had been a builder for nine years, and the housing boom had been good to us.  But we caught the downward trend early, and at that point my husband did something very smart and also very risky:  He decided to chase down a childhood dream of being a helicopter pilot.  To make this dream happen, we sold both our businesses and used the money to send him back to school and float our family of four in the interim.

Last November and almost three years later, just when we were starting to feel panicky about our finances, Michael landed his first real job at a real-live helicopter company headquartered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Not only was it his first break into the industry, but this company specialized in doing really cool stuff, like controlled burns for the Forest Service, fire suppression, collecting alligator eggs for alligator farms, seismic testing for oil and water, and maintaining utility lines.  Oh, and did I mention it’s also the most dangerous kind of pilot work one can do?  But we’re not complaining, because just like endurance riding, you’ve got to take risks and put in the time to get where you want to be.

I believe in miracles, and this job was definitely one of them—as my bookkeeper reminded me, something has to be said for someone who can land a good job in these perilous times when so many are losing theirs, and companies are shutting down or begging the Feds for money.

But we’re not out of the woods yet and trying to catch up a lot.  And like a lot of other people, we’re making sacrifices to hold it all together.  The hardest part about this new job is that it requires us to live apart, with me and the kids here in Colorado, and Michael living out of our camper in Louisiana.  And it feels weird to be living apart.  So we’re left still counting our blessings but conducting our shared family life long-distance.  Thoughts like, I wish Michael could have seen our son make that basket the other night are now commonplace in my head.

Though missing each other is the worst of it, I’ve also been struck by how difficult it is to be a single mom.  My other half is gone and without him, there is no back up family member.  I find I have to do everything with kids in tow unless they’re in school.  Last  weekend, for instance, when I had a trail riding lesson with a client on a Sunday (read: money in my pocket) I was forced to make my son ride with us because I couldn’t leave him at home and I didn’t want to turn the work down.  (He is the one person in our nuclear family who isn’t a horse-nut and he wasn’t too thrilled!)  And then there was that three week period right before Christmas when I ended up in the hospital two times within two weeks of each other for unexpected emergency procedures.  You can bet I have a new depth of appreciation for friends who pitched in with babysitting, meals, and moral support.

Lately, as I cook dinner while listening to NPR in the evenings, as is my usual routine, and hear yet another day’s worth of lost jobs and failed banking systems, I am reminded of things I’ve heard about the Great Depression.  Back then it was common for the man to go wherever he could find work and leave his family behind—often for six months and longer.  Some of these men never came home because they felt like such failures.  So far, images I’ve seen of the Great Depression make me feel that this current recession is pretty nice in comparison.  Afterall, there are no bread lines, and no one is skin-and-bones yet and there don’t appear to be hobo settlements everywhere.  But when I think about the prospect of our family being separated until our house sells, which could easily be a year or longer, well, that starts to feel pretty darn hard.  It makes me sad to think that Michael might miss so many of the little hallmarks of his kids’ growing up.  At seven and nine, these are years that are especially precious.  It reminds me of how so many of our military families are similarly and more frequently subjected to this type of separation, and I can feel how hard that is.  Like the Great Depression, these types of hardships are truly hard times.  Being separated from Dad will surely be something my kids remember as their version of the Great Depression.  I can only be grateful that it most likely won’t include being homeless, hungry or worse.

And we’re pretty lucky in comparison.  A neighbor up the road from me lost her high-tech job over a year ago, and is still looking.  A family whose kids go to the same school as ours just barely escaped foreclosure when the spec home that their dad built sold at the last minute.  My realtor tells me it’s increasingly common for people to come to the closing table with money in hand—rather than walking out with some.  The mantra these days seems to be to hunker down, try to keep your credit and good name, and buy only whatever you need.

Which is what we all should have been doing in the first place.  I am not innocent of the over-consumption that has brought us on a national level to where we are today--using credit to buy things we really didn’t need or couldn’t really afford.  With the thought of moving constantly in mind now, I often go through my home and wonder how I got so much crap…..having to relocate will always make you take stock of the stuff you now have to move!  Like someone who’s eaten too much cheesecake and ice cream, it’s a relief to go on the wagon and get rid of the excess, turn over a new leaf, start on a new path.  As we’ve all heard and as we all know in that place inside ourselves which we call The Truth, happiness doesn’t come with stuff.  Happiness and true fulfillment are found in loving relationships with others.

And one of the best loving relationships in my life, in addition to my family, is the one I have with my horses.  I adore my horses.  I cannot imagine my life without my horses.  Which is why I see red when well-meaning members of my extended family counsel me to sell my horses. After all, in these times having horses are more of a luxury than ever……or at least that’s the perception.  And to be sure, I am making some cuts.  I am going from six horses to three.  I’ve thought about this a lot, and have whittled my herd down to the three horses that are most important to me: Taz, the Arab gelding my 7-year old daughter and I can both ride (hard to find) and my "lesson" horse; Wasabe, my yearling “designer” colt that was born on my property and shows great potential, and my mare, Nadrah, who is absolutely number one on my list—selling her would amount to selling-out.

And yet, to people who aren’t familiar with horse addiction and horse people, and endurance riders, and all things horse-related, my insistence to keep only three horses probably sounds pretty self-indulgent in “these times.”  I run the risk of sounding like the guy who headed up GMC, complaining to the reporters that he could only get money from the government by promising to change his ways….like not flying around everywhere in his corporate jet.  Waiting in line at the airport is really hard, I never had to do that before, he whined.  (If I could have reached through the radio and slapped him, I would have.)  Yes, horses are expensive and they’re only horses…..but to me, they’re like a part of my family and they are who I am.  They also represent a way of life that is healthy, active and wholesome.  I can think of nothing better than my daughter continuing to immerse herself and grow up in the Horse World.

The recession won’t go on forever.  Things will get better, although I think the trail as we knew it will have to be abandoned and a new and better one built in its place.  And ultimately, doing the things we need to do as individuals and as a nation to get back on course will be, in the end, what saves us and brings us back home to ourselves.

--Michelle Smith

January 26, 2009