By Mark A. Keyser
Photography by Laura McClure
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My personal journey began as far back as I can remember into my childhood. Dreams of riding horses, pushing cattle, sleeping under the stars, to live the life of a cowboy. Long hot, dusty days or shrouded in a slicker, trying to stay warm and dry, through rain storms or blizzards. Discovering at age five, I was born with a rare bone marrow disease, completely dashing any hopes of fulfilling this dream. Over the next forty-five years, I found myself following a hundred different paths.
Fast forward to the end of 2000; being reintroduced to the world of horses, there was this constant nagging in the back of my brain...a voice, it kept saying to me, “Where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you”. There was no denying it, no ignoring it, this was my destiny. Faced with the choice of changing careers at mid-life, giving up an incredible income, all to start over and enter into a field already overpopulated by professionals who’d been doing this their entire lives, I was tagged by some friends, as being completely insane.
“There are Horsemen. There are riders. Lucky is the horse that carries a rider on the journey to being a Horseman”
Paula Isenbarg
Horsemanship
Journey to
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