Saturday, October Fourteenth, Two Thousand and Seventeen. This was the day that me and about ten other people deicided to spend our first adventure day in Lesotho riding horses down the mountains to a beautiful waterfall. This was also the day that I front-flipped off of my horse that I was riding down a mountain. As dramatic as I may sound right now, no worries. I am alive and well. I survived the fall. But every since the incident, I am a little shook.
The day began and we were all excited to get on our horses and trek through the Malealea mountains all the way to the beautiful waterfall. Now I haven’t rode a horse since before I can even remember, probably third grade at summer camp or something. But come on, it isn’t that hard to lean back while going downhill and forward while going up. Common sense. So I jumped on my horse and rode to the waterfall. When we got there, I got off of Neller (I named my horse that) and took some sweet pictures, enjoyed the scenery, ya know, typical things that I would do. After that, we ate lunch and then jumped on our horses again to make our way back.
After about thirty minutes of riding, I saw Makennah, my teammate in front of me, go down a pretty high cliff/rock with her horse, and she almost fell off. After this, she made sure to yell behind her and tell all of us to not go down the way that she did because she didn’t want anyone to fall like she almost did.
Well apperently my horse, Neller, doesn’t have very good listening skills because guess what. She did just that!! She went down the cliff. As soon as I saw her head that way I just knew. I knew that this was going to be the end. Neller stopped right in her tracks before she tried to make the treacherous jump off of the cliff and I began to lean back and hold on as tight as I could to her.
But it was too much.
With the first step that Neller took, all of my body weight jolted forward and my feet came out of the harness, my head started to tuck into my stomach, and I front-flipped over Nellers head, into a bush. My shoulder scraped across the ground, scratched across the bush, and I landed on my back. I am not going to repeat the words that came out of my mouth accidentally but let me just tell you that I am not proud of them.
Just like the girl that I am, I immedietely got up out of the bush, laughed it off, got back on Neller (although I was pretty upset with her), and began riding again. Even though I was probably the most scared that I have ever been in my life, I shook it off and kept riding.
A little while later, Makennah was riding behind me and she kept checking in with me to make sure that I was emotionally okay after the incident because she knows me too well and could tell that I was a little frazzled and was just hiding it. As soon as she said something to me, I started SOBBING. The only words that I could get out were, “I just want my mommy”, “She would know exactly what to do”, it was just sad.
I didn’t ever think that I would ever be one of those kids that cried because they miss their mom, but I guess I was just wrong.
For the rest of the ride home, I was terrified. Everytime we started to go downhill or down anything steep, I would start to freak out. I was being such a baby.
Although I was not really focusing on what God could be saying to me through my tragic fall off of Neller, I began to think. I thought about how even though I fell off and it was terrifying, that doesn’t always mean that it will happen again. Even though I fell off of a horse once, it shouldn’t make me scared to ride them again.
The Lord can speak to us in many different, maybe even weird and terrifying ways, but sometimes that is just what we need. So thanks God, for making me fall off of the horse. It makes for a pretty hilarious story.
Thanks for reading everyone. Don’t worry. I am alright.
–Abigael
Some rad photos I took!!
Me and Makennah under the waterfall!!
LOL
