This Month's Story

“Dressage is a highly skilled form of riding performed in exhibition and competition …. it is the highest expression of horse training where horse and rider precisely perform a complex series of extremely elegant movements.” (Wikipedia)

I was mentally tired. I was in Switzerland attending an international meeting of oceanographers. My talk for the meeting was that afternoon and was very technical in nature involving the newest advances in satellite oceanography. My problem was that many of the scientists in the audience would be world class, highly skilled in their own specialties. My talk would introduce them to the swiftly moving new advances in satellite oceanography. It would also be, by necessity, tutorial in nature in that many of these same oceanographers knew very little about satellite oceanography, no less what the new work I was describing would change the thinking in their own work.

It was a constant uphill battle. My work as well as the work of my colleagues in satellite oceanography was so new that many oceanographers were unaware the implications of our work had on their own studies. My talk, I hoped, would change this, but it was rough going.

I had left my hotel very early in the morning. of my talk. My walk took me through a vast wood area just outside of the pretty town of Bern. My rambling took me a little ways from the small town and I was soon lost amid the summer foliage. Behind me was Bern and in front and all around me was the serenity of the Swiss woodland. It was a feeling that I felt again and again as I moved about Switzerland. I was always amazed at the deceptive manifestation of this small country in that its highly sophisticated industry blended in with a countryside that was in all appearances agrarian in nature.

I had not walked far before I came across a small paddock wherein a rider in a Swiss army officer’s uniform moved his horse quietly about.

The whole setting was quiet or, better said, serene. We were deep in the woods with its non-intrusive wood noises and here in the middle of all of this was a rider and his horse doing what appeared to be an elegant dance. Although there was no word from the rider to the horse, the two proceeded to move about the small enclosure with an almost floating elegance, it was as if the rider and horse were a single unit.

As I said, the paddock was small and soon their movements brought them close to where I was silently watching, leaning on the wooden fence. The rider seeing me, stopped the horse and greeted me with a polite good morning.

“You are up early today.”

I smiled “I’m here to give a paper at an international meeting in town. I came for a walk when I found I could not sleep.”

I looked more closely at the horse. I was intrigued.

“Would you mind telling me what you were doing? I mean you and your horse…It was beautiful. It was like you were floating…”

The man smiled at my look. “It’s called dressage. It’s a way of showing how a horse can behave in a manner that shows how well a rider and his horse can communicate with each other. The better the communication, the better the two show how well they communicate. I agree with you. He and I work well together. I am lucky to have such a horse as this.

He looked around the paddock. “We are leaving this afternoon to show how well we work together and I was just about to run through our basic routine. Would you like to see it?”

My look gave him his answer and he moved to the center of the paddock and the two began a series of movement that were unbelievably beautiful to see. There is no way I can describe it. It was as if the horse and man were in an intricate dance that blended in with the morning light and woods around us. They made no noise, just the soft movement the patter, patter sound of the horses hoofs as they swirled about in their ballet-like dance.

Then it was over and the two stopped and he bowed to me from his saddle.

I shook my head in amazement.

“That was beautiful! Thank you!”

At this moment a Swiss soldier appeared beside me and spoke to the rider.

“The carrier is ready to leave now, sir. If you wish to catch the plane, you should leave now.”

“Thank you. We will go to the barn now. Please have a car take this gentleman back to his hotel.” He moved out of the paddock and turned to me. “Good luck with your paper! And I hope we meet again someday.”

The soldier and I moved to some buildings that lay farther off.

“Do you know the colonel?” he asked.

“No, this the first time we met”

He was obviously impressed. “Then you don’t know they are about to leave to fly to Mexico City. They are to compete in the Olympics and are favored to win at least one medal”

I shook my head in amazement. The soldier took me to a garage where a car took me back to my hotel.

Well, the paper was well received and the questions it generated assured me that the innovative work me and my colleagues was paying off far better than we had hoped.

The next day was a relaxed day and I was one of several other American attendees that were invited to the American Ambassador’s house for a luncheon. We went and enjoyed a wonderful catered lunch.

In the middle of the luncheon, the Ambassador announced that if we went to the rear of the residence, we would be entertained by his teenage daughter with an example of dressage. He explained dressage as most of us had never heard of it before.

“I think you will be pleased. My daughter and her horse, Daisy, have won a number of awards for their performances.”

I went out with the others fully expecting to see a presentation that would bring back to me the wonders of the magical performance I had seen earlier in the woods outside the city.

It wasn’t the same. There was taped music from a recorder set to one side of the corral and the teenage daughter led her horse through a program accompanying the music.

The music was good.

To my amazement, the teenager and her horse were not.

It was, as it was supposed to be, an amateur performance. I should have been prepared; they were after all amateurs. It was just that I had not expected it to be so poor. Having seen the rider and his horse in the woods that morning, in comparison, they looked dreadful. The girl and the horse despite their best effort were as if they were wooden figures in a Punch and Judy show.

Several days later I heard on the news that the Swiss colonel had taken several Gold Medals in the summer Olympics at Mexico City.