Our Board Members Ride Down Memory Lane: Ann Bennett, President

Our Board Members Ride Down Memory Lane ---- on the way to Friends of Shimek:

 

We will be profiling each of our Board Members over the next few months.  Each will tell us a little of what has happened to them on their way to joining the Board of Friends of Shimek.  First---our President.  Featured next will be John Byrd, Board Advisor.  So check back again.  Lora

 

Ann Bennett, President

Ann aboard Arabian Holiday--way out west.

I moved to southeast Iowa in 1990 and discovered Shimek as one of the few public places to trail ride in southeast Iowa.  I was born and raised on the Mojave Desert in southern California and was accustomed to riding out my back door all over the high desert on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) property.   I could trailer up the 9 Mile Canyon logging road on the east side of the Southern Sierra Nevada and be at 8000 feet in the Sequoia National Forest.  You could ride for a hundred miles and not run into a fence line.  So moving to Iowa with corn fields and fence rows and no mountains was quite a shock.  But the silver lining was grass pastures instead of sand lots, and you could grow a garden without irrigation.

It took me a few years to find riding buddies.   I think Mark and Cheryl Lieurance were the first people I met on a Henderson County trail ride in Illinois.  They remember my daughter Cassie (probably age 12) riding Holiday, our Arabian gelding, and we visited around the camp fire.  The next person I ran into was Lori Field at a competitive trail ride at Sand Ridge Forest in Illinois and I think she introduced me to Shimek Forest.

Shimek did not have any rocked trails then, all mud and treacherous footing in boggy spots and slick clay slides down the hills – no switchbacks.  My horses at that time knew a lot about sand and rock but clay hills were a different kind of footing.  They learned how to “ski” down.  There was no water in the campgrounds, and I don’t know what year the water was installed but what a blessing.  I can remember that sometimes I would have to unload my horses at the bottom of the hill of the entrance road to get my truck and trailer up the hill because my tires would spin out and lose traction on the gravel road.  There was no map of trails nor trail markers, and until I got oriented I spent quite a bit of time lost!   Someone raised hogs along a border fence and my horses were afraid of those moving, talking “rocks”.  I was warned to cross creeks only at the crossings due to quick sand.   I dismounted to offer my horse a drink of water just a few feet away from one creek crossing, and we safely walked over to drink, turned around to come back and my horse sunk belly deep – much to his surprise and mine!  He did manage to get to firm footing on his own while I stood there holding the lead rope. 

Ann aboard Arabian Sol,
 trail riding November 2013.
 

Shimek is also where I met Debbie Miller.  I met Neal Hartman and his sister Lala through either Lori Field or Debbie, they were all locals, born and raised, and they probably met riding as children.    Then I started running into Marsha Achenbach at Shimek and she is the first one that told me about Dr. Allen and put a bug in my ear about good horse dentistry.  I can remember meeting Brenda and Ringo Covert in Shimek Forest too – they were riding their Arabians, and they liked to ride fast!  Lora Conrad and I met through the local dressage club – and Arabians were our common bond too.

Its a joy to be working with this group --some I have known for 20 years---as part of Friends of Shimek.


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