ADVENTURE CALLS
Nature is playing a central role in attracting travelers who want an immersive, therapeutic experience
Jeanne Fisher was browsing through activity options for her upcoming visit to Santa Fe, N.M., when something piqued her interest: a self-mastery equine retreat called Equus.
There was just one hitch: She was terrified of horses.
Fisher, who lives in Chicago, had visited Santa Fe with her husband several times and had fallen in love with the city. She suffered from an anxiety disorder that she hoped Equus could help with.
“Horses were one of my longtime phobias,” she said, “and although my daughter loves them and I’ve given her horseback riding lessons, these animals were something I was never comfortable with, and my anxiety would be out of control.”
She wondered if the best solution was to face what she feared the most.
Texans have long visited Santa Fe to attend retreats like the one at historic Cimarroncita Ranch, now a Boy Scouts camp. Families from Houston would send their children to beat the summer heat — and as a holistic experience to help better acquaint them with the wilderness.
Equus is situated in a small valley behind the Four Seasons Rancho Encantado hotel, which once was a dude ranch where guests rode and fed horses and cooked their own meals. Rancho Encantado was started by Betty Egan, a single mother of four from Cleveland, Ohio, who was a bit of a pioneer and tomboy, having dropped out of college to join the Army in the early 1900s.
With Santa Fe’s rich horse legacy, it made sense for resident Kelly Wendorf to open a center for equine-assisted learning in a spot right next to Egan’s former outpost. She named her ranch after Equus
ferus, the wild horses that roamed in herds across the Earth 55 million years ago. The ranch currently has six horses and a donkey (the youngest is 7 years old) and is managed by Wendorf and managing director Scott Strachan.
Strachan hesitates to describe the Equus process as “therapy.”
“What we do can be therapeutic, but what we do is not necessarily therapy,” he says. “It’s a place that people can connect to their true nature through nature.”
Typically, guests of Equus are led into the arena, a fenced-in area where the horses purportedly feel the spirit and nature of the visitor. Some sessions can be one-on-one, and some groups as large as 20 people.
In one instance, Strachan and Wendorf hosted a woman who was going through an emotional slump at her workplace. A horse came up to her in the arena and licked her forehead and chest. Another horse did exactly the same thing. “That’s a peculiar thing for a horse to do,” says Wendorf. Apparently, it turns out, the woman’s emotional blockage was due to the recent loss of her dog, who had licked and greeted her the same exact way the horses had. Almost intuitively, the Equus herd had felt the woman’s pain and wanted to be there for her.
Fisher, too, discovered a form of self-empowerment.
When she stepped into the arena, she took deep breaths and just waited to see what would happen. Strachan was with her so she would not feel alone, and she felt calmed by his energy. Initially, the horses approached her gingerly and she was nervous, but Strachan put his arm around her to be protective. She gradually realized that the creatures, who sometimes would come to- ward her at a gallop, were there to be friendly, not to cause harm. “I learned that horses are able to feel my fear, and they can sense I’m not there to hurt them,” she said.
After standing by a few horses a number of times, Fisher had moments when she went into panic mode. And then in one instant, she felt an emotional shift. “I know this sounds really weird, but I looked up at the clear blue New Mexico sky and there was no fear anymore.” Recently, she and her husband purchased a 5-acre horse farm just outside Chicago.
The idea of connecting to the wilderness in a deeper way is coming into its own, with several retreats developing programs with a stronger focus on both mindfulness and self-discovery. Some incorporate spa treatments at fancy resorts; others are a bit more bare-bones, with a twist of adventure.
Wyatt Webb founded the equine program Miraval resort in Arizona more than 20 years ago and says it has helped guests improve connection with loved ones, heal fear and trauma, and to be more open and vulnerable. The signature program, “It’s Not About the Horse,” is where guests discover patterns of learned behaviors and live in the moment with more authenticity.
Webb says thousands of people have returned to the ranch over the years and that “the experience feels different each time, depending on the stage in their lives. Some guests have told me that it has helped them change careers and that they’ve stopped being doormats for other people.” They start to evaluate their own stories and realized that is what matters in life, not the stories told by others.
This is a global mindset. Zimbabwe-born Deborah Calmeyer founded a company called Roar Africa, which she describes as a safari that is part of the growing “rewilding” movement. Calmeyer describes the process of rewilding as “a return to a more
The idea of connecting to the wilderness in a deeper way is coming into its own, with several retreats developing programs with a stronger focus on both mindfulness and self-discovery.
wild or self-willed state,” which encourages a deeper immersion in nature to empower change, foster peace, purpose and a connection with oneself.
“Being on safari does just this in the most organic way,” she says. Her trips in Africa serve hundreds of women each year who come to her for experiences like bushwalks with anti-poachers and listening to ambient primal sounds. “This allows for an authentic sensory connection and brings out instincts that we have been forced to suppress in modern day life,” she adds.
A recent survey by the Travel Leaders Group in partnership with the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) found that 86 percent of surveyed travel agents saw a rise in adventurebased vacations over the past three years. Many clients now want transformative and authentic travel experiences, a sizable chunk of the $636 billion adventure-travel industry. While “rewilding” retreats are considered more therapeutic than adventurous, they overlap with the wellness market, which is projected to grow to $1.3 trillion market by 2026.
“To really unplug from the digital overload, people are immersing themselves in nature now more than ever,” says Shannon Stowell, CEO of ATTA.
Bitterroot Ranch in Dubois, Wyo., which hosts a popular summer yoga and horseback-riding retreat, started as a working ranch and now has a herd of 135 horses that roam its 1,300 acres. It offers two-hour morning rides through pine and aspen forests, as well as an afternoon trail experience. Around 30 guests per week come here from all parts of the country to heal, rejuvenate and connect deeper to the wilderness.
These kinds of vacations are different from traditional luxury wilderness retreats that allow you to simply observe the natural sounds. Rather, they demand that you actively participate in the experience, because you get as much out as what you put into them.
Tracy Fulton, a Dallas businessman and frequent Santa Fe visitor, says that his daughter, who suffers from Crohn’s disease, is looking forward to her first session at the Equus.
“She has been talking to Kelly and Scott about things that they teach, and already they have been so helpful,” he says. Charu Suri is a freelance writer. Email: travel@chron.com.