Many years ago, in 1998 to be exact, our daughter, Eliza, was running a small camp for family members and their friends at a family place on Afton Mountain. It was towards the end of the last day of camp, and she and one of her counselors were riding up to the top of the mountain to a picnic and awards ceremony.
It was dusk when they came to an open area called “Aintree,” after the famous British racetrack. The “track” is a long, oval path where we used to race our ponies, with a few jumps on the upper section of the oval – barrels end to end, post and rails, a handmade dry stonewall.
The young counselor wanted to jump, but Eliza thought it was close to being too dark, and suggested that they have a canter around the oval instead. They started around, with the counselor in the front. She was above the turn that takes you around to the top of the oval when the next thing she knew there was a riderless horse beside her.
Horrified, she looked around, and saw Eliza crumpled on the ground under the old tree that marks the beginning of the turn up the hill. Eliza’s horse, Lucks, a big black quarter horse with a white moon face, galloped off. Within an eighth of a mile Lucks came to a fork in the road. To go straight would have taken him back down to the barn and his pasture, a choice that you would expect of a loose horse. Instead he chose to go left, up the mountain to the top, where the campers were. This choice was one of the many miracles that day that saved Eliza’s life.
At the top of the mountain the first thing they see is Lucks, reins flapping and stirrups clanging, charging up the road. The second thing they see is the counselor, spooked nearly senseless, blurting out that Eliza fell at Aintree and may be dead.
My cousin Strother was there with his SUV that had a phone in it (unusual for those days) and he drove fast down to Aintree and found Eliza, conscious but groaning in terrible pain and with her left arm sticking out at an un-natural angle. She was trying to sit up to get her breath, but he wisely kept her from doing so while he called the ambulance.
Jump north to Deer Isle, Maine, where we are sitting on the porch admiring the sunset, when Strother calls in from on the ground next to Eliza at Aintree. Where, he asks should the paramedics take Eliza; UVA Health Center or the just-built new regional hospital between Waynesboro and Staunton? UVA, we say. He tries to get Eliza to talk to us, but she is in too much pain.
