Cover story: Saddle up -- Woodside aims to keep the town's equestrian spirit alive and kicking amid mounting threats to the rural lifestyle Cover story: Saddle up -- Woodside aims to keep the town's equestrian spirit alive and kicking amid mounting threats to the rural lifestyle (October 05, 2005)

By Andrea Gemmet

Almanac Staff Writer

Woodside is horse country.

It's the kind of place where Mike and Marty Raynor can keep five horses in the backyard -- one for every member of the family. A place with hitching posts that are more than just decorative and with trails that can take you from one end of town to the other. The kind of place where, if you're running for public office, you had better have a good answer to the question "Are you a horse person?"

But there's a growing concern in town that the times are changing and the rural lifestyle, a source of pride for so many residents, may disappear.

The older generation of equestrians is vanishing, and new Woodside residents would often rather have a swimming pool or a tennis court than a barn.

A group of Woodside women have been working to make sure that the equestrian way of life doesn't become extinct. They have formed the Woodside-area Horse Owners Association, or WHOA.

WHOA has taken up several projects, but the most visible one to date is coming up this weekend. On Saturday, October 8, Woodside is going to get a whole lot horsier with the Day of the Horse celebrations.

The event is both a chance for the town's horsy set to enjoy a progressive trail ride around town and for the uninitiated to get familiar with horses and the area's many equestrian resources.

"We were looking for a way to share some of the equestrian heritage that has been part of Woodside since the 1800s," says Donna Poy, a member of WHOA who is co-chairing the Day of the Horse event with Fentress Hall.

"Things have changed a great deal in Woodside, from what some of the old-timers tell me. There aren't as many trails, nor as many horses, as there used to be," she says. "We're using the horse fair as a way of sharing information and celebrating their long legacy in Woodside."

The number of horses stabled in Woodside has been declining in recent years, going from 765 in fiscal year 2000-01 to 675 this year, according to town records.

Mr. Raynor, who chairs the town's Trails Committee, says that while the trails are in great shape in terms of maintenance -- " as good as they've been in 20 years" -- the trail system as a whole is vulnerable, he says.

"I think the trails are under siege right now," Mr. Raynor says. "A lot of people don't understand how important trails are to the town, to the politics of the town, to the layout of the town."

"You haven't seen Woodside unless you've seen it on horseback."

Woodside's trail system is a patchwork of dedicated trails, where free passage is essentially guaranteed, and permissive trails, where the right to pass is subject to the permission of the property owner. As homes change hands, an increasing number of new owners don't want to allow equestrians to use their property, whether for liability reasons or simply because they want their privacy, Mr. Raynor says.

He says he hopes that new residents understand that the trails system is what keeps Woodside rural -- not just the locals' penchant for kicking around town in blue jeans and muddy boots.

"It's a legacy we need to work on continuing," Mr. Raynor says. "Without it, we're just rural Atherton."
Next generation

Part of keeping Woodside horse friendly is grooming the next generation of horse owners. WHOA members count among their past accomplishments the resurgence of the Woodside Junior Riders, a 10-week-long English riding summer camp.

Back in 1999, Woodside Town Councilwoman Carroll Ann Hodges says she got together with Maggie Ma and Nancy Shanahan to talk about how to replace the town's old-time horsemen and trail guardians, who were dying off.

"A lot of properties had changed hands, and the unwritten acceptance of horses on private property trails had come under question," says Ms. Hodges. "A lot of people are buying places with permissive trails on them and they aren't interested in maintaining them."

From subsequent dinner meetings, a group of women emerged that formed the core of WHOA.

An offshoot of the group, led by Susan Lang, formed the Folger Stable Committee to raise money to restore the historic stable at Wunderlich County Park and make sure that it would house horses for generations to come.

Besides the state of the trail system, one of the things they talked about was the waning interest in the Junior Riders, Ms. Hodges says.

"We didn't want to lose a program from which was coming our next generation of trail riders and protectors," Ms. Hodges says. "Just with the advent of soccer and computers and God-knows-what-all other diversions there are for kids, a shrinking number are involved in horses."

WHOA members stepped in to help promote and rejuvenate the program, Ms. Hodges says. Ursula Eisenhut had been single-handedly running the camp for 40 years, but since 2001 the Junior Riders' leadership has been divided into three jobs. Ms. Raynor is the program manager, Nelly Emmerson is president and Kathi Dancer manages the horses.

"It turned around and now it's going like gangbusters," Ms. Hodges says.

Programs like the Junior Riders and the Woodside Pony Club teach kids horse care as well as riding skills, says Ms. Raynor. One of the biggest complaints she hears from parents whose children take riding lessons elsewhere is that the kids don't get to do anything with the horses other than ride them, They need opportunities to learn to groom and tack up the horses, she says.

"If you want to keep a horse at home, or anywhere else, you need to know what's going on with them," Ms. Raynor says.

Although her husband grew up on a farm in San Gregorio and rode horses all his life, she took up riding in her 20s, she says. On a recent weekday afternoon, the whole family moved easily from task to task, saddling up horses and leading them from the stable that's next to their house down to the small riding ring in their backyard.

"English or Western, Katie?" Mr. Raynor asks, preparing to saddle up Thistle the pony for his 4-year-old daughter.

Six-year-old Merilee cleans her horse's hooves with a pick as Katie and Christine, 10, ride around the ring. A little later, Christine and her dad head out for a ride, picking up a trail across the street from the house on Kings Mountain Road.

Merilee helps her mom load her horse and Katie's pony into a trailer so they can get to a riding lesson at CTETA across town.

The girls have all done vaulting -- performing gymnastic tricks on the back of a moving horse -- with the Woodside Vaulters, and Christine went to the national championships as a member of the trot team, Mr. Raynor says.

This is the first year Katie has been able to ride by herself, but she competed in her first horse show as an 18-month-old in a lead-line class, Mr. Raynor says. When she was a baby, he'd put her in the saddle in front of him and go on trail rides that usually resulted in Katie falling fast asleep and bystanders gawking at the unlikely duo, he says.

"It's like they've always ridden," Mr. Raynor says of his daughters.

But you don't have to grow up with horses to become a Woodside horse person.

Ms. Poy, one of the Day of the Horse organizers, says she runs into quite a few "returning riders" -- women who haven't ridden horses since they were children, but who are interested in getting back into it. She's one herself. A San Francisco native, she fell in love with horses when she took her first trail ride at the age of 7, but being a city girl, summer camp was her only chance to ride. She moved to Woodside so that she could keep her horse at home, she says.

Ms. Hodges, who grew up in a Texas suburb, says she learned to ride at summer camp and didn't own a horse until she was an adult. She rides the town's trails almost every day, and with council colleagues Joe Putnam and Sue Boynton, forms the core group of equestrians on the Town Council.

"It's undeniably true that if not for the prevalence of horses, and the desire to keep horses and have property where you can keep horses, Woodside would have grown up quite differently," she says.

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