By Rita McInerney

Maggie Wideman has a profound love of horses, in particular her beautiful Arabians. They are, she says, the only purebred horse in the world today and the oldest: “Their ancestors watched the Wise Men go by in the desert.”

Maggie is in the business of teaching girls how to ride these handsome horses at Little Hope Ranch in Conyers. She started the riding camp for girls from 8 to 16 back in 1963 when the only traffic on Christian Circle was the postman bringing mail to the few residents, and an occasional car. Now the 60-acre horse ranch is surrounded by newly built homes and subdivisions in the construction stage.

“Little Hope” is heaven for girls eager to become horsewomen. For one or two summer weeks each has a horse of her own to ride, feed and groom. Her world is centered in the large barn, in the stall where her assigned horse is quartered, the trails and the show rings. It’s total immersion in the world of the horse -–the ranch house is full of trophies, books and framed pictures of well-remembered horses, even the hand towels in the bathroom have a horse motif.

On a typical morning, the girls have eaten breakfast and are out in the barn by 8, getting themselves and their mounts ready for the morning lessons. Maggie is in the midst of 14 girls, moving from stall to stall to introduce her beloved horses to a visitor. She pauses first at the stall of Count Daytime, a handsome chestnut stallion and her special pride among the ranch’s 16 purebred Arabians. In all there are 38 horses in the stable, many of them sired by Count. Because she is “half horse myself,” she is their friend, sensitive to their needs and moods. And the horses? “They’re all kissin’ cousins” to one another.

Maggie’s horse wisdom gives her a wide-angel vision of the barn, the stalls, the campers. She’s in mouth and muscle motion constantly. Here’s a horse with muddy flanks, here’s a stall not cleaned out, here’s a horse not eating his oats. Good care of the horses has top priority, it teaches the campers responsibility, a virtue required of topnotch riders.

“You have to work out your own salvation and establish a rapport,” Maggie tells the newcomers. “You’re dealing with a living creature, you’re like two dancers. You have to be a team. Let your horse know you’d like to be a friend.” It’s in your voice, the way you handle the reins, the way you use your legs to command your horse, she tells them.

“I was my daddy’s only rider,” she says of her introduction to the world of horses when she was 10 year old. She helped him on the 1,000 acre horse range he leased in eastern Texas. Horses have been a major part of her life ever since.

She teaches formal English riding style at Little Hope. “When I came to Georgia I learned the joy of forward seat (English hunting seat) and said goodbye to Roy Rogers’cowboy style. With the big old Western-style you can’t even feel your horse.” And balance, she tells the girls, “is the foundation of riding. After that you’re on your own. It’s like riding a bicycle.”

Mindy Morris, a blonde, jockey-sized dynamo, directs the camp with her mother. The two have no more kinship with those caricatures of angular horsey set women than Annie Oakley has to the side-saddled Queen Elizabeth. Theirs is a strong bond, an unbounded appreciation of the splendid creatures who gaze upon the two women with mute love.

Maggie and Mindy scrutinize the single-file line of girls leading horses out of the barn. As the young riders begin to mount their horses, they are with the little girl who needs a let up, or tightening a loose buckle around the belly of a large mare. Good seats are praised and improper handling of reins corrected. Slowly, horses and riders move down the trail separating bunkhouse and ranch house from the swimming pool and indoor ring. Horses’ hooves send up clouds of dust from the parched ground. The friendly dogs that have been part of the busy group in the barn race for shady spots under the trees, horseflies in pursuit.

Riders are divided into classes according to their experience; many return to the ranch summer after summer. The younger riders follow Molly Murphy, 12, of Holy Cross parish, in a slow walk around the trail circling the horse show ring. Molly, a camper-helper, is in her fourth summer at the ranch. She’s a natural with horses and a great help, Maggie says. The tanned, barelegged girl is riding “Ben,” the handsome chestnut brown gelding belonging to Mindy.

“Here’s an example of the fine art of bareback riding,” Mindy calls out to the visitor as Molly and her group approach. “It’s a rare privilege, very few people have ever ridden my horse.” Mindy has ridden the even-tempered gelding in many national competitions. Although she is an accredited American Horse Show Association judge, she still prefers hunter class competition with “Ben.” Now she worries that “Ben” senses that she is training another horse for competition. Both Maggie and Mindy know that horses understand these things.

Some of the girls Mindy is putting through their paces look tense, other carry the poise of born horsewomen as they clear low jumps or round a turn without faltering. No move escapes Mindy’s well-trained eye. She is all over the ring, striding from one pair to another, calling out praise for a good transition from a canter to a trot or encouraging a girl over a fence.

One girl’s horse heads for the gate each time around. “Take up your reins, nag her with your legs,” Mindy urges her. The horse obeys the signal. The rider looks pleased with herself.

Soon the class follows Angie Gray, 15, a camper-helper from Tucker, in a cooling walk along the trail in the woods bordering the ring. Angie, another of Maggie’s right-hand girls, has been coming to the ranch for four summers. It shows in her easy handling of her horse.

Twins Lisa and Tasha Pascucci, of Westchester, N.Y., Chris Berman, of Trumbull, Conn., and Jody Werrbach, of Marietta, are advanced riders next in the ring with Mindy. Their jumping is more practiced and they respond smoothly to her commands to clear the fences. Before they quit the ring, Mindy assigns them jumps to practice for the next day and study of the rulebook on show competition.

The rules will be followed at the Saturday morning horseshow when the campers, formally dressed in their summer hunt coats, polished boots and hard hats, exhibit their newly-acquired equestrian skills before parents and brothers and sisters.

Usually there are two or three girls who stay over for another week of camp. Often they choose to get up before dawn and go with Maggie to the early Mass at the Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit. Before traffic became heavy, Maggie and the girls used to cover the four or so miles on horseback.

Maggie, a convert to Catholicism, took instructions at the monastery 25 years ago, about the time the controversial idea that “God is dead” was receiving heavy attention in the press. “I wanted to go where God isn’t dead. He’s alive and well in the Catholic Church,” she found.

She’s been going to the monastery ever since, long before the parish of St. Pius X was established in July, 1974. “We were part of the early family out there (monastery), there were only eight or 10 families.” And the monks were “everybody’s family.”

The Widemans bought the property as a weekend place, somewhere to keep a horse, Maggie says. The ground was strewn with so much old junk and debris that there was “Little hope,” she recalls, of ever getting it cleaned up. Hence the name. The first stallion acquired, a gray Arabian, was named “Elachar” after the initials, LHR, of the ranch.

In 1966, catastrophe struck. The barn burned to the ground. “Before the ashes had cooled,” she says, “the monks were over here bulldozing and leveling off the ground” so a new barn could be raised. At the time Father Damian salvaged two horseshoes from the barn and later, Brother Leo Francis, an artist with an acetylene torch, created a black wrought iron sculpture much treasured by Maggie, incorporating the salvaged horseshoes into a “whimsical” abstraction of squares, rectangles and “dream” prints of horses.

Brother Leo, who used to sell his welded sculptures to a gallery in New Hope, Pa., before entering the monastery, has created several iron works for the abbey church including a Paschal candle, tabernacle and Advent Vigil lights.

His gift to Little Hope, delivered for Christmas, 1968, was brought over on a flatbed truck, tied with a big red bow. Today it hangs in the dining room for all to admire.

Maggie says she likes to think of the ranch as giving continuity to life for former campers who bring their own daughters to the place where they spent happy summer weeks. They delight, she says, in recognizing the horse they used to ride or the tree they used to swing from. It’s strengthening, she believes, to have such a place to come to and find things unchanged amid the transient quality of life today.

Little Hope is one of 75 facilities in the U.S. recognized as a certified riding establishment by the American Horse Show Association and the ranch purebreds are registered with the Arabian Horse Registry of America based in Denver. But, Maggie says, “we never aspired to being large. At one time we took 28 girls, but you didn’t get the feel of these kids. I want to enjoy them.” Now the camp limit is 20 girls each week. Year-round activities include a Pony Club which meets one weekend each month, family riding lessons, horse shows the third Saturday of each month from fall through spring and an annual show in May.

One could say Maggie has a “dare to live” outlook. Although her life, she claims, is limited to the ranch, church, Kroger’s and the dumpster, and has had a share of ups and downs, the “therapy of being needed is marvelous. With all these little animals around I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself,” she tells a visitor. It helped to have faith. “All things work together for those who love the Lord,” she likes to quote from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Each time Maggie takes a few of her girls to the nearby Saturday night horse sales she is appalled by the pitiable condition of some of the horses. So many people, she claims, starve their horses and then sell them off to a dealer who’ll bring them to the sale. She doesn’t waste time arguing with the dealer, just lets the Humane Society know about the mistreated beasts.

“Angel,” one of the favorites in her barn, was purchased a few months ago at a sale. “She’s older than the hills and has never been ridden,” Maggie says of the big gray horse. “It was an act of charity buying her but I do feel I was taken. She’s been somebody’s old brood mare.” Now Angel has a good home at Little Hope and Maggie can speculate to a visitor that she might be “entertaining an angel unaware” as it says in Scripture.

One sale Maggie can only enjoy through the marvel of video is the well-publicized yearling sale at the Keeneland stables in Kentucky. Viewing a tape shared by a friend which focused more on millionaire celebrities than the horses being sold for millions of dollars, she could say with happy conviction that “they may have more money, but they don’t have more fun than we do.”