Find your path

[great big story]

It takes a special bond between horse and rider to compete in a 100-mile-long race. For professional endurance rider Uma Mencia Uranga, it’s a bond that began in childhood in the Basque Country of northern Spain and eventually led her to pursue a riding career in Dubai. Today, she lives a busy (but fulfilling) life in Dubai—with mornings spent at school in the city center, and afternoons training in the breathtaking landscape nearby. Ten years after moving to the city, Uranga is at home in Dubai.

Vocabulary chunks to learn from the video :

• My world was very much centered around the horse
• A long distance
• You are becoming one
• An endurance horse rider
• Long distance racing
• Through open landscapes
• Puts you in a state of concentration and peace
• As you travel as you wander through it
• Ride in the desert
• Something that would bring me back and keep me here
• It’s a city of contrast
• I’ve been mesmerized by its organic shapes
• As the sun rises and sets
• It has moved me the most
• It makes me love this place

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Look deep into nature

 

[Green Renaissance]

“I believe with all my heart that we can create cities and towns that are functioning like a forest. How to really thrive on this planet is all around us.” – Sue Swain

Follow more of Sue’s work in the field of biomimicry HERE

 Visit Green Renaissance HERE

Vocabulary chunks to learn from the video :

• Sustainability

• The least favorite word in the English language

• It is so limited

• Shame I’m sorry hear that

• You are just hanging in there

• Nature is so much more vibrant than that

• Critically important it’s regenerative

• That’s what we should be striving for, is regenerative living

• They are sharing one particular territory

• There is no waste at all

• We have made chemicals combine

• 3.8 billion years

• The earth can’t recognize it can’t’ assimilate it can’t break it down

• We are acting like aliens

• I believe with all my heart

• The blue print is here

• How to thrive on this planet

• We need to ask nature what we should be doing

• You need to get out into nature

• You need to reconnect

• No patch of nature is too small

• To actually start you journey of discovery

• We are capable of so much more as a species

Feed your soul

 

[Green Renaissance]

Everything today seems to be so manipulated and plastic. We yearn for something that is powerful, true, and genuine. Animals are honest. Around animals, you feel like you grow. It feeds your soul.
Warren loves animals, and over the years has looked after many rescued and abandoned horses. He has a deep connection with these special animals and shares his story of how they have helped change his view of the world around him. What’s on the outside of a horse is good the inside of man.  Visit Green Renaissance HERE

Vocabulary chunks to learn from the video :

• What’s on the outside of a horse is good for the inside of man
• Manmade activities
• It just feeds your soul
• Being in contact with these animals
• Quietly grazing
• You feel like you fit into the natural order of things
• I’ve always tried to look up instead of down
• I’ve tried to look past problems and things in my life
• The problems are even smaller
• Every now and again
• These things are equally clever
• The fact that they tolerate us is just absolutely phenomenal
• I sometimes can be an impatient person
• We yearn for something that is powerful and strong and true and genuine
• Everything today seems to be so manipulated and plastic and not honest
• What you get is what you get
• It’s so good for you
• You do feel connected

These tiny horses may have once taken Achilles to Troy

National Geographic

Vocabulary chunks to learn after watching the video :

• Small horse breed
• They adapted to the local conditions
• No white markings of any kind
• A thicker mane and tail
• A non-domesticated horse
• Strong hard hooves
• Expressive eyes
• A handsome head
• A much larger population
• They were used in agriculture
• The welfare of the Skyrian horses
• A definable breed
• From a conservation perspective but also form a welfare perspective
• An education perspective to change local people’s opinion
• Reconstruct the pedigrees
• That was our main concern
• From the horses that we bread
• Has value in a contemporary society
• Not a long history of equine  activity
• Go off into the big wide world
• To promote the Skyrian pony
• To produce better quality Skyrian  horses

 

The Skyrian horse : 

Existing primarily on the secluded island of Skyros, the Skyrian horse, or Skyros pony, looks as if it were meant for a child. Although it shares many of the proportions of larger horses, the breed stands at a mere 100 to 110 cm (3.2to 3.6 ft). Some legends connect the small but mighty Skyrian horse with those that Achilles took to Troy, while other theories link the breed to the small horses that appear on the frieze of the Parthenon temple in Athens. There is no concrete proof for these claims, but evidence suggests that the breed has survived relatively isolated in Greece for several thousand years.

Due to declining use of horsepower, overgrazing of livestock on Skyros, and interbreeding with donkeys on the island, the number of Skyrian horses has decreased. Only about 300 horses are left. To preserve the rare breed, organizations such as the Skyros Island Horse Trust working to increase the population and encourage locals to protect the horses. The hope is to increase the genetic pool of Skyrian horses on the island to prevent their numbers from dwindling. [national geographic]

Read more about the Skyrian horse HERE

 

Wild Horses in Iceland

Watch the following video :

Vocabulary to learn after watching the video :

It’s very interesting to stay out here in Norway and feel how the horse is relaxed and has enough to eat

The freedom, mountains, how much they can move, that is why they become this special character

We drive them to the mountains and we leave them for the summer

We allow them to be totally free

In the fall, the owners collect them; they go to the highlands and take them back

It’s one of the best weekends of the year

I’ve been riding more than half my life

To breed horses in the future

Our horses go together

Riding a good horse in perfect conditions, you really can’t describe with words, the freedom of that moment and the perfection and the feelings you have