She said a book got her to volunteer at the Straightening Reins ranch, which uses equine therapy to help improve the mental health and well-being of youth. The book, “The Art of the Commonplace” by Wendell Berry, has been passed down in her family.
Castaic resident Samantha Callaway, 24, said her dad was a farmer and her grandpa was a farmer — they had fruit trees. Her family is very much of the land, which is why “The Art of the Commonplace” is almost required reading for them. It shares 20 essays offering an agrarian alternative to urban culture.
“I was just reading that book,” Callaway said, “and I’m very interested in the various agricultural, land remediation kinds of things, but he (the author) also mentions horses. And just the way that he talked about it really inspired me to want to get to know horses.”
The idea is that when a farmer uses horses, he or she is working with an animal — not a machine — and there’s a necessary reciprocity between farmer, animal and the land, Callaway said. Farmers find a deep connection with horses, which embodies the relationship between nature and human life. Horses, through their strength and grace, remind farmers of their reliance on the land and the importance of living in harmony with the natural world.
In July, Callaway began volunteering at Straightening Reins in Hasley Canyon for a few hours a day, a couple times a week. The nonprofit organization, according to the website, specializes in equine-assisted and interactive therapies to promote emotional growth in youth from about 8 years old to their teens.
Callaway started by feeding and cleaning up after the animals. But she eventually worked with the kids at the ranch to help them get “work ready” to care for the animals.
Her job is what she called “ranch crew.” She’ll “muck out” the horse stalls, feed the animals, get them water, sweep out the barn and perform other similar tasks. She especially enjoys the work because there’s no cell service out there. She can be present with the animals and not get distracted by technology.
She also just loves the physical aspects of what she does.
“I came from a job that was very office-based,” she said. “So, it’s really nice to have this hands-on experience where you do something and in real time you get tangible, meaningful results. As you work, you’re improving the lives of these animals and you’re improving the quality of this therapy ranch. You’re directly benefiting a lot of people.”
Callaway is originally from North Carolina. Her dad’s family comes from Georgia and her mom’s family comes from Ventura. It’s her mom’s side of the family that brought them to California. They’ve been in Castaic since 2019.
And while Callaway has an economics degree from California State University, Long Beach, she recently went back to school at College of the Canyons to take some classes that interested her, one of them being a linguistics course. She’s also teaching herself how to speak Korean.
“I love languages,” she said. “My boyfriend is Swedish, so, I’m also learning Swedish.”
Callaway began volunteering at the Straightening Reins ranch as a way to work with and be with horses. However, she’s found her time with the kids to be more rewarding than she thought.
One of the kids there speaks Spanish, and that kid has been trying to teach Callaway Spanish in exchange for lessons from Callaway in French. Callaway took French in school.
“She wanted to learn French,” Callaway said. “I said, ‘You want to learn Korean? I’m better at Korean.’ She said, ‘No, I want to learn French.’ So, it’s a sort of a tutoring thing.”
The experience, Callaway said, has been motivating. While she’s worked with kids in the past — she used to teach martial arts to a wide range of youth — working with the kids at Straightening Reins has been such a different experience.
Her martial arts work, she said, was more discipline-based.
“Here (at Straightening Reins), it all starts with the environment,” Callaway said. “This is a safe place. This is where kids are to be kids. This is where I also can just be myself. It just feels safe. It’s nourishing for my inner child. I see them (the kids), and I see their ages, and I sort of remember, ‘OK, what was I like at that age?’ When I was that age, I looked up to people who were around 24, and I just wanted to hang out with them.”
Callaway loves the impact she can have on the kids. She’ll help them perform a task, even those who initially think they can’t do something. Some kids will accomplish something and play it off like it’s no big deal, but Callaway sees pride on their faces.
One time, Callaway came upon a young girl who had it in her mind that she couldn’t lift one of the large feed bags to fill the feed containers.
“It was really satisfying for me to encourage her to realize, like, she’s strong and she can do this,” Callaway said. “And then you can take the time to brush the horses at the end. At the end, I think you have to pause. You know the phrase that you’ve got to stop the smell of roses? You pause and you pet the goat, you pause and pet the chicken, you pause, and you pet the horses.”
And that’s what brought her to Straightening Reins, after all. She gets those interactions with the horses. But some time ago, she noticed she was developing a desire to do more than spend time with the animals. She found she really liked being around the kids and guiding them to do things themselves.
“I’ve sort of reassessed what it is that I want to do,” Callaway said. “I mean, I still don’t really know yet, but I get excited at the idea that maybe I could become a substitute teacher, or maybe I could work at a day care.”
According to Deborah Rocha, co-founder and executive director of Straightening Reins, Callaway’s level of comfort engaging with kids when she first arrived was not there.
“She’d be like, ‘Yeah, I just want to spend time with the herd,’” Rocha said. “But she’s grown into realizing that the environment is really conducive for supporting the kids. And now she’s looking at teaching. She’s actually considering teaching.”
Rocha added that Callaway is an ambassador to kindness. She’s good at redirecting kids who might be joking or rude to others and getting them to be kinder. She’s really found what seems to be her purpose, Rocha said.
Before Callaway came to Straightening Reins, she researched what it means to be around and to work with animals. She learned that you can’t pretend to be happy around animals. They know if you’re faking it. They feel your inner emotions. They feel your anxiety, your anger, and they’ll mirror your emotions, so, you have to be careful what you project.
Callaway said you’ll see yourself in the animals. As such, you have to bring your subconscious into your consciousness. That’s a bit what the therapy at Straightening Reins is all about, she said. Not only has that approach been good for the kids, but it’s also been good for her. And that’s the idea of reciprocity that she read about in that book, “The Art of the Commonplace,” which brought her to Straightening Reins in the first place.
She now understands what it all means.
Know any unsung heroes or people in the SCV with an interesting life story to tell? Email [email protected].
