Where’ve you been: Horsewoman’s golden rule
Published 11:22 am Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Travel changes our worldview and strengthens the bonds between loved ones. I don’t believe it’s a luxury, but a necessity.
Taking a successful adventure to other countries involves trusting the group, yet making good choices.
My latest interview was refreshing because this horsewoman’s travels around the world are as exciting to her today as they were 80 years ago.
She is 91, but she could be called new-aged. Fox hunting and horseback riding have been her monikers, and she has been a strong advocate of the humane style.
Like the Golden Rule, she is the opposite of those who treat others with bitter entitlement. She believes in positive news, without prejudice, and looking at life with the glass half full.
We need YOUR travel story. Tell the Tryon Daily Bulletin, or email to jazzmusictravel@gmail.com.
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Where’ve You Been
Who: Peggy Carter, Tryon, N.C., originally from Baltimore, married George Carter and settled in Tryon in the 1960s.
Where’ve You Been? Panama Canal, 1926, with her mother and father. They traveled through and onto California, coming back east by train.
Her grandfather was Howard McClintic whose steel company, McLintic Marshall, built the locks of the Panama Canal. She was 6 years old, and remembers being shocked to see children onshore in Panama with no clothes on.
Bermuda 1930: She traveled by ship with her uncle to meet her parents, who needed to spend the winter in Nassau, during which time Peggy was cared for by a nanny whom she liked very well.
Loved: Being greeted by her parents by horse and buggy. At that time, there was not even one car in Bermuda. They stayed at the Princess Hotel, which is now the Fairmont Princess, still one of the finest hotels in Bermuda.
Disliked: Getting seasick! Today’s cruise ships have stabilizers, which act on sensors to minimize the roll of the ship, which is the action that causes nausea. But in those days, ships did not have that technology!
Saguenay River, Quebec, 1935: At age 15, she took a luxury boat ride through Canada’s magical cliffs of the Saguenay, the deepest river in the world, 2 miles deep.
Loved: The scenery was gorgeous, and they had music every night. Disliked: There were no boys to dance with!
Scotland 1931: They visited the ruins of her family castle of Dairsie, originally D’Arcy, from France, a family who came to Scotland with Mary Queen of Scots.
After she married George Carter, she travelled all over the world and could write a book. One place she never went to was New Zealand, and now she and two of her sons have a solar-powered lodge and home on South Island.
The story of finding the home was amusing, the farmer/ builder was too polite to tell them it was not for sale, so they jumped into a sheep cage with him to see it, and rode in it up a 45 degree slope-the Tasman Sea foreboding below.
With the Pacific on one side and the Tasman Sea on the other, their place on Farewell Split, called “Land of the White Cloud,” is truly a sanctuary to the legacy of a golden haired mother- valiant who rides with the wind in her hair to bring tolerance and sustainability to the world, after having the opportunity to see it for herself.