“Oh, Eeyore, you are wet!” said Piglet, feeling him.
Eeyore shook himself, and asked somebody to explain to Piglet what happened when you had been inside a river for quite a long time.  – A.A. Milne 

Three years ago I dipped my toe in to a churning river that had been rushing past me while I sat on its banks for years. Tempted by the adventures and challenges within, I made a modest boat and pushed it in, with a naïve hope that plain hard work and longing could see me through the rapids ahead.

Matt Brown and Super Socks BCF at the Aachen CIC. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography

Heading down this river has sometimes felt like an easy thing to do. Many gentle tides grabbed me and towed me along on smooth waters in the direction I was aimed. Sometimes tides tried to push me in directions I didn’t want to go, and often times I didn’t realize it until I was far off course and needed to paddle desperately back up stream.

Other times it felt as if the river was going nowhere, and I was stuck in the middle of thick, stagnant water, making no progress at all. And many times the river tossed me and my boat around, battering bits and pieces along the way—still pulling me in the right direction, but so violently that I doubted whether I would ever breach the water and taste air again.

Now, somehow, despite the odds, I’ve basically made it to my original destination, but it’s as if I’m one narrow spit of land away from where I wanted to be. I can see the place, I know its landscape now, and I can almost feel its shores beneath my feet.

But I’m a little too far off, a little too late, my boat is in sad shape, and I’m water-logged to my bones. I need to pull my boat out of the water and make some repairs. I will still walk along the shore towards my destination, but I need to travel at my own pace right now, not the rivers frenzied and unpredictable flux.

I almost made it.

It’s crazy, actually, when you think of it. The strangest thing of all is that being this close almost feels farther out of reach than it was from the start. When I set off on this voyage, my boat was fresh and new and the river was only as big and daunting as the breadth of my imagination—no more than that.

Now my boat is splintered and weathered, and I’ve spent too much time taking my eyes away from the night stars guiding me towards my destination while running from bow to stern plugging holes. The river is so much more beautiful and powerful than I ever could have dreamed, but it’s cold depths and churning rapids have threatened to pull me apart, limb from limb.

So many times I’ve found my head deep under water, a riptide pulling me down to the sharp rocks below, and all I wanted in that moment was out of the blasted river. I desperately scrambled against the tides, yearning only for the sheer relief of dry land, certain it would be easier to watch the river rush along it’s banks safely and comfortably from it’s shores rather than from within it’s unpredictable waters.

But then, dry and rested, the beauty and excitement of the river rushing past me sent me jumping back in, unable to resist its temptations.

And now that I’ve tumbled down the river this far, it scares me more knowing what lies within it, and I know that I must take the time to fix my boat or I’ll just keep being tossed down this river, gasping for breath, yearning for shore, and most likely ending up shipwrecked somewhere I never meant to be.

As I walk along the banks for the moment, I will take the time to build a more sea-worthy boat before I cast off back in to those waters again. Some days, watching the river pass me by, will feel like I’ve given up—but I haven’t.

I’m rebuilding.

And when I put my boat back in the water, it will be with a more full knowledge of what this river really is, what it can do TO me, and what it can do FOR me. And this time I will be more ready for its tides and rapids and many forks, and I hope to land on that dreamed of shore, boat not just intact, but gleaming.

So, three years after I first said the word “Olympics” out loud and actually meant to see myself there, I find myself with a list of accomplishments and results that seemed far out of reach before that goal was set. I was named as a reserve for the Olympic team, which is far closer to attaining that goal than I think anyone on my team would have actually predicted, whether we dreamt of it or not.

Matt Brown and Super Socks BCF at the Aachen CIC***, where they had a runout on cross-country. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography

But after returning home from a deeply disappointing personal performance at Aachen, where I felt I let the team and my horse down, I will take the rest of this summer and fall, and frankly as long as it takes, to regroup, train harder, smarter and better. I’ll most likely not aim for any big CCIs this fall, as I don’t intend on staying the same and just letting this river toss me about, but I plan on getting better, and able to see myself through the rapids to that shore. 

Matt Brown has been a lifelong student of the sport of three-day eventing, studying under some of the most respected names, including Derek di Grazia, Volker Brommann and Denny Emerson. He also credits horseman and rancher George Kahrl for helping him learn how to create a trusting relationship between horse and rider, even at the top levels of competition. As a young rider, Matt competed through the advanced level with his Appaloosa Maximum Speed, who was his mount for the FEI North American Young Rider Championships in 1993.

More recently, Matt has been named to the USEF High Performance Training Lists since 2013. In April of 2015, Matt and his wife Cecily moved from California to Cochranville, Pa., to continue chasing his dream of representing Team USA. In October, Matt and Super Socks BCF placed sixth in their first European competition at the Boekelo CCIO*** in the Netherlands. This spring, they placed 21st at the Rolex Kentucky CCI**** and were named as a reserve for the U.S. team at the Rio Olympic Games.

You can read all of Matt’s insightful blogs for the Chronicle here.