This is not real life. Nowhere else in the universe can you rock a giant brim on your helmet that evokes everything from Donald Duck to Little House on the Prairie, wear multiple items of bedazzled clothing, and openly discuss the purchase price of your house in the Hamptons—all while riding your immaculately groomed horse that may or may not be a unicorn.

You might also be texting.

This is fantasyland.

But the reality of fantasyland for someone like me is a lot less Swarovski and a lot more sawdust. Don’t get me wrong; I have a good gig. I get to ride mythical creatures that are so fancy it’s hard to believe they’re real horses. Sometimes I even wear the big brim on my helmet. For practical reasons of course; I’m so pale I’m practically clear.

I burn through my SPF 100. I routinely ride in sunglasses for the first time in my life. I pretty much do everything except sleep in sunglasses. Including cleaning stalls, scrubbing primordial mold/scum off golf cart rain flaps, move jumps, clean more stalls, sweep, polish tack trunks that immediately attract more dust, move jumps again, listen to mariachi Christmas music until it becomes the soundtrack to my life (think “Donde Esta Santa Clause” on loop), etc, etc.

Underneath the crystal-encrusted façade, life in Wellington is not dissimilar from life working at any barn. With one major difference: I feel so close to the heart of the sport, so surrounded by all the greats that I’ve drooled over in magazines since childhood. And yet, despite physical proximity, they’re still a world away. It’s like being a kid in a candy store without a dime in your pocket. Not that I expected the gates to Grand Prix Village to fling open at my arrival, but I still feel restless.

Some might argue that I am doing something. I am riding after all. And when you put it in perspective, riding fancy hunters for top-notch pros in Wellington is a hell of a lot closer to galloping around the grand prix ring than freezing my butt off teaching riding lessons in northern Virginia. And more importantly, I’m learning the business of hunterland—which will undoubtedly serve me better as a professional.

Maybe what I’m trying to say is that it’s easy to get swept up in the magic of this place and forget about real life. And when I forget about real life, it’s then easy to think that I’m missing something when I see the show jumpers walking to one ring, and I’m walking the other way. Because I know the reality of the situation is that I’m not a “big break” away from making it at as a show jumper. I’m about 87,495,062,346,545 little breaks away. It wasn’t one lucky phone call or chance meeting that got me the job I have now. It was putting on my breeches every morning and trying to ride a little better than I did the day before; all those little steps every day added up to now. And just because I can visualize a goal—that up until recently I was afraid to fully articulate—doesn’t mean that I can now press fast-forward to realize it. I’m learning that perhaps now I have to climb my way up the levels in a non-linear fashion.

People often tell me, “Oh, but you’re still young.” I just turned 28. I went and watched a session of the George Morris Horsemastership clinic and had a startling realization. I am ancient compared to these 18-year-old phenoms.

It’s easy to get discouraged when I compare my limited resume to the teenage grand prix rider ranks. I try to remind myself that I’m pretty sure I’ve come farther in my riding career than anyone ever thought I would; that despite lack of funds, and average talent, I am actually in Wellington, riding horses.

I shook George Morris’s hand this morning. And he said I looked familiar! (I rode in a few clinics with him years ago). And I didn’t faint, but managed, despite the pulse pounding in my ears, to formulate a coherent question. I asked him, as a jumper rider of limited means, what should be my next step? (I mean, who better to ask than the guru himself?)

His answer was simple: network. Meet people. Which, if I slow down and think clearly for a minute, is painfully obvious. This is the same advice I’ve given to aspiring pros time and again.

Palm trees and Parlanti aside, the game in Wellington isn’t so different, but the players certainly are. I have to be patient and soak up every bit of wisdom I can during my time in the sun. And if nothing else, this is by far the best weather I’ve ever cleaned stalls in. 

Chronicle blogger and hunter/jumper trainer Paige Cade worked at Tebogo Sport Horses, a facility in Delaplane, Va., devoted to the re-training and sales of off-the-track Thoroughbreds, and has recently accepted a job with Eight Oaks, which specializes in hunters, jumpers and equitation horses.