There are no smart accidents. Mine was no exception.

It occurred on one of those perfect Thanksgiving Day foxhunts in Chester County, Pa., with Todd Addis and his game Penn-Marydel pack. While galloping uphill on my quiet but young mare, Fife, I felt a sudden but effective buck when another horse came upon her too closely from behind.

Then I had an extremely unlucky landing and heard a mean crunch as she galloped away. As it turned out, Fife propelled herself away by pushing off my right ankle, which had just been broken, badly.

With the crack of that bone came a few life lessons and a few harsh realities.

Lesson # 1: You cannot pick your rescuer. That’s a volunteer job awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. Jim Rice, 10 weeks off of quadruple-bypass surgery and following the hunt that day in his 1983 Ford pick-up truck, got to me first. He wisely dismissed my requests for someone to retrieve my horse so I could continue following hounds. Something in the unnatural dangle of my right boot suggested to him an immediate trip to the hospital. He definitely knew the way.

Lesson #2: You cannot pick your rescue vehicle either. My memory of a photo of David O’Connor being hermetically swathed and then horizontally loaded by a uniformed team of emergency medical professionals into a gleaming ambulance two years ago at the Fair Hill CCI gave way to the stark contrast of the interior of Jim’s truck.

Food wrappers, an old Cabela’s catalogue, baling twine remnants, rusted wire cutters and some boxes of hard raisins were scattered on the cracked leather seat. I tried to recall the date of my last tetanus shot. He offered me a well-used towel from the floor of the truck by way of first aid; I rested my head on the gun rack; and we were on our way.

Lesson #3: You can’t schedule an optimal date for your accident. Ironically, major holidays are expeditious times to be in a hospital’s emergency room. Deliveries of babies, accidental and intentional gun and knife wounds, and even car crashes hover at near zero during traditional dining hours on Thanksgiving.

Your surgeon is usually home and easily reachable. Intravenous painkillers deliver an almost bizarre euphoria as you phone instructions to your teenage daughter on how to baste the bird and render the gravy. In the background of this conversation, a competent swarm of technicians ask you again how precisely the accident happened, and why did you take your boot off before you got to the hospital? The bone protruding through the sock would have suggested a more prudent approach.

Lesson #4: Avoid picking on yourself while reviewing the accident. After the surgery and during the nausea of recovery, alone at night in the hospital room with the right leg in a cast to the knee and elevated by pillows, the exquisite stupidity of the accident is utterly revealed.

For the first of hundreds of times, you review the sequence of events in your mind, and you know with blinding clarity that this, like most accidents, was completely avoidable. You knew all the rules–be alert to what’s happening around you and avoid unnecessary risks; ride defensively. And, as a character in Jane Smiley’s Horse Heaven counseled, “When everything is going well, be your most careful.” You know, in your heart, that this crash was optional. And you cry.

Lesson #5: You cannot select which friends will call you to console you–but if you could, you’d only answer the phone when those who have had accidents are calling. Of course, riding accidents aren’t the only avoidable injuries. The most comforting post-operative phone calls are of the “misery loves company” kind.

Noteworthy true accounts include the nephew who fractured his leg during a boarding school food fight; the friend who broke both arms while jogging around the block; another friend who shattered an ankle while the carpet cleaners were at her house; the neighbor who sustained a three-part ankle fracture walking down the hall at work wearing flat shoes.

My personal favorite ghastly tale is the one in which my brother-in-law broke his 7-year-old son’s leg in a sledding accident and then the very next day broke his own arm on the icy exterior of their kitchen steps. (My sister still can’t speak about those incidents politely.)

Another foxhunter’s account involved a friend’s leg broken in the heat of the chase, ignored for a week or so until gangrene commenced, and then, finally, amputated. I am assured this incident took place in the 20th century. This, like so many accounts I heard, put my own injury into some perspective.

“If you’re going to do things,” a whipper-in from my hunt consoled me, “things are going to happen. If you’re not going to do things, things might still happen.”

My close friend and trainer asked, “Did they cast your foot in the heel-down position?”

And then she added this truly comforting counsel, “The one good thing about lay-ups is you can’t develop any bad riding habits.”

Lesson #6: Best get yourself busy once you’re home. A number of projects around the house soon suggest themselves, and before you know it, you’ve set a series of ambitious goals that probably couldn’t be completed during a lengthy sentence in a minimum-security prison.

This is the “lucky break” phase of recovery: Have all tall boots dropped off to have zippers put in the backs (and certainly wipe as much of the dried blood stains as possible beforehand); get tack cleaned and repaired; read the classics; organize the shoe boxes full of family photos into roughly chronological albums; clean your desk, the closets, the drawers, under the beds; call and write family and friends; and experience the wonder of not flying out of the house half-cocked to the barn each morning.

And, of course, tend to this strange new appendage, the stump, the leg in a cast–both a fortress and protector as well as a prison.

My kind neighbor who’s a physical therapist advised me to wiggle my toes, do legs lifts, and move what I could as much as I could. Blessed in having a personal trainer with knowledge and versatility, I worked out each week. I gradually ventured out for lunches, the movies and short shopping trips on crutches with my husband. And I even made–with my dear sister and another loyal friend–an unforgettable trip to Manhattan, in which I toured much of the city feeling giddy in a wheelchair.

The sentence of six weeks in a hard cast was served, the graduation to a hard plastic and Velcro walking cast achieved, and what once seemed to be a true eternity had passed: my leg was healed.

Lesson #7: Be patient with yourself. Admission to the pantheon of fallen riding heroes–to the elite who feel impending weather changes and who set off airport alarms with pins, plates, and other orthopedic hardware–comes at a cost.

Celebrate each milestone like Bruce Davidson, who, after a horrendous fall four years ago, rejoiced the first time he could at last sweep the barn floor. The profound loss of innocence, the epiphany of knowing that “I can be hurt” is a new place to ride from. The first time in the irons after your fall is terrifying and exhilarating, especially if it is on the horse on which you were injured.

Melvin Dutton, the long-time hunter-jumper rider and trainer, assured me, “It will all come back. It will come back.” That is, initially, very hard to believe.

There comes a deeper acceptance of the risks that come with riding, with the sport that makes us feel most ourselves, more alive than anything else we do, but carries few passengers. We realize there is no vaccination from the twin viruses of worry and fear; there is just the gradual strengthening and increased confidence that only more time in the saddle brings.

We learn again that horses give us far more than they take–our lone-wolf personalities find a home and true friendships in our lives with these remarkable animals. In the end, we finally find a way to cradle our fear in the sheer beauty and joy of our sport, and we ride on.