Tucked among the pages of Khalil Gibran's The Prophet, its corners curling and the paper starting to yellow, the note had been all but forgotten. It was only recently when Carrie Tindell was leafing through the Lebanese poet's doctrine on love and life, looking for a message to write inside a Valentine's Day card to her second husband Cliff, that the neatly folded piece of paper fluttered out.
Picking it up, Tindell was transported back in time as she read again the words that had brought a lump to her throat when first written, not least because the writer had struggled so hard to write them. "I know sometimes you find you have lost your way and are always looking for the answers, but life is not about looking for the answers, it is about the journey," the note read. These were the inspiring words which started her on a long road of self-discovery and the realisation of a childhood dream to open her own equestrian ranch.
Poignantly, the author of the note is no longer alive to see what he inspired. The words were written by Jarrod Cunningham, the rugby star whose life was cut short by the muscle-wasting motor neurone disease, leaving Carrie a widow at 30. Three years on, her long-held ambitions are about to become a reality. A horse-lover from the age of five, she had always dreamt of running her own ranch. In September she is to open stables in the sand-swept plains on the outskirts of Dubai, where she will be able to indulge her love of horses, offering riding lessons and teaching the art of horse whispering in management-training workshops.
And five months into her first pregnancy, she has the birth of her daughter to look forward to with her new husband Cliff, fulfilling her yearning to be a mother and to have a happy home life. As she looks out over the dunes, burnished gold in the dawn light, she cannot help but think about the man who set her on this path, even as his own dreams lay shattered around him. "I thought I had already had my chance at love," she says. "I thought I would never marry again and could not fathom how I could possibly have another relationship like that.
"But suddenly Cliff was thrown into my life when I least expected it. I am very lucky to have met two such amazing people, both different but both completely awesome. "That note was the beginning of my journey, but Cliff is the one who has seen it through. "In the later stages of Jarrod's illness, it became very difficult to understand him. The disease attacks your nerve endings and tongue, so I could not always make out what he was saying.
"His written communication became more important then and that was when he sent me that message in an e-mail. I printed it out and put it inside the front cover of The Prophet. I forgot I'd put it there and didn't find it again until quite a while after he died. "He set me on the path. And look where I am now, sitting on my own ranch and expecting my first child. I think life presents you with opportunities and it is down to you to seize them with both hands. Jarrod would be saying: 'I told you so, I knew you could do it.'"
While Tindell, now 33, became an active campaigner to increase awareness about motor neurone disease, she has rarely spoken before about the devastating effect it had on her and her husband, or the twists her life has taken since his death. She first met New Zealand-born Cunningham, then a successful rugby player exuding the self-confidence sporting prowess brings, in 2000, at a mutual friend's birthday party in London.
His long-ranging penalty kicks had made him famous and earned him a reputation as the best uncapped player of his generation, helping his native Hawkes Bay triumph over the Lions in a famous 29-17 defeat in 1993. Both the English and Scottish international squads were eager to sign him up, on the basis of his British ancestry. At the time, Tindell was living in Newcastle, in the north-east of England, where she was born. She was somewhat bemused by Cunningham's attentions, but the London Irish fullback was determined and pursued her until she agreed to a date.
Their relationship quickly became serious and in February 2002 they married in a traditional, simple church wedding in Newcastle with 80 guests, paying Dh220 to hire the village hall for the reception and decorating it with tree branches and vines. Their joy at setting up home together was to be short-lived. Three months after the wedding, Cunningham signed a two-year deal with the London Wasps but realised something was wrong on his first day of training.
His handling and co-ordination were skewed and he had problems with his right thumb. Five weeks later in June, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common form of motor neurone disease. Its cause is unknown, but symptoms begin with cramps and twitching muscles, leading to a progressive weakening of the muscles and eventually, paralysis in the throat and chest. In many cases, the condition proves fatal.
But doctors who had diagnosed Cunningham failed to tell him a vital piece of information: the average life expectancy of sufferers is only 14 months. Cunningham, then 33, said he was glad of the omission as it had given him reason to hope. The couple set up the Supporting ALS Associates Foundation (Salsa) to raise funds for research into the disease through gala balls and charity events. He threw himself into the task with the same passion he used on the pitch: "I am a totally different person," he told a British newspaper at the time. "Rugby players are necessarily selfish, but all that seems trivial. This is my challenge now."
One of the most remarkable changes he underwent was a period of deep self-reflection, which led to him sending daily motivational aphorisms to those closest to him. His letters and e-mails would always end: "Yours Positively", with capital letters for emphasis. His wife, who became his carer as the disease progressed, was on the receiving end of some of his most touching ones."He had always had a very positive approach to everything he did. He had to have that side to him to be top of his game," she says. "That was definitely something he tapped into to fight his illness.
"He became a very beautiful person and had a massive period of self-reflection. When his body started to fail him, he could only be a watcher and a listener and he would notice things I would not. "Jarrod and I never got a chance at family life because his diagnosis came so early on. We accelerated through a lot of life experiences and, while others our age were worried about who was going to do the shopping, I got to experience the harmony and companionship that 70-year-olds have after a lifetime together. There was complete and unconditional love."
However, after much soul-searching, Cunningham, by now wheelchair-bound and increasingly weak, decided to return home to New Zealand to receive full-time care in December 2004, leaving Tindell in Britain to spare her from seeing the worst ravages of the disease. "He did not want me to see him getting weak," she says. "We had been husband and wife and suddenly we were carer and patient, and he found that hard to cope with."
The harder he battled to live, the more his encouraging maxims flowed forth. When his speech became slurred, he resorted to sending e-mails to those he loved most. One was the long-buried e-mail which sowed the seeds of Tindell's current venture. "He would say, 'spend the rest of your life doing what you love because you never know when your number is up'," she says. "He loved his life as a professional rugby player and said he never regretted dying young because he had lived his life to the fullest. I always believed you had to be born talented, though. He was a master of his sport and I used to say it would be so nice to be born talented.
"He said it was love and passion for what you are good at that makes you a success, but I would respond by saying, 'I don't know what I am passionate about'. "You lose touch with your dreams and the ability to play as you grow up. But he had faith I would eventually find out what I was passionate about." The answer came from several surprising quarters. Distraught after Cunningham returned to New Zealand, Tindell - who had been working in sports event management and modelling part-time - asked her agency to "send me anywhere".
"I needed to get out of town," she recalls. "Anywhere" turned out to be a week-long promotional shoot in Dubai for the Kempinski Ajman hotel. While in the UAE, she spent her spare time horse-riding. "I learnt to ride at five, I had my first pony at 13 and was in the Pony Club," she says. "We had three horses in our back garden when I was growing up. "When I came to Dubai, there was something about the spirit of the Arabian horse that struck me. They seem to have an internal energy - their power, grace and majesty is very obvious.
One other incident sealed her fate. Flying to New Zealand to see her husband, Tindell struck up a conversation with a fellow passenger, a draughtsman who told her his 28-year-old daughter had gone blind from cancer but taught herself through horse psychology to ride horses and instruct them verbally. "I remember thinking, I would love to learn more about that." On the internet, Tindell discovered the secret to such skills: the Parelli natural horsemanship technique, devised by US-based Pat and Linda Parelli.
It works on the theory that horse handlers have to use natural methods to communicate with their animals, gaining their trust by understanding what motivates them, whether it is a need for security, comfort or food. The programme teaches the concept of the "horseanality", or four horse personality types, which have to be understood to build a rapport with the animal so they obey commands. "Most people only know how to be with a horse in one way and that is to be a rider, but horses have more needs," says Carrie. "Their hierarchy of needs is safety, comfort, food and play. If you can look after the first three, you can develop a relationship with horses where they can play with you just as they play with each other because they are such gregarious animals by nature."
Even beginners can learn to ride Parelli-style, she says, as the concept unravels traditional ways of handling horses. "Most people learn to ride and compete before they know anything about the psychology and nature of the animal they are working with," she adds. Tindell flew out to the Colorado ranch where the Parellis are based to learn more about the technique and train to become an instructor herself. She hopes to become the first Parelli instructor in the UAE.
"When I saw Jarrod in New Zealand and showed him a video of how far I had got, he said: 'Make sure you never give this up. I told you that you would find what you are looking for.'" Tindell was on the Colorado ranch undergoing an intensive six-week training programme to become a Parelli instructor when she was told her husband had died in his sleep in July 2007. He was 38. "It was like I was in the right place and exactly where I was meant to be," she says.
Tindell returned to Dubai, resolving to buy a horse, take it back to England and open her own stables there. But life was to take another extraordinary twist just weeks after she returned to Dubai from Colorado when she signed up to an early morning boot camp to keep up her fitness level. Cliff Tindell, 24, a South African fitness instructor who owns the Core Direction gym, in Dubai Marina, was immediately impressed by her determination. "She was the only person at boot camp who really challenged me," he says.
For Carrie, it was more fear than willpower that made her throw her all into the training regime: "Anyone who arrived late had to do extra press-ups. So to avoid extra work, I would be there 20 minutes early." Cliff decided to join Carrie and her friends on a camping weekend and the pair instantly clicked. "I was not expecting to meet anyone - I was just going about following what I loved doing," she says. "We spent the whole weekend talking non-stop and clicked on so many different levels.
"We are like a carbon copy of each other, especially through our love of the great outdoors." Cliff proposed later the same year during a surfing holiday in Sri Lanka and Carrie accepted "without a doubt in my mind". They married in July 2008 in a low-key ceremony in Jebel Ali Christ Church with two witnesses and honeymooned at Al Maha desert resort. Carrie acknowledges Cliff as the pillar who has helped her turn her dreams into reality. If Jarrod sowed the seeds by urging her to follow her passion, it is Cliff who has nurtured her ambition.
He was training performers in the show Jumana Secret Of The Desert, a long-running spectacle held in a 1,000-seater amphitheatre among the sand dunes and featuring a laser show, fireworks and acrobatics, which suddenly folded a year ago. The show, in the style of Cirque du Soleil, told the history of the Middle East. It ran nightly at Al Sahra Desert Resort for three years before falling victim to the recession.
Carrie, who was then acting as Cliff's general manager, had seen the extravaganza and had been bowled over by the setting on the Dubai-Al Ain road, 30 minutes outside Dubai. "Because I'd been there a few times, I knew there were horses on site which had been in the show. I drove past a couple of times and stopped to have a look," she says. "I had been on the lookout for a place that would lend itself to a ranch and I had got to the end of my horsemanship training. It all seemed perfect."
In October last year, she began talks with Jebel Ali International, which owns the site, and its parent company, Dutco, who welcomed her plans to open a desert ranch on the land, which forms part of Dubailand. Since Jumana stopped its nightly performances, the amphitheatre has sat empty and two Arab-style majlises on the 2.4 square kilometre site have only been used for the occasional wedding. But Tindell believes the land has great potential and says the dunes, dotted with wild shrubs, traditional-style Arabian huts and a small group of trees, will provide the perfect setting for her plans to create stables where she can hold corporate-management training sessions using her horse whispering techniques, offer riding lessons and even ranching holidays.
She intends only to take over a corner of the site to build paddocks, a training arena and a horse "playground", but she has inherited 11 camels, 16 goats - including two kids - a pond full of ducks, three donkeys and a terrapin, who were part of the Jumana entertainment and will need caring for. She plans to set up an education centre for schoolchildren to learn about the animals and could even offer goat-herding holidays.
"I was thinking of doing camel herding but I still have to see if the Parelli technique works on them," she says. The ranch will eventually form part of a new scheme to revamp the land and replace the amphitheatre with a different venue and show by the end of the year. Most days Tindell is up at the crack of dawn, exercising the five horses she owns and three she cares for on the land, while the family dog Todd trots behind her.
Her baby bump just starting to show, she effortlessly swings herself on to her horse Double, a retired Arabian racehorse, formerly owned by Sheikh Hamdan, the Crown Prince of Dubai. Without any need for a bridle or saddle - in keeping with the Parelli method - she circles the land she hopes to transform, a Stetson coolly perched on her blond head, and allows herself a smile. "I don't have desires for massive wealth or material goods," she says. "Sure, those things come along and it is nice when they do, but I just want a nice family life in an environment where I can have my horses and see the stars."
