Twenty years after co-founding Nicasio's Halleck Creek 4-H Riding Club, Joyce Goldfield is stepping down as the non-profit organization's coordinator.

But the concept that has allowed so many disabled youngsters to gain self confidence will go on.

The idea is simple: no handicap should prevent anyone from experiencing the wilderness. And over the years, an increasing number of disabled kids and adults - many of them residents of group homes - have come each Saturday to the 4-H club in Nicasio for free horse riding lessons.

Halleck Creek also organizes a four-day rafting trip, barn sleepovers, beach parties and other events, all free of charge. The only fee - if people can pay it - is $5 a year, which goes toward riders' insurance.

The ranch owns 60 acres and riding easements on more than 400 acres. Neighbor George Lucas lets 600 acres to the riding club for $1 a year.

Goldfield of Inverness Park, who grew up riding horses on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, said her successor, Julie Cassel, 32, is perfect for the job.

Cassel first volunteered for the club as a teenager. She and other friends who also loved horses would come help on Saturday mornings.

After going away to college and to teach school in the Bay Area, Cassel now lives in Inverness with her husband and three-month-old daughter.

Like Goldfield, Cassel will be responsible for the numerous fundraising events, the endless paperwork and the myriad of details that go into running a non-profit 500-member organization.

It costs about $90,000 a year to run the ranch, Goldfield said. The coordinator is the only full-time position. A caretaker works part-time.

"Joyce has left pretty big shoes to fill," Cassel told The Light, adding that she will just "bring my shoes along."

On Saturdays, Cassel will coordinate three 90-minute sessions with co-founder Duane Irving.

"The buck always stops with Duane," Goldfield said.

Irving is always on the lookout for any kind of danger - poison oak, highly-strung horses, hanging branches - as he leads the different groups on trail rides.

He will also take youngsters to shoot rapids on the Rogue River near Galice, Oregon, early in August and push wheelchairs through the surf at Drake's Beach later that month.

Goldfield, 60, said the organization has survived thanks to the community.

The community, she said, deserves a "blanket thank-you" for the "unending" support over the years. And Toby Giacomini, who organizes fundraisers and sleepovers at his barn, is a "prince," she said.

For starters, people have donated horses, of which ranch now owns 35 thoroughbreds and mixed breeds. Over the years, the ranch has owned Arabians, Hanoverians, Tennessee walkers, Appaloosas, quarter horses, draft horses, and ponies, Goldfield said.

"I can't sing the praises of the volunteers enough," she added.

All riders have at least one volunteer assigned to them. The volunteer usually leads the horse. If someone is prone to seizures, perhaps a person will be stationed on each side of the horse to catch the rider in case of an episode, she said.

Barbara Steardt, 28, who now works as a secretary in Novato and lives independently in Petaluma, said coming to the ranch helped her enjoy life.

"It definitely was a self-esteem builder," Steardt said. At age 9, she was one of 12 kids who were Halleck Creek's first riders. (Her favorite horse was Chester.) "It was freedom," she said.

Goldfield said there is no condition she hasn't seen at Halleck Creek over the years, explaining that autism and cancer can present the most emotionally difficult situations to handle.

Retiring will give Goldfield more time to finish writing her book on the riding club, practice her Celtic harp, canoe on Tomales Bay, ride her horse on her Inverness Ridge property, finish the quilt she started four years ago, and keep up with friends and family, she said.

But Goldfield said she will always be there to help out, and she intends to go on the Oregon river trip in August.

"It's her life," said Giacomini, president of the Halleck Creek board of directors.

Etched in Goldfield's memory is a young German boy who had been paralyzed in a motorcycle accident.

During one of Halleck Creek's rafting trips, his boatmates tossed him overboard, Goldfield recalled. The boy was floating in the water and yelling in broken English, "First time since accident I am free!"

"It's been an affair of the heart," Goldfield said.