The Villages Group, which develops and operates retirement communities in locations around the world, has announced that it will build France’s first equestrian village. It will be “aimed at buyers in the over 50 age range who want to live in a community with sporting and outdoor activities.” While horseback riding is the marquee attraction, the village will also offer “cycling, canoeing, golf, potholing, hot air ballooning” and even hang-gliding, according to the managing director. (You are invited to offer your own definition of potholing, but we have it on unimpeachable authority that it is another term for caving or spelunking.)

This is telling. It tells you that the Villages Group, which is not naive about its clientele, sees a robust market in older folks who are very active. And by active, we mean sports that induce sweat, burn calories, build muscle, add endurance and spike endorphins.

These activities will also, occasionally, tweak knees and backs, so it is odd that none of the Villages developments include medical facilities. In fact, the literature seems to promote the lack of medical facilities, as if to say: “This is a retirement community for people who will share your interests and your vitality for as long as you and they are able, but when people fall by the wayside, we won’t stop to retrieve them.”

We are somewhat uneasy about the prospect of riding off into the forests of southwestern France with a posse of non-retrievers. And we are certainly not going potholing with any of these people.

But that is not the really disturbing part about this concept. What is most troubling is that people who are 50 years old and vital would choose to ghettoize themselves, excluding their fallen (or temporarily confined to physical therapy) peers and younger people from their lives. No babies living next door. No teenagers sneaking around in the woods, doing the things that these 50-year-olds did when they were teens. No newlyweds.

Young people are fast and loud and boisterous, so the notion of a retirement community makes sense for folks who are frail, slower, finicky, and fearful of petty vandalism or the occasional misdemeanor noise violations. But if you are robust and reckless enough for hang-gliding, what is your problem with a bawling child? And what are you surrendering to avoid it?

When we think of horse people in France, this is the image that springs to mind. Feast of the Centaurs, by Edoardo Ettore Forti (Italian, c. 1880-1920)via Wikimedia Commons