1.
There’s a man up the valley who will ride any horse—a warmblood, an ex-racer, a rescue, a Shetland pony, an untouched two-year-old. And so fearlessly, and with no helmet and gentle hands, it is a precarity to watch. What he seems capable of in the saddle is something pre-thought, a communication between bodies that rises without the slipperiness of words. As with many who possess his skill, he is not very good with them (words)—not nearly as good as he is at anticipating the moves of a prey animal. He’s no professional—everything he knows has been taught by and with the rein and saddle, worn smooth by decades of his life guided by their wield. He’s no fancy trainer, so the people of this valley hurl their eyes toward his methods with varied levels of scorn, until they themselves are in a pickle with an unridable horse, and it’s then they pick up the phone, load the trailer, drive up the valley to his ramshackle land-slice of lashed-together livestock panels.
Though I’ve had moments of pre-thought horse communion, I’m plagued with too much thought. I know the limits of my ability to surpass my primate nature, and can sense when word-thoughts have become too loud for me to access the languageless realm of the prey animal. When a horse spooks, one girl in me wants to let him spook, to understand, to let him look and heave his body sideways, because yes, the truck crunching too fast down the ranch road was rather startling, if you’re a horse. There’s another girl, one who has watched a thousand such interactions between horse and rider, who thinks, no, it’s unacceptable to find a barreling truck fearful, you silly thing, you’ve seen the likes of this many, many times in your life and continued to munch hay unharmed, so knock it off with your spooking. Which one is right, letting the horse look and snort at the truck, or a gentle tug with the rein to look at something else, to turn an ear inside to focus back on me, the literal monkey on your back?
Once, in fact, I did think I could speak horse well. I was under the tutelage of a jet black Mustang mare, one white pastern, soul forged on the harsh and horse-dense high desert of Nevada, where some horses starve. Still, she was kind. Horses almost always are. But she was moody and wouldn’t stand for the cinch or to be mounted, and always had the attitude of having places to go, and right away. After a ride, she often had a dash of foam under her breast collar, and she’d roll with such indulgent self-care in the fine dust of the bull pen after her saddle was pulled. It was a great accomplishment; her rolling, and by extension her contentment, was also mine. The rolling, the chomping of a carrot in her unimaginably cavernous jaw. I felt her happiness as my happiness.
The work of understanding horses, of working with animals with brains the size of your closed fist and an enlarged capacity to sense the world that meets their muzzle, is strange for an upright ape. We are, first of all, creatures with eyes set like any predator. When we are tense or startled, we ball up, draw our knees in, or wrap our arms around our middles to protect our organs. Only by training, and not naturally, at such moments astride a horse can we learn to relax, to draw tall, to breathe, or to, as my childhood trainer used to mysteriously phrase it: “sit in.” To “sit in” the body of the horse instead of bracing on it. All much easier said than done. The horse runs, and only secondly does she kick or bite or squeal. She’d much rather run. As two such creatures attempt to communicate, they must work past their impulses; the horse must trust the judgment of the rider about what is fearful or not, or at least needs to avoid the spur at all costs, sharp as a bee sting on the hypersensitive horsehide fascia. The predator must learn not to be one; to be something else entirely, an evolved being, or resort to violence, fear, and pain.
We are drawn to horses as a species. No alien observing Earth would be able to argue with that if they took a long view of civilization. The horse charges, saunters, and gallops across the pages of human ebbing and flowing, offering its body to our agenda.
2.
I began to ride again in earnest one spring after two years of parenting and working online. I had been, for two years, running around, fulfilling and creating tasks for myself, as one does in their forties, perhaps. I was, meanwhile, becoming horse-sick. Something in me is tapping out a Morse code: save our souls. And so, instead of ordering things online or toying with becoming a vegan or updating my resume, I began trying to find a horse to ride.
This is a game of matchmaking, and I’ve done it many times. Sat astride horses who wanted nothing to do with me, watching an owner yank a horse around. No thanks. Not in a position to buy one myself (no land, and two expensive creatures called human children already relying on me for their survival), I kept asking around. One day a neighbor said to me: “By the way, you can ride my horse if you want,” to which I answered, aghast, that I didn’t know she had a horse at all. “I have four,” came her reply, and after riding her beautiful Warlander mare, I couldn’t very well settle for anything else offered. She was the Lexus of equines.
For riding, a seat is the best foundation; that ineffable ability to match a horse’s rhythm is called, in horse parlance, having a “good seat.” In riding the Warlander, I found myself once again beckoned by twin impulses—one that wanted to contain her high-headed marching, the other that wanted to slacken and settle back in the cantle and see what she’d get up to.
I was, frankly, out of practice communing with such a creature. Due to several years of ranch life, I was used to riding toes-out on hard Mexican stock with drawn-on brands, where staying on was the goal, not constant conversation. Often, while riding this mare, I would come to a place where I could not wrest out the predator, the ape, and she would respond like a prey animal. Then I would have to remember “sitting in,” slow the conversation down enough so I could hear each syllable. I would get past the moment, feel both girls—the loose-rein one, hair flying about, and the one with the tight pants, the continual contact. “Don’t cowboy that mare,” a trainer once told me, and later, to make up for it, “you’re a good rider, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” I pondered why she felt she needed to reassure me like that.
3.
A horse appeals to the body of a human—warmth, refuge, a rhythmic chomp, and an eye that seems to look as well as see. How often do we see horses in statues and art, sometimes coiled up and wild, other times stately and strutting? Surely the horse appears to represent the state of the soul. They are a mirror, expressing what we repress.
Everyone has something to say about horses—that they fear them, that they adore them, that they pull over on the side of any highway to beckon them to the fence. There are dream-horses that are pinned to binders and bedposts, horses that rage across the grill of sports cars. These imaginary horses are our reflecting pools as much as the real ones. Riding and caring for them are activities that resist classification—I can’t help but side with those who want them ripped from the Olympics since they aren’t a “sport.” Performing art, therapy session, witchcraft, mutual care, these things they are.
Horses are things I can tell about over and over, with gusto and from different angles, and still never quite describe what I mean. Just as with poetry, my relation to a word is different than yours, and so is my relationship to horses. The two girls inside me aren’t really two, after all, they are one girl who feels many ways. Words are familiar, and thoughts are a warm bath; horses call a bluff. My words don’t suit them. The mare comes close to me, roots in my pocket for a treat, and rests her great head for a breath on my shoulder. For a moment, I’m convinced she doesn’t recognize me as anything different from her, and as soon as I put words to the feeling, it’s gone.
