Hands On

So, if my mind's not quite in the game, my body can still go there. Sloughing off the winter is close to being my favorite time of a horse-owning year. I dig in with my few simple tools and work at it until my shoulders burn. The horse loves it as much as I do, just differently. She loves the pressure of my raking through her coat over and over, leans into it, sighs. I love the feel of chasing a seam, like coal, finding the glitter gleam under lifeless shale.

 

The brittle strands sometimes levitate in the surrounding air - they cleave to my lips before long, line an eye. I pull and drag her contours, following her every small shift of position without thought. If only I could peel off my own shit like I can peel off what she's already cast away. But I don't think about things like that then, only notice sometimes the burning in my wrists, the sweat at my brow. It's satisfying, relieving, a little freeing.

Afterward, lingering at the doorway, she seems to smile. That can be enough. It can be enough for what it was. She looks beautiful.

Eating My Life

I miss this arena where I snap a longe line to my thoughts and try to move them out, pushing them past balking, bucking and distraction into some kind of steady, flexing rhythm. My mind needs that kind of work, lest it turn back on itself. It needs this place where I talk about what I long for when I can't be with it, plan the next thing for days that seem to never come. I have to say something when there's no time for me.

The festival is eating my life this year. I miss my horses. Thinking of them is compressed between tasks, endless words, numbers, phone calls, repeat calls, walking the festival amid the blazing heat, lifting, bending, watering the screaming plants, phones in both hands, radio at my hip. Enforce this, create that, ask him, follow up with her -

And there go the jousters riding bareback across the parking lot. I twist to watch them from my window, stinging a little at the sight. The idyllic mood I imagine them to enjoy has nothing to do with reality, it's just a dream of my own longing.

In truth, joust horses rarely connect, mostly won't connect; they could be gone before the next show. They live a narrow life defined someplace between livestock and labor. The dull uncertainty in their faces shows, but they are used to it. As animals will, they live for the next meal. There, astride them, the joust boys look happy and relaxed, and they are. It's not a show day, there are no screaming crowds, no armor, no dust, just a morning ride to stretch the horses before the heat comes to choke the day. I watch, a little pained, knowing my mares are okay without me, enjoying  better care than the joust herd ever will, but still, but still...

I saw them two weeks ago when the farrier came to do trims and look at Scout's mysterious hoof hole. Her cave-in was the result of an impact of some sort. She struck it against a fence post, took a glancing kick, or experienced a blunt trauma that knocked out a chunk. He shaped it much as we would a broken fingernail, smoothing rough snags and rasping away the load-bearing edges around it to keep it from cracking. I marveled at him being down on his hands and knees, face inches from her hoof, studying the divot with true professional curiosity.

Arriving for a brief interval into the lives of the horses both helps and hurts. I've really let them become a kind of compass for me, a rudder, a bellwether. Bellwether. That's it. As if it's they who lead me toward what I want to become and I am falling behind.

The Best Breath of All

Lift-off is imminent. I've been prepping on the launch pad for two weeks. Tomorrow my life will be commanded entirely by the 10-day run-up to opening day of the event I work for. It's a ceaseless hurtling toward that moment, the home stretch still demanding and startling despite this being my 11th year doing it. I will work for 150 hours or more, frantically hacking off a bit of time here to spend another bit of time somewhere else. This is Hell week. Everything else becomes subordinate to it.

I went to the barn to see Saxony and Scout tonight knowing it would be my last chance. I had to hunt out the time, stalk it, isolate it, and then take it. I took S with me and we met K there. After picking our paddock, we each took a horse, speed-groomed, bridled, put on our helmets and then clambered on bareback.

Oh, that feeling of settling on your horse's back after days away, settling there along that impossibly strong, tensile spine. I can't believe the crap that melts away in me. Forty-five minutes idled past as we drifted up and down, around and through the long outdoor riding arena. We walked, letting gravity seduce our legs long, draping them against the horses' sides. Gambler, Saxony and Scout met each of us halfway; welcoming the easiness of it, they settled into well-strided, forward walks. They sighed and snorted contentedly. Together, we all walked and it was wonderful.

It was like I was buying time, in the best way, buying breath, energy and resolve. We were there for just two and a half hours, but I banked enough time for the next 150, all I need to carry me to opening day.

The Horse as Equal

I never feel equal with people, really never. Less than, more than, better than, worse than - all of that is around people. We hardly recognize that we start from the same place. That recognition has long since been displaced by countless things in life that distance us from ourselves.

It's not like that around horses, though. I feel my horse and I are equal in the moment, whatever that moment may be, whichever horse it may be. I think the species difference is what creates that sense for me. For their powers, the mares are advantaged over me; for mine, I am advantaged over them. Face to face, it all levels out on a being-to-being plane. We are present, and, because we cannot communicate in the same language, we are equalized by our limitations and left able to be only what we are. It's like we're in the same boat for our differences. From there, we interact. I like the bluntness of it, the inescapable immediacy of it. I just don't think you can lie to a horse without lying to yourself. Sometimes it seems I get a better measure of myself from horses than I ever do from humans, even those I love most in the world.

My Sure Sign of Spring

It's not in the eight-inch-deep mud, not in the sun-glinted  sheddings whisked away on the wind, not in the restive bits of play that the horses manage on such clumsy terrain. They are waiting too. They want to run and buck, twist and shift in the herd, have some space to move out wide open in themselves.

Work always defines the seasons for me, so I'm used to my calendar being skewed, out of sync with the year. Even the festival's rhythm has been altered this year, however. The grounds linger in doldrums, waiting to erupt into life. There was snow in the air just the other day, ceaseless rain before and after, all greyness the rest of the while. The park waits, poised to burst.

Sitting at my desk, watching the latest feral cat pace back and forth before my open door, I was thinking of days to come, feeling jittery within, seeming placid without. I should have been working, because this draggy winter has put me behind. We're none of us thinking of the festival yet, not with hail slurring like lava across the freeway. I don't have my game face on, haven't found my preseason war footing.

But today spring returned, carried on the sound of a plane whining in the sky, its engine humming and hesitating, first closer, then far away. It's the acrobat. This is the first day he's gone up to the sky, back after the long winter. I've grown accustomed to his practice, his looping and diving over and over again high in the sky. I listen for him like the sea and hear him all summer, especially in the dog days, practicing with a discipline I can only imagine. I was surprised to hear him today. The pilot is airborne again. Spring must be here to stay.

Mind the Gap

I had the strangest sense of distance from the horses. Last week I went to Philly with H.G. for a few days. We visited friends, the kind of friends it always seems wrong to be separated from, so easily do we come back together. Naturally, given time, conversation inevitably turns to us moving there or them moving here or all of us moving to some Switzerland of our own making. Neutrality offered in the face of the enemies of our dreams, or something like that. Money enough, time enough, space enough, vision enough. Guts enough, too.

Travel like this makes it easy to imagine that other life. Led by the hand through a captivating city, food, drink and shelter provided, all seems easy, all seems possible. I got really drawn into the sales pitch this time, I did. But for a carriage horse here and there, the horses fell away. It's like I imagined my life without them. Not "like." I did. In fact, I imagined my life without my life. No bills, no work, no stresses, because none of that pertains when we are guests in others' lives.

Back we came and on Wednesday I went out to do the P.M. chores. Winter is skulking away, but its tail is long this year and drags in my way. I stepped from one semi-frozen muddy hillock to another, making my way across the dry lots, noting the horses as I went. Bay, dark seal brown, chestnut, light grey, dark bay, black.

I had to tip, scrub and refill the water tanks. I started with the one shared between lots 2 and 3. While I worked, Dark Bay stepped up behind me, lipping at my jacket. Black whirled away from him in impatience. Chestnut and Grey watched me through sleepy eyelids. The tap at tank 2 is slow running. I pumped the handle and settled in to wait. It was peaceful. They were just horses. I knew them, but I wasn't connected to them. Strange. Like I went too far away and returned trapped on another side.

But the environment began to take over. Horses in their world cast a spell on watchers like me. My, my, someone has grown rather portly this winter:

 

She stood whiffling at me, Scout, content in her swaddling, slack-lipped and patient, not as mud-encrusted as she could have been, calling me back.

Postscript: Caring Into The Void

I felt compelled to write an e-mail to John Burns, the author of the article in the New York Times, just after I had read it the other day.

"Thank you for your heartbreaking article about the horses  of Ireland. I can't help but wonder what moved you to write it, when there are so many other points of darkness you might have chosen to illuminate with your words."

And yes, Virginia, it seems reporters sometimes care what readers think, even when they happen to be the London Bureau Chief. He wrote back:

"I saw the horses on that hill from a distance, against that twilight sky, and thought that it was a tragic metaphor for all that has gone in Ireland, for the people AND the horses. And, like all the normal, well-adjusted people I know, I am an animal lover, and feel that we humans owe, before God or Providence, a duty to look after them. I thought writing about them was the least I could do. I shall never forget the skewbald nuzzling her nose against my side in the Arctic wind, as if looking to me as the last court of appeal."

Playing the Work

I've met many horse owners who talk about all the training their horse needs, the work on this, work on that...

(I love this runaway frosting slipping down Saxony's left front leg. I keep finding more Oreo goodness in my mare.)


So lately I've been thinking about whether the "problem-solvingness" part of having a horse consciously (or not) factors into our decision to own one. I think it might play more of a role than we realize, since working with the horse, training the horse, striving to better the horse consists of interacting with the horse, or "communicating." Communication is a primary tool that enables humans to feel connected to others. It's also a two-way street. After infancy, humans quickly learn to speak, but horses don't have that particular tool. I sometimes wonder if, given a chance to hang out and chat with my mares, I'd be able to handle what they said. From my perspective, I'm a good horse owner committed to providing my horses with the best care I can afford. I expect myself to be fair with them at all times. I ride kindly and quietly, despite my nerves. But what about their perspective? Do they know me? Do they think I know them? Do they even care, beyond the comfort they find in routine and familiarity? No matter what I do with them, no matter how much they bloom, they are still separate beings. And what if they were perfect? What would our relationship be then, with nothing left to teach? I suspect the horse can just "be," but that skill often eludes humans.

One of the things I have always made a point to do with my horses is play with them, just go and play together. I don't include riding in that, though I think a nice ride can be fun for both horse and rider. Scout and I devised a chase game early on. I'd stand in the center of the indoor arena, turn Scout loose and challenge her to get past me on the rail, positioning my body as if to cut her off. She delighted in the race every time, blowing by, tail flagged high, snorting. After a few minutes of this, I'd pretend to "lose" her, and go wandering around the arena calling her name. I honestly think she loved sneaking up behind me to bump her nose into my back. Playing seemed to bond us quickly, and I wonder if it was because we enjoyed playing together so much. I know I completely lost myself in playing with her.

Dar had a deep curiosity about tools, vehicles, objects of all kinds. I played with him by offering him things. I'd be using a strainer to sift out hay bits and leaves from the water troughs and I'd splash a little water on his face. He became silly with glee over this. Sometimes I'd lift the dripping strainer and cup his muzzle in it; other times I'd rub it up and down his face. I did a lot of laughing because his responses were so comical and eager. Just like with Scout, I'd forget myself and become completely engaged with Dar and our playing.

I also give nose baths to my horses, and this is the first way I've begun to play with Saxony. My nose bath consists of deep-cleaning the nostrils with non-toxic baby wipes. I add massage along the way, wringing out the edges of the nostrils between my fingers (something along the lines of Linda Tellington's TTouch.) I don't think Saxony ever had a nose bath before I began doing it with her, but now she almost whores herself in pursuit of it. She's ticklish, and what she seeks from the nose bath is the moment when I start to tickle her. She just craves that tickling. It's ridiculous how much time can pass while we do this.

I file this under being with the horse and hoping the horse will be with me. Not to take away from the beautiful achievements that result from harmony between horse and rider, but to remind myself that what exists between us before and after the "work" is what led me to horses in the first place.