Equuality: Reflections on Life with Horses

Preface

The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination. -Don Williams, Jr.

Life with horses is not easy, but neither is life without them. So, we make the choice of which difficult life to lead.

Each and every day, I am rewarded for choosing a life with horses. Some day those rewards aren't apparent in the moment. However, I find that that even the hard days, when seen in retrospect, are filled with blessings of their own. I believe this is true in any life, but I enjoy blessing with hooves and manes, so I have chosen the path of the horseman.

In many ways, the previous statement isn't true. In many ways, the path of the horseman has chosen me. I did not grow up on a ranch. Nor did I have years of riding lessons as a child, or a grandfather that whispered to horses. Instead, I fell in love with a girl who was already in love with horses.

To my great fortune, she infected me with that love as well. It feels now as if there was never really a choice to be made. Not for fear of losing the girl, but because the horses became a part of me long before I knew it had happened. Sometimes I think that they've always been a part of each of us and that they've just been waiting for those of us who are late in realizing.

While much of the horse world focuses on training horses to compete in our modern equestrian disciplines, it is my belief that we have as much to learn from horses as they do from us, and that none of those lessons have anything to do with sliding stops, jumping, or half-pass. I have found that horses, as fellow sentient travelers, have a lot to teach me about the journey of life.

This is teaching in the sense of education, from the latin educare, meaning "to draw out." In my daily horsemanship practice, I find both my best and worst parts arising, along with everything in between. Through this process of drawing out, horses give me an opportunity to reflect on myself and my relationships with the world around me in a way that allows me to synthesize and be open, rather than becoming defensive and withdrawn.

When I began writing the essays that make up this volume, I did not set out with the intention of writing a book. I simply felt the need to process the lessons I was learning through the written word. So I wrote one day, then the next, and then the one after. Soon I had been writing for a week, then a month. This process continued, sometimes as an activity of leisure, sometimes with the feeling of a chore, and sometimes with an intensity I can't explain. The words piled up, demanding to be shared.

Thus, somehow my process of exploration became this book. As I look back through what I've written, I find I wouldn't write the same thing today. At first, I found this duplicity troubling. Then I realized that of course it would be so. I am not the same person who did that writing. I have continued to live, and thus have continued to change, to be born anew in each moment.

So, aside from some minor editing for grammar and clarity, and some reordering for the sake of flow, you will find the following essays essentially how I originally wrote them. It is not my intention to spread The Truth, or to try and guide you on your path, bur rather to share my experiences because I think that we were created to share ourselves as freely and openly as we can.

Simply, I present these essays as a record of my process, a record of living a life with horses.