My life has been barely controlled chaos for the past few weeks, but it now seems to be giving me enough of a breather that I’m able to form coherent thoughts. Thoughts of things that I’d never considered in horse/human relationships before, because it’d never been so glaring.
Mildly stealing from the title of a new sci-fi film I’m eager to go see, there is a Third Body in our mutual orbits. The horse and human were the ones I concerned myself with for years. Yet horses are heavily influenced by the third entity. The land. Whether through ingesting grasses, finding shelter from the prevailing winds, or traveling across it, horses are in constant contact with this third entity. As humans, sometimes we forget.
I was starkly reminded of this by the land at this newly established boarding location. It was absolutely uncooperative with what we as horse owners and leasers were trying to force upon it. The initial setup, flat grass paddocks at the bottom of a slope, meant clay soil threatened to turn to slippery mush and deep sucking mud with too much horse traffic in too small an area. It’s temporarily solved by keeping the horses in stalls when it rains, but then the horses show the typical behavior problems that crop up with confinement. They become stressed with pent-up energy and boredom. The alternative is an unkempt wetland bordered by hills full of saplings and dense brush, punctuated by small meadows of native grasses. We’re still in the middle of figuring out ways to preserve the wetland while still giving the horses a better environment to thrive in. We’ll see if things work out the way I hope it will. The land has its own opinions on things, just as the horses do. Forcing it might work, if we had enough resources and heavy equipment. However, it would break the land. It would never be the same, and the area would cease to act as a filter and a buffer for the water. Already the entrance to the property, downstream from the marsh, becomes flooded in heavy rains. Damaging the bottomlands would turn it into a deluge. So we stand and breathe. We find the deer path through the dry areas that we wouldn’t have seen without stillness. We test. “What is your response when we do this? What about this?” Operating within the boundaries of what the land can handle is, frankly, odd in our society. Just like allowing horses to disobey is odd. Just like allowing ourselves to feel is odd. To exist mindful of the non-human partners, instead of using them as a backdrop for our own story is something that I’m still continually growing into. It’s a necessary, but sometimes difficult, shift.
For more on the beginnings of my time with horses, check out my memoir, Standing in a Field With Horses. It’s available from Amazon, Smashwords, and several other book vendors.
Maeve Birch Home 