Maeve Birch Home

    Category: Uncategorized

    • Excerpt from the Chapter “Rex: Discipline”

      Rex, unfortunately, was impatient with staying still for long while humans did things to him. Some days he would behave perfectly, and others, he wouldn’t want to do anything. Brushing would elicit small kicks of his back legs and rocking away from the brush. Being on cross ties would make him shake his head and…

      Read more: Excerpt from the Chapter “Rex: Discipline”

    • An Opening

      I’ve been busy learning again. It has been a continuous struggle to figure out how to get better at riding horses without compromising on how I want to be in relation to horses. I don’t force a horse to move anymore. It’s so counter to what I’m trying to do in the world that it’s…

      Read more: An Opening

    • Story Snippet: Thoughts on the Herd

      You ask how the horses are. I tell you they’re fine. I brushed Spruce. I was able to stand next to Red today. I speak in terns of progress. Activity. I haven’t told you how peaceful it felt as the cuddly one kept nodding asleep with his nose pressed into my jacket. I haven’t told…

      Read more: Story Snippet: Thoughts on the Herd

    • Traveling Around

      The book and I are on vacation this week, wandering through the Appalachian mountains again. I took along a few copies to drop off in various places. If you see my book in the wild, it may be that I left it in a coffee shop somewhere! It feels good to have some time off…

      Read more: Traveling Around

    • The Freedom of Waiting

      We are paused in the doorway again, the tall nervous horse and I. I’ve pulled him through this opening before. Not this time. He widens his eyes and holds his breath, waiting for something to happen, since things always seem to happen in doorways. Instead, we wait. It’s seen as a sign of weakness, me…

      Read more: The Freedom of Waiting

    • Story Snippets: Flora

      I barely mentioned Flora, the oldest mare at the rescue, in my memoir. Though I didn’t work with her often, Flora was a wonderful dark bay with a generally pleasant personality, aside from a few quirks. She had a terrible fear of clippers, whips, and fly masks, and grumpyness about picking her feet up. She…

      Read more: Story Snippets: Flora

    • Story Snippets: Beating the Rain

      I thought I might make the next few blog posts some small story snippets from my time in Field Board that didn’t quite make it into the memoir. The first is a visit to Red’s field during the early summer, right about this time of year four years ago. I was standing out in the…

      Read more: Story Snippets: Beating the Rain

    • Guilt and Smoke

      The past two days have been full of wildfire smoke here on the east coast of the US. What at first seemed like a weird orange sunrise turned into an all-day warning to stay indoors and watch through closed windows as the neighborhood was enveloped in a thick haze. Horses, unfortunately, didn’t have the option…

      Read more: Guilt and Smoke

    • Something Else

      My mentor and I talk pretty freely with each other at this point about the various energetic and “supernatural” things we encounter in our day to day lives. Part of an animistic worldview is that non-physical spirits are about as common as physical ones, just sort of overlayed on top of the physical, most of…

      Read more: Something Else

    • Ponderings

      Things have been really chaotic on all fronts this week, so this blog post may be a bit scattered. Things at work made me realize over again that not everyone is going to like me. Sometimes it’s not for any good reason. Just as I can clash with someone else’s personality, so they can clash…

      Read more: Ponderings