Friday, January 2, 2009

Horse time

What is it about horse time? I love to be with other riders, love to be on a big trail ride, but I embrace love those moments when I'm completely alone with a horse.

I think it's because most of my life I'm multi tasking. If I don't have to be doing multiple things, I can stop from thinking on multiple tracks.

But that disappears when I'm in horse time. I am present, only present. Everything outside the circle recedes, sounds get muted, my thoughts streamline.

It's a ridiculous luxury in this world, an extravagance of time and place and spirit. For hours afterwards the joy of the indulgence lingers and I count the time until it'll be horse time again.

I'm beginning, slowly, to bring the lessons of horse time into my time. But I still have these things to learn:

  1. Ease back on the self imposed pressure. Take it easy on yourself.
  2. Be here, now. With kids, with my loving husband, with my work. Stop thinking ahead at the cost of this moment. And stop rehashing the past.
  3. Let go. The lesson is in the release.
  4. Respect is earned everyday and easily lost.

For the next few weeks I'm going to try to take each one of these lessons one at a time and find a way to bring horse time into my life.

Wish me luck.


Canyon, contemplating the empty hay rack in a very zen sort of way. With that hay belly, all you should do is contemplate, little buddha...

6 comments:

Grey Horse Matters said...

All good sentiments to work on. Horse time is the best time. Horses know only how to live in the present and that is something we should all aspire to, we'd all be better off.

jacksonsgrrl said...

Hey there! I'm in San Antonio! I like your blog! Check me out...Just thought I'd say Hello!
--Mindy

Unknown said...

Grey - I'm with you. My horse - as crazy as he can be - saved my sanity in 2008. Maybe he can help me on my life journey to be a better person.

If he doesn't freak out. :D

Jacksongrrl - Hey! A local! We need to hook up for a ride. Do you ever head out to Guadalupe (I've actually gone there WITHOUT losing my horse .. it's a long story). Hope we can get together a group of grrls for a ride out...

GNH said...

I think its more than getting away from multi-tasking or the hectic nature of day to day life. "Horse time" is about getting back to nature. For me it feels like being complete and in tune with the natural world. One of my favorite things to do is either ride my horse Wishes alone in the wilderness or walk my dogs in the mountains, either way it helps me get back in touch with nature.

lytha said...

Privacy with a horse is such a rare thing for me now. Just tonight, I carried the 4 feed buckets to the horses, and a lady and her toddler, who were just finishing up their playtime in the snow, saw me, and changed their minds. They followed me and I heard her say, "It's FEEDTIME for the HORSES!" and I thought, "Oh here we go."

She took her toddler to the fenceline as I whistled, and then it must have been something out of National Geographic.

The horses rose from their natural habitat of snowy meadow, and came placidly to the fenceling where a human was dumping their rations onto the snow. The camera pans left to one horse, hesitating for fear of the meanies' hooves and teeth.

The human calls to the woolly beast, who finally approaches and buries his nose in her bucket.

The child yelled "Vee vee" a few times (That's the sound a horse makes in German).

I dumped the rest of the food onto the snow, said bye, and left them rapt, unblinking as they watched the documentary before them.

Good grief, I can't do anything without an audience.

*pout*

~lytha in Germany, anxious to move into her own place in March, where there will be no audience (Lord willin' and the creek don' rise..)

Unknown said...

Lytha - ROFL! Think of it as infecting a child with the horse crazy disease. May she never recover.