When Two Became One

My horse’s feet no longer touched the ground. She no longer had feet or legs. We floated over the powdery sand as we responded to the ringmaster’s instructions. The noisy crowd, the dusty arena, the other horses and riders, all disappeared. We were in a peaceful, featureless place, like riding in clouds in the sky, a universe where boundaries intermingled, merged, and dissolved. The horse and I were one, in thought, in action, in being. My intent became her only commands as we responded to the ringmaster’s instructions without consciously hearing them. I felt my heart open to bliss and expand beyond measure.

It felt timeless, yet it ended. As the ringmaster called the riders to line up in the center of the arena for the announcement of the winners I came back, gradually growing aware of the voices of the crowd, the jingling bits, the snorting horses and the muffled shuffling of their feet stirring up the tan dust. I nudged my mare into line, feeling a bit dazed and bewildered but wonderfully relaxed and calm. Even my horse was uncommonly serene and quiet, standing square and still where I positioned her. There was none of the excited dancing that usually accompanied a sudden end to our activity.

While my Thoroughbred-type mare was a sweet-natured horse, she was young, energetic, sensitive and not easy to ride. She definitely was not a “pushbutton” horse and not the usual type for a moderately green rider like I was. On the day I went to try out some potential new horses, I first tried an easy gelding that “anyone could ride.” It was a disaster.

Finally I tried this mare that everybody agreed “was a handful,” but she was all there was left to look at. My riding instructor was surprised at how well we appeared to work together and we struck a deal. That was pretty much the last time we worked smoothly together. We had many instances of frustration that greatly upset us both. We just couldn’t seem to get it together. To call our performances rough is exceptionally kind.

After our remarkable experience, though, and, I suspect, because of it, with a lot of hard work and sweat, we learned much from each other. I discovered patience and self-control and trust; she learned trust, self-confidence and calmness. Now when we made mistakes, she was forgiving if it was my fault and she seemed to understand when it was her fault. Then we’d try again.

During the 20 years we were to be together, we developed an interdependence and affection that’s hard to describe. I’ve never shared anything with any other living being, human or not, like what I had with her. There was a special knowing, an understanding that surpassed understanding.

One fine day I was standing with my arms up around her neck, just quietly resting my head on her firm, muscular shoulder. I had my eyes closed and was thinking of nothing, just appreciating the solid warmth of her presence. Suddenly my eyes popped open as I realized she’d wrapped her long neck around me and was hugging me back! You haven’t been hugged until you’ve been hugged by a horse.

Anyway, the episode mentioned earlier occurred during a local horse show that we entered about 40 years ago now. It was a typical Texas summer day, bright, stiflingly hot, humid, and dusty. The guest judge was a woman known nationally for her strictness and tough requirements and I was eager to ride for her. I hoped for a different perspective than the usual round of local judges provided.

Nevertheless, even before the competition my horse and I were already showing our awkwardness in the warm-up ring. Almost nothing was going right. There seemed to be no way we could work together. I demanded, she refused. I insisted, she resisted. On this soon-to-be-incredible day I was beginning to panic. I couldn’t take her into the performance ring behaving like this.

Hoping to take the edge off our nervousness, I took her behind the show arena to a deserted lane overgrown with tall, sere grass that stretched away up a low slope for half a mile or so and I set her into her ground-eating canter. This was one thing we could do well together. She was a Thoroughbred and born to run.

We burned off the adrenaline that was causing our jitters but my timing to return to the arena was off. The last of our group had already entered the ring and the gate was beginning to close.

To add to my abruptly revived anxiety, several hecklers who thought my English style of riding was amusingly ridiculous decided to make sport of us and blocked our way through the arena alley-way with their quarter horses. This was Texas, after all, the land of big saddles and short horses.

I quickly saw reasoning with them wasn’t working so I desperately plunged my heels into my mare’s sides. She surged forward.  Our harassers and their short horses parted like water before the prow of a speedboat. She was a very big horse.

The gate had nearly closed when we thundered through it at a strong trot. My horse’s neck was arched, her head held proudly, and her strength evident. We were a great contrast to the riders already in the ring. They plodded along, their horses in a lazy, loose-reined, heads-down walk. They seemed to be peering nearsightedly at the puffs of dust blurring the outlines of the feet of the horse ahead of them. We, on the other hand, probably gave the impression of lightly and barely controlled power but I didn’t think of that then. All I knew was that I saw the judge’s head whip around toward us and her eyes lock onto us. We were “different.”

I tried to tone down our action, blend in with the others, not realizing the contradiction in my behavior. After all, the whole point of a horse show is standing out from the crowd, in a good way. But every time I’d sneak a peek at her, the judge’s eyes were boring tunnels at us through the choking clouds of rising dust. She never relented. As she put us through our paces, I gave up. I simply rode. No longer trying to impress her, I just practiced the things I knew to do but wasn’t always able to, like keeping a light touch on the reins and sitting properly and quietly in the saddle. I quit worrying about whether my horse would “do the right thing” and just concentrated on being the best rider I knew how to be. As for my horse, I just let her be her; she was responsible for her part of the deal.

Since I was nearing 30, I’d come late to learning to ride and it wasn’t uncommon for the more experienced local teenagers to outperform me. One 17-year-old girl in particular nearly always took first place. It was practically a forgone conclusion. She and her big gray horse seemed nearly perfect.

I, on the other hand, could look forward to maybe a fourth place or even a third, if I were lucky and not all of the usual riders showed up. My primary interest was in seeing if I’d improved from show to show. Moving from sixth place to fifth to fourth, etc., was very gratifying. And it was all about I, I, I. My horse was definitely the lesser part of the equation even though common sense should have told me I couldn’t do it without her. I had a lot to learn.

Then, on this unusual day, we took first place. I wasn’t elated or even surprised as I walked my horse forward to receive the trophy and congratulations from the judge. I was a bit surprised that I wasn’t surprised and I even felt vaguely guilty about not being surprised. I hadn’t yet fully recovered from our Experience.

All I felt was a serene sense of rightness. We deserved this.

A few moments after all the awards had been made we were just sitting off to the side, not yet moving out to make way for the next class. I was holding my trophy and ribbon unaware that I held them, still dazed.

The 17-year-old wunderkind rode up to me and rather than congratulating me as I half expected she was going to do, she simply said sharply, “I didn’t ride worth shit today.” Then, before I could think of a reply, she jerked her horse’s head around and, with a forceful kick to her horse, she shot off trailing a cloud of dust.

Although her inelegant remark took me by surprise, I lowered my eyes and tried to hide my grin. I knew that she’d probably ridden as well as or better than she usually did. It simply wouldn’t have mattered. Our perfect Oneness hadn’t been just in my mind; others had seen it, too.

If we’d not even placed, though, I wouldn’t have cared. Our ride had been its own reward. For that perfect moment there had been no time, no effort, no dust, no heat, no other horses and riders. I was about to say, “There was only the two of us,” but that’s wrong; there was only the One of us. And Bliss.

It was my first experience of, not only my own soul, but the soul of another being, of the Soul of the Universe. It never happened that way again but everything changed after that. I never forgot it and, I guess, my mare didn’t either.

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