Finding Equuleus
Knowing how to know
I can trace horses back to my childhood at Hoofbeat Ridge in Mazomanie, Wisconsin where I took a bus to an afterschool riding program and slept over in their bunkhouses for weeks of summer camp. There are traces in Germany, when I stayed with my Oma in her town, the reiterstadt Verden an der Aller in Lower Saxony and took lessons that were bareback calisthenics in vaulting, spinning and balancing. And in the branches of my family tree—the Hemingways in Iowa raised Percherons for farming long before tractors replaced draft horses.
But sometime in my early teens I drifted away from horse barns towards the gyms and playing fields. I did team sports—volleyball, and basketball. Because I was a fast runner, I focused on running as fast as I could. I hurdled hurdles, passed batons, jumped long, high and threw things like the javelin. I won awards for my high school. I set records and got my picture in the local newspapers. I was the girl to beat, a big fish in a little pond until it all fell apart because I didn’t know what to do with any of it.
Now after considerable reflection and reconciliation I better understand my natural talents and the inclinations that made me good at running fast. I get now that I’ve always been like a horse. That I’m still like a horse and that I have a nervous system like a horse. Horses are prey animals, I’m built like a prey animal. They are herd animals, I’m a herd animal. A horse will kick down fencing, break out of their tack, fight and run away when threatened by a predator. I too will kick down fencing, spit out my bit, fight, run away (or freeze and fawn) when threatened by a predator. (In humans—the most violent, aggressive predators stalking the earth—this gets expressed in every way from language to behavior.) See what I mean?
It took some life and death shit for me to understand my nervous system and the ways it’s impacted my life and relationships. Though I don’t run as fast as I used to—at least now I understand what I was running from. Turns out, thanks to some hard earned hag wisdom, I’m more of a slow and steady horse these days.
Whenever I’ve had a tough go, I always found my way back to a horse barn. Like around ‘07-09 when my father was dying, a friend asked if I’d clean stalls and exercise her horse by riding him on the trails on Martha’s Vineyard. The year before I moved off my island home after 25 years, another friend gave me a birthday ride on her trusted steed, Theo. Though by that time, around ‘17, I’d lost much of my confidence in the saddle and the belief that horses would ever become a substantial part of my life. Then in ‘21 after my gut broke and I had an emergency colostomy, I was stumbling through healing post surgeries with a hefty side order of medical trauma when I found my way back to another horse barn that specializes in therapeutic riding lessons. It was there when I began again but on the ground, quietly grooming a horse for my weekly lesson for a long while, as I got reacquainted with horses, with fear and love, myself with myself. It’s a work in progress.
Now that I’m blessedly in my sixth decade of life, we’ve a horse barn and two horses who live with us, honored by a truest of friends. Cole and Rusty are besties. They live a kind of feral life, as do I. They have shelter, should they want it, as do I. They graze, rest and roll in the grass and mud, co-existing with the sheep and the dogs, as do I, and they poop by the old apple trees. With ravens above, barefoot they lope or saunter safely around within the boundaries of their fence line, whinnying as they go, as they want, as do I.
The horsewomen in my life are like the stars of the constellation Equuleus. They are who I navigate life with, by and by, through the darkest of nights and brightest of days. There’s the teamster. The dressage showman, teacher, the barn boss. The acupuncturist, the retired jockey, herders, the queen, mountain guides, the tarotist, the forester, artists, poets, the potter, the fermenter, the model, equine therapists. The wranglers, storytellers, the friends. For the rest of my time I’m dedicated to learning the language of Horse they’re proficient in in their own myriad of ways of knowing, beauty and adventure.
My hips may be stiff, pelvic bowl weakened but getting stronger, my wonder, joy and creative life are thriving. I still stumble some, I laugh more and have a good amount of afraid. But it’s an interesting kind of fear—not the steely kind of fear provoked by predators. Horses don’t suffer predators, nor do I anymore. This is the practice: knowing how to know.1
Thanks for reading. I’m so glad we’re here together.
~ Alice
Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism by Anonymous
So eloquently put, Alice. Thank you for sharing with us 🫶
Alice you're my hero.