Six times a month I drive across the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico, heading northeast, to ride and train horses on a few thousand-acre ranch. People call it mesa country, where, on a wet year, the tall grasslands sprawl in every direction. I stay at the ranch for three to four days at a time, depending on how the horses are doing. When I’m there, I speak with no one except the horses. They rarely make a sound. Their entire language is movement. The days on the ranch are long, quiet days. No cell phones. No Internet. Bluebirds lightly prop themselves on barbed wire fences, tall native grasses squeak against each other in the wind, the
occasional call of a far-off cow: these are the signs and sounds which fill my days. Cow elks call to their young from on top the mesa as I saddle my last horse for the day. I have the overwhelming sensation that the day is made up of light, not time. In the mornings I bring the horses in from their pastures to groom and clean their hooves. There is nothing but breath in the barn. A deep, blowing, wet breath that drips from their resting nostrils. Hind legs are cocked. Half-asleep warm bodies, with ears that flick in circles, follow me as I rotate from side to side, getting each horse cleaned and ready for saddle. Each horse has a story to tell. It comes in waves of emotions which pulse through my seat once I swing up. The feeling tingles up through my spine, then sits heavy in my chest. Taking deep breaths, I try to listen. As I ride the horses across the fields, heading to the steep road that leads to the top of the mesa, they tell the stories of the humans who have come before me. The other riders and the worlds they carry in their bodies. Their sorrows, their naughty humor, the constant feeling of urgency and anxiety. The basic stories of our basic lives. I had to ride horses for many years before I could hear their stories. A teacher once asked me what I was feeling as I rode another woman’s horse around the arena trying to help calm him down. “I feel like he can’t breathe,” I told my teacher. “Why?” he asked back. I circled the arena twice, silent and focused. “Because no one listens to him,” I said, and my teacher shook his head, yes. Trauma halts the flow of time. Listening to the stories horses tell is similar to the way it feels to shake someone’s hand who really doesn’t want to touch you. It’s cold, or it’s sweaty. They barely squeeze, pulling back quicker then they reach out. Or like a hug that comes in at the top of my collar bone but never touches my chest, my belly. It’s a physical story. The body takes the shape of words. When I’m not here working on this high-altitude ranch in northern New Mexico, I work with troubled people and their horses at a prison re-sentencing ranch a few miles south of my home, along the Rio Grande. Six years ago, when I started working at the prison, the horses looked and acted a lot like the 100 or so residents living there — pissed off. They lifted their lips and bared their teeth if you approached while they were eating. They chased and then knocked the residents to the ground as they brought out the trash after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Running off with a crusty old loaf of Wonder Bread hanging from their mouths.
Trapped on a 17-acre ranch, surrounded by 12-foot adobe walls with razor wire along its top — these horses had become aggressive, defensive, abandoned, and captured. They were the exact mirror of the two-legged life that surrounded them. The stories of the residents became lodged inside the bodies of the horses. The residents’ stories get stuck in my body too. I find myself carrying them around. They sneak up on me and the next thing I know, I’m having a silent conversation with them in my car when I’m driving to town. Or when I lay down at night to try and sleep, there they are, their stories becoming movies inside my head. Trauma halts the flow of time. It takes one minute and makes it the rest of your life. It sits in the body like a heavy boulder: unmovable, stagnant, crippling. Trauma tells the same story, over and over again. A person repeating herself to everyone she knows. Does she not remember she has already told me this? I wonder to myself, when I speak with one of my clients at the prison. No. It is brand-new to her each time she tells it. That is the stranglehold trauma has on time. The horses on this high mesa ranch live in the present. Their gift of sight takes in each tiny movement of everything and everyone around them. They have no sense of time. Everything exists in an eternal rolling moment. They don’t know about beginnings and endings. Their whole life is one moment following the next. There is no rushing toward it. There is no running away. There is no fretting over what might happen, or frustration over missed opportunity. These horses exist in a permanent state of existential satisfaction. “When you ride on another animal’s body,” I tell my clients back at the prison, “when you make the decision to leave the ground, leave the knowledge of your feet behind, you have two choices: try to control the power you are sitting on, or try to become that power. And the only way to be the latter is to follow them.” I ask them to pay attention to their horses. Try to become them. Let the moment move — don’t try to control it, or hold it, or define it. Up on the mesa the ranch horses know every detail about their land. They are born into these winters, these winds that gust up to 70 miles per hour. They know the sound of wild turkeys in the bushes way before I can ever detect them. They hear rattlers when I hear nothing but a low
buzz. They know where the red tail hawks will perch and eat their prey, dropping body parts of lizards as we walk under the branches. They have seen the kingfisher and night heron swoop across the creek as we splash through, heading on our hour-long ride down from the mesa. Every ride, every day that I am up at this ranch, the ranch horses see the same characters, feel the same wind come across the grasses. The only thing they need from me is to try and notice it all with them. Otherwise, I’m just putting on the brakes. I’m just in the way. “Hold onto their manes, not the reins,” I tell my clients. I ask them to lean over their horse’s neck and see the world from their point of view. Blow out an audible sigh, I tell them, then listen for the horse to blow out too. Notice how everything has movement. How everything has language. Listen for the pine cones drop from the treetops, as the busy ground squirrels hustle to get their meals ready for winter. Watch the tri-colored clouds fly east, telling us rain or snow is coming. Everything rustles then, everything is still. But what I want to tell my clients the most, something I know I won’t say, is that nothing can halt the flow of time for them, not ever again. Instead, I’ll leave it to these horses to help them remember.
Centaur
A dozen residents are haltering the horses near the pipe corral railing that runs a seventy- foot distance, east to west, and fits neatly between two old cottonwood trees. A large water trough sits at the east end of the railing, a shiny, steel beacon planted right in front of the ancient tree. The horses come here throughout the day to rest and drink in the abundant shade. They huddle together in tight groups to swat off the gnats, flies, and mosquitoes that bite and cling to their chest, ears, and muzzles. To the south of the railing is the bright green twelve-acre pasture where they spend most of their days, heads down, teeth grinding side to side, ears flicking back and forth. There are no fence lines to contain them except the twelve-foot high, razor wire topped, adobe wall that enforces the seventeen-acre perimeter of this prison. The horses are free to roam off the pasture and into the wood shop or the automotive shop or over to the big warehouse that stores all the new clothing, shoes, and bed linens for the ranch. The residents greet them daily, invite them in, help knock off the flies, then leave them to stand in the coolness of the buildings, hind legs cocked, taking their stand-up naps. The boundaries between animal and human are thin here.
The horses are all gathered, standing attentive and perpendicular to the rail, with their lead lines looped loosely around the three-inch metal bar. Each resident has a brush in one hand and a curry comb in the other. The sound of horse hair brushes swooshing across necks and spines whispers into the air.
Tony is standing back from the group, his legs spread wide, hands on his hips. He looks ready to get into it with someone. I ask him, “What’s up?”
“Oh, you know, it’s Sarah and Fred fighting over Scout again. Two fucking babies. They’re gonna get us all in trouble, you watch.”
I look past Tony, down to the end of the rail. Fred is on the right side of Scout, combing his mane. Sarah is on his left side combing his tail. They both hold a low-slung pout on their lips. Their shoulders roll forward and down, hunching their backs into the shape of tortoise shells. Fred is thirty-six, Sarah forty-five. For some reason they’re both obsessed with Scout – a fourteen-year-old brown and white spotted Tennessee Walking horse gelding who has his own issues with neurotic and obsessive behaviors.
“I’m fucking tired of it, we all are. They need to grow the fuck up,” Tony says.
Angie comes over and stands next to me. Tony can be volatile and she wants to stop him before his mania gets started.
“I’ll handle it Angie,” I say to her. “Watch yourself, Tony. You’re getting too involved. Focus on Luna. She needs your attention. How’s her face healing?”
“She’s good.”
Luna’s injury is why I’m here. She fractured her face on an overhanging shelter beam three months ago, and no one could catch her. The residents chased her into the corrals and round pen. They pinned her into the corner between the hay barn and the chicken coop, where she knocked Tony backwards and ran for safety into the fenceless pasture. The veterinarian came out but couldn’t treat her. Instead he left them my number, which, as a result is now stapled to the tack room door.
“You’ve done a great job with her, Tony.” But Tony’s no longer listening to me. He’s finished grooming Luna and seems to have settled. He walks back over to the grooming box and drops his brushes.
Some days the residents are spooky silent, and other days they’re full of chatter and chaos. Rarely a day goes by where someone hasn’t broken a rule, gotten in a fight, or had an outburst or some other infraction, and usually that person brings a whole group of other residents down with them. Those troubled days are the silent days. No one wants to talk. They keep to themselves, move slowly around the horses, grooming each horse with steady attention to detail. First the face, down the neck, over the front legs, then back up to the chest. Short repeated strokes, over and over. They brush the same small corner of their horse’s body like they are staring into a mirror, wondering how the hell they will ever learn to take care of themselves.
As Tony and all the others finish their grooming, I give them instructions for the afternoon: what horses they will be working with and the skills I want each of them to focus on. Everyone is listening. They ask a few questions, and then fan out with their horses into the pasture to get to work. They spread themselves out wide, trying to claim what there is so little of here – privacy.
I know they need their space, but I also know that not one of them is ready to be on their own with these horses. If they lose their focus, even for one second, the horses will take advantage of the lapse. These horses are hypervigilant. They need only one moment, one second of misunderstanding, and they’ll launch to assert or defend themselves. They’ve seen hundreds of residents come and go from this ranch. Learning to trust, to give themselves over to a human, this is not an option. If we can prove ourselves worthy to them, moment by moment, that’s the best we can do. They are the teachers. They keep us present, keen, concentrating. They keep us alive.
Most of the initial fear of the horses has finally turned toward a semblance of respect. It’s a good first step toward building the kind of relationship few of the residents have ever had. But these horses still demand clear and honest communication above all else. If anyone chooses to play around with that first and most important rule, the horses will swing a sideways kick in their direction, open their teeth and lunge toward them, stomp their hooves onto shoes and shove the residents down to the ground, using their broad chest and shoulder muscles against narrow human frames. Humans own no hierarchy here. We play a demanding game of focus and precision. One mental lapse and we’re out. Even I have no exemption. In my twenty-five years of horse training, I’ve never met horses so determined to hang onto their dominion.
So I watch everyone carefully on this silent day, keep them all in my sight and step in where I am needed for a teaching moment. Then I leave them alone to work things out.
I make the decision to assign Scout to Sarah for the day. It pisses Fred off, but he holds it together, standing over by the water tank, staring at the ground. Fred, like all the residents, has his demons. A fiery ball of red hot anger punches just beneath his skin. When he comes close to exploding, he removes himself from the group. He walks over to Willie’s gate and grabs hold of it with both arms straight out in front, rocking his body back and forth. His long, sighing exhales make my heart drop down to my gut.
“Fred.”
“Yeah, Miss Ginger.”
“You’re working with Moo today. You can go get him from my trailer and take him to the round pen.”
Every day I haul Moo over with me. He’s my anchor, my horse of choice for anyone who may be struggling and stuck in a funk. Moo’s a solid equine citizen. He’ll do no harm, and often he helps build up any loss of confidence a resident may be having.
“Will do Miss Ginger. Hey, Miss Ginger, did you know? I got all the horses up today. Groomed them all before anyone else got here.”
For whatever reason, Fred makes shit up.
“Where’s Moo? Did you bring his saddle? Can I ride today? On Sunday I worked with Willie, did all the ground work. Tony helped me. I think I’m ready. Yeah, I’m ready. Think I can ride today? Where’s Moo?”
I point at my trailer.
Fred was the background noise to which we had all become accustomed, a blustery repetition of mostly nonsense filling the air. I keep an eye on the residents and horses in the pasture as they work their skills, while Fred fires off his questions and comments without ever looking up or taking a single step. It’s as if these verbal calisthenics are his form of a physical activity. Even when I’m fast enough to slide in a few answers to his endless barrage of questions, it doesn’t make a difference. Fred doesn’t listen.
“I don’t know, Fred, if today’s a good day for riding. You still need to get your groundwork skills, and when you get those skills…”
“No, no. I got ‘em. I got ‘em, Miss Ginger. Wait till you see me. I’m ahead of the game. I can ride. I’m ready. I’m not afraid of these horses.”
Fred’s world: that’s what we call it. As each resident becomes more and more skilled with the horses, Fred lags behind. He’s a child in a giant man’s body. Everything I teach him is up for re-interpretation. He’s a man floating in his own bowl, with minimal awareness of anyone around him. Fred holds onto a fierce denial of his fear around the horses. He’s terrified of them, and it’s obvious to everyone around him. He armors himself with arrogance and a fake bravado, and most of the other residents just keep their distance.
He is big but not strong. Illiterate yet boastful in his GED class. Hardworking but completely unskilled. Artificially confident, selfish, angry, disruptive and fundamentally fractured. And he is loud, overweight and clumsy. He’s broad across his shoulders, top heavy. He waddles instead of walks. He speaks a goofy style of street-gang slang, and he pops up and down off his toes when standing in place, always pumping his arms downward in time with the upward gyration of his legs.
He’s a wreck waiting to happen. But he loves, loves, loves the horses. Two months ago, he put himself on a diet proclaiming himself a vegetarian. He knows that his over-weight body is an obstacle, a teetering, cumbersome mass that could keep him from being able to mount up and ride.
The only horse I truly felt safe enough to let him work with was Moo. Moo, I knew, would not flat out kill him, which was the fear I held for Fred whenever he worked with the ranch horses.
“Here we go, Moo,” Fred scrambles the lead line around his arms.
“Slow down, Fred. Loosen the rope, be careful not to…” He’s not listening.
“Watch out. I got this thing.”
“Fred, be careful, you’re getting too close to the trailer. Fred!”
“Hey, yeah, yeah. I got it.” He’s bouncing up and down in place.
“Fred, listen to me. That’s not what I want you to do.”
“No, no, no. Wait, wait, wait a minute.” He ignores me and goes off on a rant with Moo.
“Dude, listen up. Come over here. I got it. I got it! Cool. See that? Did you see that? Did any of you see that?”
Fred is screaming. His face all flushed, the color of pinkish mud. His mouth is wide open and in the shape of a childhood howl.
No one looks his way. No one except Moo. Moo finds Fred absolutely interesting. He is mesmerized by Fred in such a way I have rarely seen before. Moo, for all his many great attributes, loves to check out from reality. I call him my Dreamer. He likes being gone more than he likes being here. He has a higher calling. When coyotes and bobcats prowl his pasture, when forty- mile-an-hour winds blow his mane and tail sideways, when blizzards white out his entire vision, Moo stands stoic and perfectly still, peering into the portal of a different world. But with Fred Moo is all ears, animated eyes, his hooves adjusting to keep up with Fred’s constant motion in one place. Fred is a quirk of nature and Moo finds him most fascinating.
“Miss Ginger, Miss Ginger, Miss Ginger. How ‘bout we ride today? I gotta ride today I’m feeling it.”
Why anyone wants to ride horses when they are clearly scared shitless has always been an interest of mine. It is the kind of fear that is mixed with a deep knowing, a profound need to be close to the power of an animal. It can chew a person up and spit them out much weaker. Some people make it through, but so many more are left stranded and starving.
Fred’s fear is housed in a complete and mindless denial, all the while demanding I let him ride. Though I have my hesitations, I decide to put my trust in Moo.
“Okay Fred, if you show me your round pen work, if you can perform all the turns with Moo – stop him on cue, back him up – then I’ll consider the riding thing. But first you have to prove to me you have the skills.”
“I got it. I got it! I’ll make you a believer. You’ll be singing my praises. Watch me.”
We walk over to the round pen that sits on the edge of the twelve-acre pasture, just east of the farm road that splits the ranch property in half. The rest of the livestock crew is still spread around the field, each working with a horse and holding to their focus. From where I am positioned, I can keep them in my periphery while I work with Fred. Working horses all these years has given me a well-honed ability to scan for and detect problems quickly.
Fred practices all his round pen skills in a bizarre but exact sequence. First, he puts Moo inside the circle of the round pen; Fred standing like a post in the center. Then he raises one of his arms out to the side, straight as an arrow, and announces in a booming, affirmative voice: “TROT, MOO.” Moo has no idea what Fred is saying, but he reads Fred’s body language as clearly as a flashing neon traffic sign. Moo takes off at a trot into the direction of Fred’s pointed arrow. Fred stands like a statue with his arm-pointing dramatics and then, out of nowhere, he drops his arm quick to his side and raises his opposite arm with the precision of a traffic cop. “TURN, MOO.” Moo pivots and heads off at a trot in the opposite direction. Back and forth they go, with Fred’s long arrows coming up and down, until Fred decides to bring both arms up to his shoulders, then drop them fast and hard to his waist, army style, tuck his chin to his chest, blow his neck out like a tom turkey, and confidently announce, “HO, MOO.” Moo screeches to a halt, their two large male bodies in complete agreement with one another.
The truth is, Moo knows the round pen work by heart. He has spent years learning all these necessary skills. But Fred’s animations make Moo more of a believer. They wake him up out of his dreamy slumber. Fred’s physical presence matches Moo’s preoccupation with certainty. When Moo isn’t asleep, or visiting another world, he prefers to have clear and sharp communication. Yet mentally Fred is nothing but uncertainty. His clamoring, unconscious spewing of the mouth doesn’t seem to bother Moo, so long as his physical cues are clear.
Fred goes about backing Moo up at the end of a lead line. Next he practices moving Moo’s shoulders to the right and his hind end to the left. He performs all the turns perfectly, all the while a steady flow of nonsensical conversation flooding the air.
“You gotta whip it Moo. Whip it good. Down to the wire. Like we’re on skates. Curl it up. Turn it round. I’m the man. You’re the man. Let’s get down.” Fred is proud. He’s doing some awkward stationary dance move. Taking a quarter step out, a quarter step back. He looks like a child who has never learned how to play.
Oh for Christ’s sake, have I lost my mind. This guy has no business sitting atop a horse.
Fred’s giant gestures coupled with Moo’s immaculate timing have foiled my plan. I’m resistant to admit it, but I have to honor my word. It’s time for Fred to get on and try to ride.
Down at the wood shop Fred has prepared for this day. He’s crafted a three-by-three-foot wide and two-foot tall mounting box, made from two-by-twelve-inch pine boards, a sturdy platform from which Fred can mount. His vegetarian diet demands he cut out the meat and the fats. He’s held to this diet like a religion, losing twenty-five pounds in three months. Each new hole in his belt has brought him closer to riding the horses.
In the tack room of my trailer is the largest saddle I own. I haul it over today and every day, knowing that Fred will eventually ask about it, that someday I will have to give in to his repetitious requests to ride. I know Fred will pour over the pommel and cantle, squish out the sides and over the skirt, to the point where the saddle will become invisible. But this is the largest saddle I own.
I take my time and walk Fred through the saddling process, pulling the saddle blanket up and over Moo’s withers, setting the saddle down on Moo’s back, showing Fred how to measure the distance behind Moo’s elbow where the cinch will fit snugly.
“Okay dude, we got the cinch, the horn sits right here, and we got the seat. It looks a little small for my big ass! We’re gonna ride, we’re gonna ride, we’re gonna…”
“Knock it off Fred, and get your shit together. This is a big deal, not fuckin play time. You have to focus!” I feel like a blister ready to pop.
Cinching the saddle on tight, I’m hard and edgy. My throat burns down the back of my windpipe. I’m holding my breath. I know if I say one more thing, I’m going to slaughter him with words. Fred’s ceaseless talking, his inability to listen, has me reaching for my voice like a knife. I clench my jaw and bite down on my lower lip. Moo starts backing away from us on his lead line.
Tony comes back from the pasture, leading Luna alongside. They walk up to the round pen and lean against the top rail.
“Hey, what’s up with the box, Fred?”
“I built it for my bigness, what do you think? He pops up and down. “ I think I need it, don’t you, to get myself up there?”
“That’s cool, dude. Yeah, you’ll get up there. Are you getting ready to mount?”
“Not quite yet,” I interrupt. “I need to put the bridle on.”
As I move towards Moo with the bridle, I take three long breaths, spread the bit out between my fingers, lift it up between his parting teeth, and pull the crown of the bridle over Moo’s head. I lay the reins over his neck.
Forgive me, Moo. What have I gotten you into?
As Fred climbs up onto his handmade box, the platform digs into four-inches of dirt that cradles the sides. Holding the reins snug and grabbing a piece of Moo’s mane in front of the saddle with his left hand, Fred takes his right hand and twists the stirrup around, where the toe of his left boot can easily slide into the small square space of the stirrup and help power him up and onto Moo’s back.
Fred has tried to prepare for this moment, more than any of us could ever imagine. He raises his big brown boot towards the stirrup, and tips it through the center until it touches the side of Moo’s awaiting ribcage. Fred’s pant belt is eye level. I see all the empty holes he has conquered over the last few months, and yet his hairy belly still flops over the buckle. The holes in his belt puncture my frustration with Fred, and for the first time today I feel his tenderness. He thrusts some weight down into the stirrup, getting ready to rise upward. I am standing in front of Moo, the lead line clutched in my palm, making sure Moo doesn’t take a step.
The mounting block quivers in the sand. Fred’s legs tremble. I hear a long, sorrowful note crawl out of Fred’s mouth and I look up to meet his eye. In that moment he breaks. Water falls downhill. His torso curls in half. His foot falls from the stirrup as he folds and collapses from the mounting box to the ground. The sound that comes out of him is subterranean, like a beached whale, blow after blow, deep and lonely. One of his legs lay across the box, the other folds underneath him. Hunched over and sobbing, his head slumps forward with his hands cupped over his face . His waling sings out into the pastures, and the residents turn away from their horses. They drop their lead ropes and come rushing over, staring down at Fred’s crumpled body on the ground. We sink down around him, comforting him. Touching his big, lumpy body like a baby’s. I can feel our knees touching, the skin of our arms sticking to one another. Fred’s roiling is thick, wet, unstoppable. Our bodies form a capsule around him. We are the blood, the bones that hold him together. Sarah kneels behind him, propping him up, one hand hiding the surprise forming on her face, the other resting on Fred’s shoulder. She can say nothing without sobbing herself. We are stunned into silence, watching Fred’s body heave up and down. And then Angie cracks open. Her face hangs hollow from the bone. Her eyes fill then pour over her cheeks. Tony is terribly uncomfortable. He stands up and heads off for a roll of toilet paper. Fred is grateful when Tony returns. In between blows he tries to catch his breath.
We all know the real stories inside Fred’s sorrow. Each of us has our own. We know not to ask him any questions or to share anything about the past. The rules on the ranch are clear. Don’t dwell on who you were before. Be the person you are becoming.
Fred gasps for air. He is just a sliver of himself, half melted away and shaking. We stay clumped in a tight circle, the mounting box in the middle. Moo holds steady; he hasn’t moved an inch. His head is low, about two-feet from Fred’s face, bending over our bulge of bodies. His eyes are half-closed, ears out to the side of his head listening. Waiting for Fred to make the next move.
I can’t quite look at Fred’s face or anyone else’s. It’s as if my eyes have peeled my skin back and left the whole nerve of my body exposed. I fall away. I see myself sitting on the dirt inside our circle and hovering above it at the same time, peering downward at our small world filled with trouble. How on earth have I arrived here? I see us as children again, innocent and bare, animals alone in the forest, in the dark wind-swept night, curling into the grasses, heading home to the warm earth, where we belong.
“Hey Fred,” Sarah’s voice slips in from the silence. “You can take Scout next time, I promise.”
When he’s ready, Fred picks himself up and brushes the dirt off his pants. We push ourselves off the ground alongside him. He shakes like thunder. Someone brings him a glass of water. Fred clears his throat, blows his nose.
“Thanks guys, thanks a lot. I’m sorry to freak you guys out. I was just, damn I don’t know. I guess I was scared. You know. He’s a big dude. I mean he’s cool. I love this dude.” He looks over and points toward Moo.
“No, Fred. It’s cool. We get it. These horses fuckin’ freak us all out. Damn, dude, you’re good. We got your back.” Tony’s quick to chime in. He’s still uncomfortable with the whole tender show.
Angie walks over to Fred. She looks like a tiny doll standing next to him. She puts her arms around his waist, as much as she can, and pulls him in close. Her head rests just above his rolling belly. The rest of us gather around them. With Angie and Fred in the center, we spread out our arms and create a giant group hug. Touching like this, between men and women, is not allowed on this ranch. We hold on for longer than any of us feel comfortable.
Fred shuffles around the round pen on a short circle, getting his equilibrium back. Moo stands motionless next to the box, reins over the horn, patient and waiting. Fred moves back towards the box, pushes it around in the sand for stability and stands back on top.
I wonder if I should stop him, tell him he has already achieved so much today. But then I look over at Moo. He’s standing tall and ready. He is holding to his mission. Moo shuffles his hooves, putting all four feet squarely underneath his big brown body, preparing to balance Fred on top. Fred grabs the reins and Moo’s mane. His left boot moves smoothly into the stirrup. He shoves off the box, trying to swing his right leg up and over Moo’s rump. He misses. Fred kicks Moo’s left hip hard, his size and flexibility still presenting a challenge. Moo stands dead quiet, like a soldier’s mount, refusing to let any disturbance rock his concentration. Finally Fred prods his right leg across Moo’s rear end, clears and lands hard in the saddle. He sits as deep as he can with his butt cheeks lapping over the cantle. He reaches down to his right and places his right boot into the stirrup.
“That’s the way to do it,” Tony calls to Fred.
Fred looks down on us. His face square and concentrated. Only his eyes show the consequence of surprise. His body swallows the fear. Little driblets of tears still mark his cheeks. No one speaks. Eliza and Angie drag the box out of the round pen. I stand in the middle, watching his hands.
“Pick up the reins Fred, Moos is waiting for you.”
Moon and Star
Tin House published “Moon and Star” unfortunately you can’t get it on-line, but you can still order the publication.
Learning to Walk
I asked everyone to gather up and meet me over by the round pen. Earlier we ran the horses out of the shop area, past the garden with the corn growing tall, and down through the fifteen acres of pasture we keep for them in the middle of the property. Bucking and twisting, resisting and rearing, we eventually corralled them into the round pen—a recently built structure at the far end of the pastures. Today will be the first day we start working the horses. Twelve men and a few women assemble around me. Some are casually talking, while a few others are very quiet and watchful. There are still a number of them who struggle to hold their attention on any one thing too long. They gaze at the horses with a glazed and stagnant eye.
This ranch is their prison—all of them multiple offenders, felons. They refer to themselves, over and over again, as people who have done some very bad things. They live at the ranch now after hitting rock bottom; the ranch is here to save their lives. Period. Horses have always been part of the ranch. They live loosely with the residents on the property, which sits along the banks of the Rio Grande. By loosely, I mean they roam freely in the pastures, they gather in the automotive shop when it rains and snows, and in the woodshop when the flies get too bad. They forage through the ranch dumpsters for cookies, leftover baked goods, Wonder Bread. At night they are corralled into sizeable pens with shelter, water, and alfalfa hay. During the day they wander the entire property like giant gods who have dominion over all things: humans and horses coexisting in containment.
No one on the ranch knows much of anything about horses. They don’t know that Wonder Bread and Tastykakes are not good forage for an animal that has historically grazed on grasses, flowers, and tree bark for thousands of years. The horses run in packs like dogs chasing the residents when they bring the trash out from the cafeteria after meals. The residents gather in a tight circle next to the trash carriers. They carved wooden poles in their woodshop which they carry to fend off each attack. Residents have been bitten, had arms and wrists broken, been tripped and stepped on, and frightened out of their skin. Men and women, toughened by prison and living on the streets, run as fast as they can for safety when the horses begin their charge.
For me it was just another call. Another person or ranch asking me to help them with their horses. It’s my job, what I have done every day for the last twenty years. I hear many stories of how people are having trouble with their horses. I can hear the trouble in slow motion, see the footage shoot through my mind. There are a lot of things that go unsaid: the slightest movements, a flick of an ear, the corner of an eye, a shortening of breath—all of which when noticed could have averted the whole bad tale in the first place. But this call was different. Not once in my life had I heard of horses acting like this: scavenging, marauding war parties of horses. I didn’t think it could be true, and if it was I certainly needed to see it.
My first trip to the ranch was on a Sunday. The one day of the week the residents have off from a grueling work schedule. At the ranch, they have a livestock division. That means certain people are required to feed and care for the horses, ducks, dogs, and cats that live on the ranch. There are two heads of the livestock division and about twelve other members who split daily duties of caring for the animals. A long time ago, the residents used to ride the horses. But as the accidents and injuries piled up, along with the mythic tales which accompanied them, the horses became much more than a liability. They were deadly.
When I first came to the ranch, the livestock division was run by two women, Angie and Sarah. Angie was in her early thirties, a heroin addict for fifteen years. She was in prison for a multitude of crimes, with the last term for robbing her mother’s house on the pueblo. Her mom turned her in, feeling certain that prison was the safest place for Angie to be. Sarah was forty-five; a mother of three, a meth and heroin addict, and a prostitute since she was thirteen. Sarah was emotionally volatile, a damaged woman trapped inside a strongly abused body. Angie and Sarah had caused a recent stir by claiming that the horses were not being treated properly by the other members of the livestock division, who were mostly all men.
That’s when I got the call. I am a small woman, and I don’t weigh more than 120 pounds. I can be quiet when I first meet people, and I don’t usually make a dramatic first impression. On this particular Sunday, I found myself in the middle of the most dangerous behavior I had ever encountered before. Everyone was there, sitting on the benches under the shelter of the small equipment barn that sits just a few yards away from the nighttime corrals. It was four in the afternoon, feeding time. Recently they had a few bad accidents during the feeding routine, arguments about whose fault it was, and the question as to how to fix the problems had forced them to seek professional help. I introduced myself to everyone, and they graciously introduced themselves back. Then, as if a curtain dropped, everyone fell silent. The horses were at the far end of the pasture, grazing peacefully in the late afternoon sun.
“Okay,” I said, breaking the silence, “show me how you bring them in.”
Barrett, a young, strong man in his early thirties got up and went over to the hay barn door, which is a few feet away from the equipment shed. A few other men followed to stand behind him. He unlocked the door and started throwing flakes of alfalfa into the arms of the waiting men. They each grabbed the hay, tucked it tightly against their bodies, and took off at a full race toward the night corrals. They emptied the hay abruptly into the troughs, and then raced back to the shelter of the equipment barn. A few of the men had to make round trips to ensure each horse would be fed. Angie, Sarah, and the others were crammed into the shelter and shouting loudly as if participating in an important sporting event.
“Hurry up! Here they come! Get back in here!”
The screaming paralyzed me. And then there they were—the horses galloping, ears back, kicking up and thundering towards us. I was standing alongside the large cottonwood tree that shades the barn and night corrals. A herd of horses running in my direction never ceases to have a mesmerizing effect. Most of my days are filled with teaching horses how to love my world, but the real secret is how I love theirs. The shouting and screaming became louder, and a few of the men ran out and grabbed me, dragging me back inside the barn area. We were all enclosed together in an 8’ x 10’ overhanging shelter in front of the hay barn. The horses could see us, but they could not get to us. These were not horses, I thought, watching them bare their teeth at us as if we were the main meal for the night. Their dark, cold, angry eyes were unrecognizable to me.
We were their captives, run into our cell like lesser animals. I felt I had landed on another planet. Once we were solidly put away in safe subordination, the horses walked off casually into the corrals for their evening meal. The men snuck quietly out of the shelter after a few moments and shut the corral gates. We could now re-enter our world, but only because the giant beasts were content and contained for the night.
People say that a horse can mirror you, that they can blend themselves to the inside of a person—emotional camouflage. The ranch horses have seen a lot of damaged people over the years. Ninety or so residents live on the ranch, with some staying two years and others who never leave. They carry around their life histories: frightening baggage which they wear overtly on their faces, in their postures, and within their unique styles of movement. It’s a language the horses are well equipped to understand. Fear and it’s family members—anger, frustration, pain— are all carried in their steps, in their shoulders and necks, the way their backs round forward, forcing them to look out through the tips of their eyes, hiding in the shadows just beneath their eyebrows.
Some of the residents move with an artificial confidence, something they must try on in order to eventually make honest. Others have no life left in their bodies; they are soft and amorphous, like small sea creatures hanging on to any reef to which they can cling. Movement, and the lack thereof, is an emotional story. It tells all. Every day, the horses absorb the stories told from the roaming residents. Over the many years of this contained engagement between hurting humans and once-wild animals, a disaster had been created. Strong men and women beaten down by poverty, by family history, by the prison system all walk the ranch daily, doing chores and odd jobs, unknowingly constant in their communication with the horses.
Survival means to take full notice. With their ears and eyes, even while grazing head down, the horses see all, feel all. Horses survive by acknowledging risk and by asserting leadership. Flight, not fight, is how horses naturally resolve troubling situations. Leaders become leaders by being adept at keeping the herd out of harm’s way, by noticing peril and using their inherited gift of speed to reduce the danger. The movement and the emotions of the residents tell a repetitious story of hazard to these horses. Choppy, abrupt, artificially strong, and emotionally detached, the residents create and contribute to the ongoing silent disturbance.
Flight or fight: inside the tall adobe walls of this contained ranch, thousands of years of inherited instinct has been reversed. Not enough space to truly flee, where danger walks ninety men and women strong, fight is the new form of survival. The mirror has spoken.
The horses moved around the round pen, watchful with their ears but casual and aloof with their eyes. The men and women gathered around the top rail, leaning in on the horses, anxious to see what might happen next. What I saw in those horses worried me. Vigilant but dismissive, defensive and certain—they may have been corralled, but they were still in charge and they knew it. I gathered my ropes and a small bamboo pole six feet long and walked into the round pen. The men were casually talking, joking, and berating each other. Their world as small as a pinhole, narrowly aware of their surroundings. Without saying a word, I started to work. I chose the big bay named Hawk. Hawk, I was told, was the worst of the herd. He would lead the charge after lunchtime when the residents brought out the trash. Baring his teeth, flattening his ears, and reeling around with his hind legs to threaten to kick them away from his garbage, Hawk was well versed in how to intimidate and trample.
Inside the round pen, my mind was on Hawk. When he walked, I walked. When he stopped, I stopped. He heard me. His ear and the corner of his eye were sternly on me. The other horses gathered in the middle of the pen while Hawk and I walked the perimeter. I picked up my bamboo pole in my left hand and started tapping it on the ground as I walked. Hawk’s ears flattened. Still walking away from me, he became more and more agitated. He swung his head and neck toward me like a lion; his dark, cold eye warning me to back away. The men fell to a hush, but I kept tapping. I won’t get back, I said in my mind. No, I will not back up. Tap. Tap. Tap. I knew what was coming; I had seen it before, but only rarely. Hawk was coming in to attack me, and I was armed only with a bamboo cane and a rope to save my life.
At first he charged me halfway, swinging his shoulders, neck, and head in my direction—teeth bared, ears flat. I stabbed the bamboo cane into the center of his chest and quickly slapped it hard against his momentum. He flashed himself backwards in surprise. I tapped against the ground just behind his back legs to let him know I wanted him to walk forward again. I spread my legs and crouched a little, readying myself for the next charge. I began to swing the rope coiled in my right hand a little, over and under, in time with the tapping of the ground. And then he turned and came at me with all he had. I smacked him across the forehead with my cane, then twice again quickly across his shoulders. He rose up off his front legs, rearing straight up into the sky and towering over me, refusing to retreat, pumping his front legs at my head. I had never before heard the sound that came out of me: a roar so fierce, so determined and clear, but I was trembling. I thrashed at his front legs with the bamboo, moving sideways but never backwards, holding my ground. Down he came, and on the way he swirled around swinging his rear end toward me, determined and aiming. My rope was eight feet long now, the lash of it stinging him over and over again across his back, his loin, his strong, powerful rear-end musculature. Still jumping left and right to remove myself from his view, I crashed against him with all of the small force I could muster. I swung my rope and smacked with my cane. He kicked out and twirled again in order to catch a glimpse of me and set me up in his line of fire. In a final effort, I lashed him evenly across the back of his hind legs and succeeded in giving him a good sting. He jumped forward, away from me, a tiny victory. Tap. Tap. Tap. He walked away from me, ears still pinned. I quickly turned away from him as he walked away from me. Pressure off: no harm, no foul. I climbed over the top rail of the round pen and walked away from the horses. The men gathered around me, like a huddle after a big game-winning basket, whooping and hooting in disbelief at what they had witnessed, their jaws dropping.
After a few minutes, I looked back towards the round pen, keeping an eye on Hawk. He was standing alone where I had left him, his head low with one leg cocked and resting. His ears were soft and placed lightly to the sides of his head. His whole body looked deflated, less rigid. His eyes were half shut, half asleep. His mouth hung loosely, with his bottom lip in a droop. The other horses sniffed and muzzled the short weeds and grasses in the middle of the pen. We opened the gate to let them out, and they walked out casually and calmly back to their pasture. Hawk stayed resting.
I climbed back over the top rail of the round pen and stood on the far side facing him. This is our new herd, I thought, you and me. “If you don’t know what number you are,” one of my teachers once told me, “then you are number two.” Generally speaking, I think humans could use a good dose of learning to be number two, but in this situation I didn’t have that luxury. I walked to the middle of the pen and picked up my pole, standing there quietly and waiting. Hawk’s head rose a little, his legs straightened. In the corner of his eye, there lay a question, a curiosity toward me. I took a step towards his hind end but kept my pole still. A light, clear click came from the edge of my tongue. His ears captured it and flickered back and forth. I took one more step forward, one more click. Hawk stepped forward and slowly went away from me; I followed behind at a safe distance. When he would slow his step, I would click and he would return to walking. When I would stop, he would stop. When I would go, he would go. His breath became deep and noticeable. He blew through his nostrils that comforting catching breath of horses who are satisfied and settled. His mouth and jaw rolled his tongue around, and the ease of it warmed me. I stopped, walked away again, and climbed out of the pen. I went over to the dusty old box that holds the halters and picked one out. I realized they hadn’t been used in a long time. I walked over to the gate, opened it wide, and placed the halter and lead line on Hawk. He followed behind me with his head low and his eyes soft. I took him out toward his other herd. When we reached the pasture, I slid the halter off Hawk. We stood silently as I groomed his neck, face, and chest with the palm of my hand. Then as I turned and left him, he bent his head down for the grasses and never looked up.
She was definitely crooked. Most of her weight listed off to the left. Her head cocked sideways, tilting the world away from center. Everything from her waist down looked like it was out of joint. Abuses to the soul run deep, long rivers of pain into the body. Sarah appeared to be always happy, always ready for things to change. Her enthusiasm seemed to irritate quite a few of the other residents, but it also commanded a quirky sense of leadership at the ranch. She was one of the oldest people in the livestock department. Before she began her career at her father’s strip club at the age of thirteen, Sarah lived in the country outside of Los Angeles on a small ranch. Her memory of her childhood with horses was coated in a dusty, pink haze from her thirty years of drug addiction. Her love for the ranch horses was real; she alone knew that these horses were in trouble, and she was the voice on the line when I got the first call.
I drove into the ranch on my second trip with a trailer full of horses I had trained. The residents met me at the main gate, not accustomed to seeing a woman drive such a big rig. We unloaded the horses, tied them to the trailer, with everyone in awe of their size, beauty, and excellent manners.
“Before we get started, I want everyone to line up facing down the road,” I said.
To a painter’s eye, it would have been a cacophony of form. Some round, some thin, slumping shoulders, and a few arrogantly carried chests. They carried their heads slightly turned, twisted, and fallen—the shapes of uncertainty couched in defiance.
“Today we are going to learn to walk.”
Laughter poured out from the crowd. I lined up next to Sarah, and I asked everyone to watch me carefully. I walked away from them, taking long, smooth strides, my head upright, eyes forward, arms loose. Then I turned and walked back, demonstrating the same flow.
“Let’s take turns. Sarah, you go first.”
Peeling off to the left, Sarah wobbled up the road and back as best she could.
“That was good; now, let me help you. Everyone, listen up.”
The group was getting restless and silly. The simple exercise seemed ridiculous to them.
“If you want these horses to respect you, you have to respect yourself,” I stated loudly. “How you walk, how you hold your posture, tells these horses whether to stomp you or follow you. It also tells them whether you’re trustworthy or a fake, and believe me, they know the difference.”
I went over to Sarah and gently put my hands on her head, neck, and shoulders and centered them. I pulled downward on her right arm until her right hand was level with her left. I stood in front of her scanning her whole body for balance.
I spoke up so everyone could hear, “Sarah, you love the horses, but you walk around them like a hobbled, weak woman. They see this, and because of it they will never respect you. We need to fix that, okay?”
With her head on center, she firmly conceded, “Yes!”
“I’ll show you one more time,” I said and walked down the road and back, confident but not artificial in my gait.
Sarah stepped out, emphasizing her attempt to correct everything to the right. It was a valiant effort.
“Each of you has to stay conscious of yourself and all your behavior and movement patterns when you are around the horses,” I told the group. “That kind of emotional and physical control is the only way these horses will ever take an interest in you. Basically, I am telling each of you that you are going to have to change on the inside and on the outside for this to work. You’re going to need a lot of practice. Who is next?”
Fred walked forward, “I’ll go.”
He walked down the road like he was mad as hell, pounding strides with his head held up, eyes forward, hands clenched into fists. He turned and stomped back. Fred weighed over 300 pounds, six feet tall, with broad intimidating shoulders. He admittedly had anger issues; this was the main reason for his stay at the ranch. Fred did not need to be here, because his current prison term was up. His wife told him after his last release from prison that he needed to come to the ranch and work on his anger issues before he would be welcomed back home. Some days he was extremely frustrated by his situation, and other days he was honest and crumbling. He was a giant seesaw of emotion.
As he walked back into the lineup, Fred announced, “These horses don’t mess with me. I’m not afraid of them.” Fred put his best badass on, shoulders slouched forward, arms doing the downward punch, popping up and down off his toes. “I know horses; I used to work with them off the track in Florida. These horses don’t scare me,” he repeated, freely pumping his toughness with his lips pinched and readying for a fight.
I looked down the line at the other residents who were shaking their heads quietly in denial of Fred’s boastful show.
“Oh,” I said, “well, good, then why don’t you head over to the trailer and untie Billie. She’s an ex-track horse. Second one to the left, with the four white socks. Untie her, and bring her over.”
Fred stopped cold, the beefy bravado melting away. “You want me to do what?” he said.
I repeated myself carefully as he looked at me in disbelief. He then did his best to put his hammering body back together and strutted off toward the trailer at a much slower clip. The residents in line were all sheepishly smiling as they turned to watch Fred head off. The horses were in line, each tied to the trailer with a chain of slip knots and a lock at the end of each one. Fred’s first challenge would be to slip his 300-pound angry body between my two biggest horses tied closely next to one another and untangle those knots while standing inches away from Billie’s mouth and four strong hooves, essentially sandwiching himself between the two horses on either side. He stopped at the edge of the trailer and pointed at Moo, my Morgan gelding who was tied at the far end of the trailer.
“This one?” he asked.
“No, the next one,” I quietly corrected, trying to hold back my desire to run over and help him out of his predicament.
“You want me to go in there, untie her, and do what?” His memory was slipping behind the fear now. He was shaking a little, his lips no longer tight but held slightly apart and panting. “There’s no way I can get in there, Miss Ginger, no way,” he finally confessed.
“Do you want some help?” I offered gently.
“Yes, that would be great.”
I walked over to the trailer with the other residents coming behind me in a semicircle.
“Everybody likes to say that we cannot show our horses any fear, but I disagree. What they need most is honesty. If you are truly honest about how you feel, you will express that outwardly with your body and give it a chance to leave you. Open the door, Fred,” I said confidently, “you can do this.”
He stepped into the thin space between the two horses, muttering oh, shit and fuck this a number of times.
“Lay your hand on her rump, Fred, as you walk in there; let her feel you.”
Fred lifted his colorfully tattooed arm above Billie’s tall rump and placed it caringly on her shining brown coat.
“Now walk up to her head, allowing your hand to travel along her back as you go. Nice, Fred, good job,” I said with a quiet, calm voice.
I coached Fred up to the lead rope, where I had him unlock the slip knots, pull and release each one down the chain. Fred was quiet now, gaining confidence in the steamy space between the two large equine bodies.
“Okay, back her out of there now. Take your lead rope, face her head, and walk into her chest. Ask her to back up. Don’t be too strong with her; she doesn’t appreciate that.”
I had chosen this horse for a reason. Fred did exactly what I said, and in a moment he was out on the road with all of us gathered around him.
“Good job, man. How awesome. Look, man, at how big she is! Way to go dude!”
Everyone jumped in to praise Fred on this simple task, knowing how debilitated and freaked out he was. Fred handed me the rope and quickly bent over at the waist, hands on his knees, breathing heavy.
“I gotta sit down, man. I think I’m gonna faint.”
A few of the guys grabbed him under his shoulders and held him up. They helped him over to the edge of the road and, next to a small irrigation ditch, they sat his weakened body down.
This was the beginning of opening that fragile door which I had to unlock to give these residents an honest chance at getting along with and staying alive around the ranch horses. We spent the rest of that warm afternoon putting energy into the lifeless bodies of some of the residents and deconstructing the false pride carried around by the others. I constantly insisted on less and more: Less toughness, more honesty. More confidence, less apprehension. More focus, less staring at the ground. We untied my herd of horses, and everyone was soon walking around the pastures and roads, leading them without pulling on their ropes, gesturing with a body language horses could understand and respect. Watching the residents enjoy the companionship of horses for the first time was restorative, splintering the fear, doubt and confusion they had held for so long. The tyranny of the ranch horses emptied out for the time being, each resident gaining the confidence and insight needed to build and recover. Everyone was spread out wide, walking and stopping, backing up and turning, the horses following on a long, loose line.