Learning Curve

The ritual of driving a good distance, parking my car at an unmarked fence road, and getting out my mountain bike for the reminder of the journey has gradually become second nature, a routine I've memorized as if for a singing recital. I eagerly set out to find the natural horses: none of them shod, no barn, no cross-tying or heavy tack to deal with.

Once immersed into the herd, I choose a horse, or they approach me for some attention, and brush him/her to remove all the dried mud for their mane, body and hand-pick the tail a little. I pick up their hooves (if willing) to look for anything stuck in them that can be cleaned out. This allows me to see how willing the horse is to accept my touch and be in their space. I next allow the horse to check out the rope halter with his/her nose that I'm about to put on. I stand on the left and put the halter on and gently swing the end to be tied around and make a natural horsemanship knot. I know how to check for correct fit and adjust things where needed. I have added another 8 foot rope to the lead rope so I tie this back to the halter to use as the reins. I am riding bareback and lead the horse to a rock for that extra 4-5 inch boost up that I need to get on. Once on and balanced, I feel like a teenager who just stole the keys to her parents' car and ready to leave the driveway when no one is watching (and really, not another person is watching)! It's exciting, but I am not ready for the open pasture and so ride in circles, weaving in and out of the herd, lovingly touching and stroking other horses within my reach. Sometimes I do yoga poses on the horse's back, such as tree, locust, warrior 1, twist, bridge, etc. and sometimes I unpack the suitcase of my soul. I enjoy this time; this is everything.

These are "skills" I did not initially possess, and it still amazes me because of how much sense they make now. My friend once said, "You will learn by doing." And he is right; the more I do it, the less I need to think about it. Love, Sharon

The Colt Selling Fly Spray

A mare of bountiful means had only one filly, which she doted upon. Once while trotting through the medina, the filly saw a Thoroughbred colt selling botanical fly spray. She fell in love with him at once. However she had no way to convey her adoration to him so she went to the medina every day with the excuse of needing to buy more fly spray. As soon as the bottle was purchased and put in her saddle bag, she would take off without saying a word. Over time, the colt began to feel suspicious.

The next day when the filly appeared again, he asked her, "What do you buy so much fly spray for?" She confessed, "I'm interested in you romantically, however I dare not express it to you. But I'm always dying to see you so I come to buy your spray for the purpose of appreciating your good looks and being around your masculine energy." The colt was taken aback by her honesty and so they agreed to meet the next evening in a private area in her pasture.

The next evening, the filly lay at a respectable distance from the harem, waiting for the colt. When dusk fell, he arrived. She was so excited she could not control her joy. She put her legs around the colt and said, "My dream has finally come true!" As a lover possessing extraordinary gifts, she died that night of too much pleasure. The colt was so shocked that he just froze there with no where to go. At last he escaped back to the medina at dawn where he left his bottles of spray under a tarp.

In the morning at the pasture, it was time to go to their watering hole, but the filly did not get up. The harem became concerned, only to find her lying there dead.

Before dragging her body to the creek bed, the curious horses found inside her saddle bags many bottles of fly spray. The mother mare said, "It must be the fly spray that killed my filly!" Then the harem all went to the medina to find the source of the spray. When they found the colt and saw the same kind of spray as their harem-mate had, they laid into him: "Why did you kill our young one?" The colt sobbed and told them the truth, which they simply couldn't believe and so they took legal proceedings, and that meant placing him in a sack and throwing him to the bottom of the sea.

The colt said, "I don't mind death, but I request you to allow me to approach her body and express my sorrow." The sultress of the harem gave him permission despite the many ancestral practices that would be against it. As soon as he approached her and touched her, he neighed out, "If only the spirit of the body could still live after the death of the body, then there would be no remorse at all." All at once some sprocket in the filly's heart clicked into place, she regained consciousness and described the whole situation. Finally they paired up for life and had many offspring in the wild.

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Love, Sharon

How's the ranch life?

This is the question I’ve been getting a lot lately. I’m not totally sure how to answer that question because I haven’t solidly wrapped my head around the fact that I’M WORKING AT A RANCH (and this has been a dream of mine since the urge to be with horses took hold in January). This is mostly my fault because I think my little stressed self had a hard time believing that someone would actually hire me. My life has not been the easiest for a lot of years so I just didn’t spend much time thinking about what life would be like after I started this job, just in case something happened to curtail it.

When I'm in a stall or paddock, I think about how much I’ve fought the waves of change. How I haven’t been as authentic as a could have been, and how I’ve been so timid with expressing who I am. I’m not very proud of this last year of my life, I feel like in many ways I’ve failed. There have been a few bright and shining moments where my head finally surfaced above the clouds and I actually got to SEE what I have and what I’m living, but many, many of them have been marked by fear.

So here’s what I’m learning now: the lesson that I have to learn over and over and over again. Surrender. I will never be able to control every aspect of my life. I may never know what the next six steps are. I may never know what’s next. But I am choosing to believe that whatever’s next, it will be OK. I have 50 years to tell me that whatever comes, I will BE OK. In the next month I will likely be sleeping out in the wildness with a herd of beloved horses or traveling to another country. I don’t know which pasture and if I for sure will be moving the herd, but I’m choosing to believe that whatever it is, that’s the place I'm suppose to be in. I’m choosing to remember that my life has always been orchestrated in ways more beautiful than I could ever have planned myself. I’m choosing to stop fighting the waves.

So anyway, how’s the ranch life? Right now I’m ENVELOPED IN THIS AWESOME ATMOSPHERE. I think it’s good. I keep looking at each horse I feed or water, across the stall, or across the paddock and I feel so incredibly thankful. I get to spend the rest of my life doing something like this. Most horses are incredibly patient with me and I think back to what I wished for, 4 years ago, when I was taking all of those blind steps forward, not knowing where I was going. I think back to those times when the hope of what could be in the future was all that got me through. And I realize that those things I hoped for, those things that I wanted deep in my bones, THOSE are the things I got. It’s like someone knew me and made it all happen. Love, Sharon

Story of the Coyote

I dreamt...
My sister was once manager of a horse barn, which occasionally coyotes liked to pass through. At the time, a coyote killed several horses on the ranch, and no body managed to shoot it or catch it. The neighbors, feeling helpless as a crab skittering across the sand, called on the manager to recommend my services, as Sharron the Hunter, to kill the coyote feeling no other person was equal to the task.

However unfortunately, the dream was I was killed by a coyote during my last trimester of pregnancy. The doctors were able to keep me alive long enough to extract my baby daughter. The father, standing close to his newborn as a shadow, prayed and made a wish about his daughter: You must kill coyotes for your livelihood, that is your calling. Owing to this, all of the Sharron women were experts at hunting and killing the coyote.

So finally my sister employed the Sharron Hunters, promising a large reward. When they rode in on horseback, one was an old woman with white hair, who coughed and wheezed, and had pronounced veins in her cheeks, and the other was a seventeen-year-old girl with dull stays on the sides of her vest. The barn manager was greatly disappointed by their appearance. Noticing the disappointment, the old woman knelt on one knee and said, "I hear that this evil coyote is only 5 miles from town, so we had better get going and catch it before it travels any further." And so they set out at once, pressing their heels into their horses' flanks silently urging them on.

At an easy lope they followed a narrow dirt road through a desert-like pasture and found the den. Outside the den, the girl howled loudly like a coyote, and in no time the coyote rushed out with its ears flicked and leapt at the old woman. The old woman stood her ground, raising a short switch blade, three inches long. As the coyote was about to attack her, she dodged to one side, and the coyote jumped over her, landing in the pasture with blood streaming out. They crowded around and discovered that the coyote was neatly cut right from the chin to the tip of its tail as it touched the blade. My sister then generously rewarded the Sharrons' for their help. The old woman recounted that she had trained with knives since she was ten years old. She could also stare for a long time without blinking and her arms were so strong that even a strong man could not move them a little.

To conclude and in support of my afterthought, achievements through practice are always convincing. A person who is born clever can never surpass one who constantly practices.

{{Dedicated to the 2 coyotes that inspired this piece: one that crossed the street in front of me on my drive to work in the morning and one that crossed it on the way home (neither were killed). And to Debbie for allowing me a journey and a place to practice.}} Love, Sharon

Year of the Horse

We moisten each other in order to thrive. (How lovely this thought.) This moisture idea creates a grid of creativity and potentiality across the globe during this transition from last year's water/snake to 2014's wood/horse this Chinese New Year. We can contribute to this cycle as well as be fueled by it. I like to think this wave of positive energy ignites the knowing in our hearts that a patient and altruistic universe exists. It is a reality I like to play in, and so I decided to write a short story for this month's blog entry in honor of the horse.

It's almost spring and I am a young woman living across from a dude ranch. I possess a horse, which I am very fond of. Wherever I go, my horse wants to go, so I learned to lead him around and eventually ride him.

One day I was out after dark and fell into a well about three hundred feet down, where I got kinda soggy from the water. My horse, unfettered as he was, neighed and neighed around the well all night until a man in oily overalls from a neighboring cabin heard the neighing and walked over to find me down in the well. I begged the stranger, that I later learned was a ranch hand, saying, "If you help me get out of here, I promise you a good reward." To this he responded, "If you promise me your horse I'll help you." I replied, "How can I give you my constant companion; I'd be so lonely without him." The ranch hand retorted, "If you don't agree, I'll just leave you in the well."

My horse at the moment peered over the side of the well and stared down at me. It occurred to me that my horse was giving me a signal. So I shouted out my agreement to the request. The ranch hand helped me out of the well, and placing a rope around my horse's neck, he led my sweet companion away. After five days, after which I had dried out a bit, it started snowing and my horse returned to me in the night.

Well, I hope you like my story. Lots of symbolism can be pulled out, with my favorite one being the interconnectedness that is undeniable and can be used for the purposes of life-affirming transformations. Love, Sharon