Wild Horses

I have to admit it, I started following her on Instagram because I've always had a sultry thing for her. Not your run-of-the-mill actress at all, very English and naturally authentic. So then, in those small windows of insta-life, you come to see there is hardly anything about her acting life. Instead her stories and reels and photos are about real life, her life on the land in Uruguay she bought in the place she ended up calling home. In the place of red carpets and Hollywood bling, a version I never expected to delve in to - a life of horses. I found intrigue and lessons that I think maybe, I had already learned within.

In previous years I have always thought about getting a dog, having even read in to and studied their behaviours, their psychology. How we cannot expect them to understand our world but we can learn to understand theirs, in order to live better together. I have never really had the right lifestyle to responsibly have one. I have since ended up with cats; they are simpler to care for and don't need as much attention. They have kinda grown on me too, and I have endulged in an increasing stream of awareness ever since the day I moved in to a new house in 2015 and the first one - my alpha and boss cat - rocked up on my doorstep after just a few days, deciding that despite drifting the street between the other neighbours, I was now the chosen one. He has been by my side ever since.

Cats, dogs, it could be any animal really. I have watched far too many baby panda videos. My soul animal is the wolf, I have long been fascinated by them and their way of being. Unlike these, I knew, or even still know little about horses. There is of course my obsession with Tashunka Witko - Crazy Horse - The Warrior Chief whose life was dedicated to his people, the Lakota Sioux Native Americans. They revered over their roaming herds of Mustangs, they honoured them for their strength and companionship in songs and ceremonies. A relationship built with together on trust and respect. In the Lakota language they are called šúŋkawakȟáŋ, literally meaning holy or mysterious dogs. The Lakota saw them as a direct connection to the Spirit world. 

The longer I sit with animals the more I am aware - of everything. Now, I swipe and watch her tranquil, on-the-land Instagram videos of her forever-growing herd of rehabilitated, and importantly, rewilded horses. Oh, and she has rescue dogs, quite a few of them. A digital interaction has unfolded in me and I realise. 

How I hate to see rodeos now as much as a bull fight. From the years working and taking clients to much requested horse racing events in the UK, how we see them tumble and fall in more cases than we should ever see, of the tarpauling being brought around them as they end its life because it will never recover from the broken leg. How we subjugate and then celebrate and laud Olympic dressage and showjumping events as a skill for getting them to jump over poles for us people to win prizes.

Horse driven carriages for tourists and their imperial and entitled fantasies, often stood for hours in their blinkers under the sun, and only when they collapse in the street are we capable of realising. Yet not enough to stop the neglect, malnutrition and subsequent abandonment, much the same as dogs, yet often worse in some countries stooping far too easily and nonchalantly to abbatoirs, once their purpose to us has expired. With their shiny bridles we witness exploitation dressed up as affection, our reign draped in vanity.

How the Lakota would despair to see Mustang round-ups on their plains, because they are considered 'excess' on a land that was never owned by the same people who removed indigenous people from where they have roamed for hundreds of years. That same colonial playbook being seen right now in caging, bombing and removing people from their houses and homelands.

We humans are not worthy, we so easily incite sufference. How arrogant are we to call ourselves masters of beasts, taking a whip to strike or fixing a bit in the mouth to yank and pull? To tame them as masters when we cannot truly master ourselves. We can be grateful for the industrial revolution and the invention of tractors to plough fields instead of harnessing these creatures. The only thing we should be manually ploughing is our inward self, labouring, nurturing and cultivating from within, unflinching in self-reflection, in order to be kind, as many people so boldly put on their Facebook profile photos.

I have often backpacked alone around the world through the years. You can learn alot about yourself in these moments of travel. I know my limits and can sense if something is genuinely too dangerous, but I know I want to be largely off the beaten track, unless on a open road and on a scooter surround by paddy fields and coconut trees. Even then I have veered in to places and dirt tracks where scooters are not supposed to go, while all the time embracing a sense of adventure and growth. I have helped change a van-taxi tyre on a road traversing through a jungle after propping it up on stones found at the roadside. I couldn't help laughing my way through that one. I have accidently wandered in to a village funeral procession of a chief village elder and come away with an extreme sense of gratitude at being allowed to stay, accompanied with a wealth of new knowledge and understanding from the simple kindness of its people. Get out there and grow; search for the sunlight through thick canopies of (self) limitation. Instead of on a scooter I would maybe not like to ride a horse, but walk along with them, be at one with them, get out there with them. Be still with them.

It is after all the year of the Horse. How about we really celebrate it? What about a sense of agency? They are not toys. Remove the arena of our self-importance and ego. Let us try to walk amongst the wild horses, let them show us the way and help us tune to their presence. Let the dogs intertwine among the herd with their accompanying energy. Let the equilibrium flow. Then let our hearts take bold steps and run wild like when they gloriously do so, galloping across plains, free and with forward momentum. Instead of control, let us have reverence and no reign. Be humbly aware of the privilage of being part of them, be grounded, so in turn if need be, they will follow you of their own trustful free will, because they see our highest truth and accept us. 

Then maybe, just maybe they will let us ride them unbridled, unbroken and unafraid. With presence we learn to listen inwards.

Thank you for the inspiration Rhona. Thank you for keeping my eyes open.