75
july 2019yogajournal.com.au“The real or imagined slights
against my authority would come
and go, like clouds across the sky. ”ever-changing study of the vicissitudes
of clouds sweeping across in an eternal
afternoon. Lacking the cues of day and
night, my world became intensely
focused on the hypnotic rhythm of
hooves hitting the velvety volcanic earth.
Which is why, on the second day of
rolling with the tolt, I became more
attuned to my equine partners—the
dozen or so horses I’d bestride over the
course of this trip. Riding an animal
requires forming a partnership with a
silent, ambivalent teammate. Though
your destinies are bound together, as in
any job, there are different ways of
going about it. You could both slog
through—the horse burdened by his
cargo, and you, accordingly, feeling a
little too much like an oversized duffle
bag. Or you could, however briefly,
connect.
The horses I was working with came
with their own complexities. Most of the
year, they ran wild across the treeless,
volcanic expanse—loving, fighting,
helping, constantly establishing their
position within the herd. But when the
farmers tracked them down, corralled
them into a fenced field and saddled
them up, they became, like their riders,
part of a unit committed to following
and carrying.
The step, step, step of the tolt focused
my attention on the horses’ subtler cues:
eyesopenorhalf-closed,tailshighor
lacklustre,earstwitchedbacktoward
meorslantedfronttowardthehorse
ahead.Thoughtsandemotions,both
mineandmypowerfulpartner’s,flowed
inandoutofmyconsciousnesswithout
judgement.EachtimeI dismountedand
pulledoffthesaddle,mytemporary
companionwouldvanishintotheseaof
brown,black,andwhitespots,stripes,
thickmanes,long,lushtails—backinto
thehierarchyoftheherd.Wehaddays
anddaysofthisahead.
Aftera week,I begantoseehowIRachel Slade is a journalist and author of Into the Raging Sea, a
gripping account of the sinking of the American cargo ship El Faro.
Learn more at rachelslade.net.functioned within my own herd. I
realised that the indignities of the
proverbial work saddle were temporary.
The real or imagined slights against my
authority would come and go, like
clouds across the sky.
Back where I live, I found that I’d
developed a newer, healthier sense of
time, which made me more empathetic
to those around me; my perspective had
become at once vast—like the
mountains and glaciers of Iceland—and
highly focused, like the twitch of a
horse’s ear.