This is Floating

… The trees look like they’re swaying to some kind of secret rhythm, and the sunlight bursts through the green canopy in fractured streams. Suddenly, I feel everything and nothing all at once. This is floating. Even my mare seems to hover about two inches above the ground; her head low in meditation, each step sure and steady, one after the next. Her conscious mind, along with mine, is somewhere else entirely. The two of us are suspended in a world that bends slightly differently than the one I normally occupy - a place outside linear time, beyond concepts, structures, rules, and worries. Moments stretch and fold over each other. A space where my thoughts are unmoored, my senses acute. The air that penetrates deep into my lungs is weightless and sweet, each inhale filling me with clarity of the ‘point’ of it all. Mistakes, fears, the mundanity of life dissolves into what I can only call the perfect now - right here. Nothing makes sense most days, and sometimes I can’t even tell you what will become of me from one moment to the next. Yet here, with her, I feel the quiet certainty of existence - a tether to life that is both fragile and infinite.

There is no feeling I have ever experienced that compares to what I feel right here, right now. A girl, on her horse, in the wild, wild country - every sense alive, every breath infused with the scent of earth and sunlight. The God I thank in this moment has been here for near eons; present long before I even knew my own name, before I was the girl with her heart on her sleeve, a chip on her shoulder, and a burning desire to taste dust in her lungs. That girl is still very much alive inside me. I can’t say I chose this life so much as it chose me. It is a cliché, perhaps, but it feels undeniable. I cannot imagine any other timeline where it wouldn’t be me and my mare, together - our bond forged through years of insistence, patience, struggle, and devotion. Everything that came before, every mistake, every heartbreak, every moment of triumph, led to this perfect, fragile now. And in that, there is a certainty I cannot name, only feel: that some things, some connections, are meant to be, beyond reason, beyond explanation.

I earned her respect through enough blood, sweat, and tears to last a lifetime. She knows I remain, and in return, she gives me the same. When I say my longest, truest relationship has been with a horse, take it as you will. If it seems strange - or even sad - that reflects only your own perception, not mine. Nature’s law says we exist to oppose one another: human and horse, predator and prey. By all logic, we should not get along. Yet somehow, life finds a way. History whispers it, the earth confirms it, and my own experience proves it: harmony can exist even in opposition. We learn to exist with each other, against each other, and through it, we learn balance. This is the language in which I am most fluent, the dialogue of movement, breath, and presence that I share with this horse. It is a communion that cannot be forced, only earned, only understood.

Her cream coat is short and sleek under my fingers as I rub down her shoulder. I tell her she’s good. Her entire existence tells me this: she knows.  This moment is the accumulation of twenty years together as one. This old fine leather saddle shaped to my body and hers from every movement and moment under a thousand suns - carries us like an old reliable lover; the stories it could tell if only it could talk. I always have faith in my saddle, but not always in God.

Your seat is only as good as the creature beneath it. After all these years together, I know that if anything were to happen upon her back, we would return to balance - just being. We would be there for each other, in any storm or silence. There is no moment in existence I feel more calm than when I run my hands along her reins and through her mane, feeling each strand and muscle beneath my fingers and palms. I have found heaven on a white horse, but I am also the rider of a pale horse - together we have known death, pain, loss, joy, connection, and awe. Every step we take together is a negotiation with the world and with ourselves, a language only we understand, a rhythm that carries us through the ordinary and the extraordinary alike.

She navigates the woodland paths as if they were drawn for her, each step in knowing confidence - because she trusts me.. She would go with me to the end of the earth. She will do anything I ask, whether she wants to or not -  and she gives back in equal measure. I’ve cursed, cried, yelled, wailed, but we have always found a place to meet. Give and take. Breaking bread. Learning to speak and understand a language only we two could understand.

And it is not easy. But it is the greatest privilege of my life to have her, still, after all these years. On days when I feel I cannot endure another moment, there she is. Two feet on the ground, neck and shoulders wrapped in trust, offering the most loving embrace. In her nuzzle, in her grumble, in her blue-eyed gaze, I remember that I am touched by Grace - a grace that comes from a two-eyed, ice-eyed mare. This is redemption. This is prayer. Every heartbeat, every inhale feels like it is stitched together with her breath, her motion, the coolness in the air. And I am aware, impossibly, that I am alive in this exact moment, a thread in a tapestry older than memory. I am tethered to life and to something larger than myself, something eternal.

J