Repost: May the Horse Be With You

Looping back to when I first introduced Kūkūilama

Aloha! Welcome back if you are a subscriber or regular reader. Welcome to They Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir if you have just found your way here. My original intention was to write only about the years 1992 - 1994, a pivotal time in my mid-30s. But I kept going through 1997, and then started in on a series of posts about lessons I learned from horses - with an occasional random essay thrown in.

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In the past few weeks I wrote about how a crazy series of events and synchronicity brought the Arabian gelding Kūkūilama into my life and herd, and about one of our first relationship challenges, his lack of interest to focus where I focus. However those of my readers who have been with me for a long time might remember that I first introduced him almost 18 months ago. I just reread that post and decided it was worth repeating before I move on…mainly because I continue to gain new readers, and periodically fell the need to reintroduce myself and why I write about my horses.

So here it is.

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MAY THE HORSE BE WITH YOU - from April 2023

My fiction-writing friends tell me that an entire book often begins with no more than a single image or glimpse of a character. While I had never heard of that happening with memoir, I have discovered over the past five months that particular stories are very insistent on being included, while others retreat with a shy wave and finger to the lips imploring my silence. Some turn their back with a bold wink and smile as if to say “catch you later" as they walk away.

While I was floating in place in this virtual space, fishing for instructions or at least inspiration on what should come next in this memoir-by-installment, I wrote two essays about the process. At the end of the second essay, another character pranced in by way of a photo. I smiled. His appearance told me two things. First, that this next essay would be about the magic and mystery of Horses - the mentors and teachers who were important to me before the period in my mid-30s about which I have been writing, and who again became my most significant mentors and teachers at the turn of the millennium.

Second, it told me that I will need to continue writing stories from where I left off at the beginning of 1995 through Spring of 2002. At least.

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Horses showed up once before in this writing, in a 1992 poem I included in the post about Searching for Answers. Here is an excerpt:

I have always dreamt of magic

And wise Magicians

And girls who talked to wild horses.

Ravens lit on their shoulders to speak in their ears

And foxes sat trustingly at their feet.

An Arctic wolf sat on my lap once

And that was no dream.

The Apache knew my thoughts

We decided to drum anyway.

I explained in the post that the Arctic wolf belonged to Grandmother Twylah Nitsch of the Seneca Wolf Clan. It came to sit in my lap during a drum circle. About a year after writing this poem, “O Mago” Paulo Coelho walked into my life. Not sure about the ravens and foxes, but horses had been an obsession of mine for two decades by the time I wrote this poem. I was a competent rider and many images of horses adorned my apartment walls, but I had yet to learn the art of whispering to the wild ones.

In third place after the two favorite childhood books I mentioned at the beginning of this memoir, I would have named the Black Stallion series by Walter Farley. In case you somehow missed this in your own childhood, The Black Stallion is about a teenaged boy and a wild Arabian horse he manages to befriend after they are shipwrecked together. Theirs is a bond that endures across many years and adventures, long after Alec becomes an adult and the Black finds his way back to his intended owner. The fiery spirit, sensitivity, and intelligence of the Arabian horse inspired me. I yearned to experience a heart-and-soul connection like Alec had with the Black.

The horse-loving gene appears in stories on my motherʻs side of the family, but did not get expressed in her. My parents shrugged at my choice to spend my allowance buying Arabian Horse Magazine at the news stand; they were not as tolerant when at the age of eleven I answered a classified ad in it that offered to lease yearling Arabian geldings to enrolled 4-H members (which I was). They were probably more amused and impressed than they let on at the time, as I found the letter with its enthusiastic response from the breeder in my momʻs possessions after she passed.

My 1967 snapshots of horses in The Corrals - just down the road from the patch of trees we called Magpie Forest

That incident, and the amount of time I spent unattended at what we kids called The Corrals, doing things with the horses of which they definitely would not have approved, convinced them to enroll me in my first riding lessons. This was in Greeley, Colorado - not a dish-faced Arabian in sight. The rancher who offered lessons handed me the reins of a stout chestnut Quarter Horse with the introduction, “His name is Ragweed. We call him that because almost everyone is allergic to him.”

Horses are geniuses at instantaneously reading energy and body language. With other horses, it allows them to gauge what contribution that horse brings to the herd and interact accordingly. Good horse people, consciously or unconsciously, begin to do the same. Is this other individual a natural nurturer, or a sentinel, or a wayfinder? My posture and energy at age 11 told the human instructor that he needed to pair me with a horse who would teach a young girl exhibiting lead-mare-in-training traits how to earn the respect and cooperation of another independent-minded being. Bullying would not work. Clarity of communication and an intent to move as partners might.

Zara and I in 2002, shortly after the “Hellen Keller moment” in which I began to gain her trust

Eventually this memoir will come back around to how the insight about how horses read us translates into my finding another of my life passions, equine guided education, in the year 2001. And how a year later I met the first horse I actually owned, a rescued Arabian mare who was so “wild” that three years after her rescue no one had yet managed to pick out, let alone trim, her hooves. Zara has been my greatest teacher and truest partner, by honing skills I have described being introduced to in my 30s. She taught me subtlety in my use of energy and communication in our partnership at a level that looks like magic; perfected my training in “holding the frequency” no matter what outside disruption or negative voice in my head tries to throw me; and insisted on my ability to hear intuitively even when we are not physically together.

Kūkūilama, inspiring and demanding me to take my game to the next level

Eighteen years later, I was looking for a calm, versatile, mature and well-trained horse to add to the herd, explicitly stating that I did not want another project. Then Kūkūilama demanded a place in my life and heart. The omens were insistent and not to be denied. He was only 3-1/2 years old. Like Zara, he had not been handled much in his first three years of life, although the handling he did have was gentle and competent whereas hers was not. Then he was confused and traumatized by the cowboy way in which heʻd been started under saddle. He shut down and avoided touch, moving with short strides, the fluid Arabian motion absent. Still, this beautiful gelding had my dream pedigree and a clear, soft eye full of curiosity.

He came to me registered under another name - “Kolohe" - which means mischievous or naughty in the Hawaiian language. Heads up, there was a challenging horse in there. I knew I wanted the name to be changed when I updated his registration to show my ownership. But to what? He received his new name in a traditional way; it was divined by someone with the authority to bestow names in Hawaiian. The multiple levels of meaning of “Kukuilama” all have to do with literal or metaphorical sources of light.

Magic - horse - light. The poem links magic and horses. The “Magus” Paulo Coelho came into my life in 1993 because I responded to a synchronicity around being called to be a Warrior of the Light. Horse - magic - light.

I am curious to discover where Kūkūilamaʻs light is beckoning us in this journey of writer and readers as I write on, and we ride on towards the light together. I am sure he will have a lot to say about it as he has opinions about everything. But to see the future, apparently first I have to continue to look to the past. Next week¹ Iʻll be picking up the story where I left off in 1995. Until then, may the horse (magic) be with you!

1. This was 2023 “next week.” In September 2024 next week I will be picking up Kūkūilamaʻs story. See you then!