What Falling Can Teach Us

The first horse to teach me what humans could not

Aloha and mahalo to all my readers, new and devoted. I am excited to be writing about lessons I learned from my equine teachers and how these horses have shaped me into the person you might interact with today. It turns out this is just an extension of my writing memoir for the past year. If you have not yet subscribed to receive my missives weekly by email, you can do so for free with the link below. The Welcome email includes a list of past posts in order in case you want to catch up on the stories of the years 1992 - 1997 when I left Wall Street and was taken on a strange and mysterious pilgrimage.

It was not my first fall from a horse.

Let me preface this story by explaining for non-equestrian readers that when someone says they are an experienced rider and follows that with the statement “I have never fallen off!” - actual experienced riders turn away - or if that is not possible - cover their mouths with their hand to mask their smirk or snicker. Most likely this person is someone who has been on a number of trail rides on “bomb-proof” horses, mistaking the robotic professionalism of their mounts for their own mastery.

So. It was not my first fall from a horse.

I had stopped riding after college for over a decade. Fast forward, now I am working on Wall Street, living in an oceanfront loft on Staten Island. The two neighbors on my floor are a couple, although they donʻt yet share an apartment. They are almost two decades my senior, but we are great company. T happens to be a born and bred, working class New Jersey guy, who in middle age discovered the joy of the hunt. Starting as a completely novice rider, a few years later he owns an Irish warmblood and during the season fox hunts weekly. His girlfriend D has never been on a horse. Somewhere in a middle of a wine-inspired conversation in which I am once again urging her to take some lessons at the barn where he boards his horse, just to see if she might like it, D spits out “I will if you will!”

I grew up riding Western. I had taken two semesters of lessons riding English style to meet my physical education requirement in college. But I had never jumped a fence on horseback. Did I mention the wine? “Fine, letʻs do it!” I responded, throwing my arms out in enthusiasm. “Great!” said T - “Letʻs set a goal for you two to get good enough that that three of us can go on a riding vacation in Ireland or Scotland.” Did I mention the wine? We readily agreed to his suggestion as if resolving to walk a little more often to get in shape for a hike through the woods.

This was a slightly bigger commitment. For starters, we needed to buy leather riding boots, breeches and helmets. A few weeks later, properly outfitted, we began our lessons. A year later, we were approved to ride in a hunter pace, a kind of low key cross-country event that hunt clubs hold in the off-season. It seemed like a logical test of our readiness for a weeklong ride that would include jumping ditches, logs and fences. As inevitably happens to me, I was paired with a horse that came with warnings. And sure enough, at a moment when I was 100% focused on the jump ahead, he made a sharp left turn into the woods, knocking me off on a branch so he could gallop home to the barn.

It was not my first fall from a horse. And so it did not deter me. Another lesson learned. Donʻt let my focus on the future make me oblivious to the partner on whom that future goal depends. But that turned out to be only part of the message.

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Not long after, on one of my business trips to London I stayed over the weekend and flew to Scotland for a romantic interlude. I found a flyer in the Glasgow airport advertising riding vacations at the Castle Riding Centre - a weeklong ride in a circle around the “centre” where each night participants stayed in a different castle, with the horses stabled nearby. The highlight of the week was said to be galloping and swimming the horses two miles across a bay at low tide. I had found our adventure!

And no - I did not fall off in Scotland. We spent the first two days riding in the arena and around the Centre, the eagle-eyed proprietress putting us through increasingly demanding exercises to make sure we were well-evaluated as to our skill level and well-matched with a horse. Then we took off riding for five days, rain and shine (mostly rain), warming ourselves each night over glasses of stout and whiskey in pubs.

Could you canter in a circle without stirrups? Could you drop your stirrups and reins and fold your arms across your chest over a jump? Physical tests of harmony and balance. Mental tests of confidence and ability to trust.

After our grand adventure, D announced sheʻd had enough, but I continued taking lessons, riding every Sunday morning at the barn in the heart of New Jersey hunt country. One week as I warmed up over an easy jump course, rather than pop over a straightforward 2-foot rail, the mare I was riding simply and quietly planted her feet at the moment she was meant to lift them. I sailed smoothly in a somersault over her head and landed on the other side of the jump, still holding the reins in one hand.

Dusting myself off, I looked over at the instructor. That day it was the mean one, Mary. “I donʻt know what just happened!” I exclaimed. Mary shook her head. “Sheʻs trying to tell you to stop trying to jump for her. Just get yourself in position off her back and let her do her job!”

The wide-eyed look on my face must have been priceless. Mary burst out laughing.

“Sorry,” I stammered in amazement. “Itʻs just that…that is exactly the message the team working for me gave me when they filled out anonymous feedback forms for a management course I was in last week. It sounded like I was a dictator who did not trust them enough to stop ʻhanging over their shouldersʻ or ʻjumping in myself.ʻ They literally said those things! I rejected their feedback and had all kinds of rebuttals. I guess now I canʻt deny it.”

“Horses are our mirrors,” Mary responded with a shrug.

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We all have our blind spots, the places we can only see in a mirror. Sometimes we have to “fall” or, as we often perceive it with a change of but one letter, fail, in order to get shocked out of our resistance to constructive feedback.

Studies show that over 90% of communication between sighted people actually happens through visual non-verbal cues, energy, and shared frame of reference. Even so, most of us put more of our trust in the words being exchanged or the stories in our heads, even if we have had enough coaching or therapy to intellectually accept that what you hear me say and what I think I am saying can be wildly different. Horses may have limited vocal expression, but they coordinate action in a herd or with their human in a flawless and elaborate flow when given the chance. And perhaps because words are not part of the equation, the feedback they convey interacting with us via expression, movement, and energy comes at us with the force of unmediated truth.

My next major personal learning experience with horses was in a structured environment, about a decade later. Next week Iʻll write more about my first encounter with my mentor Ariana Strozzi Mazzucchi and her framework for Equine Guided Education.

Until then - ride on!