Laura
I have been writing books for 20 years and have lived in Montana for most of them. I’m originally from the city—Chicago, New York, Boston, Seattle. In my city years I did two things: I worked and I wrote books. My life was in balance. But then I had kids and my life as I’d known it became undoable. Something had to give, and I felt desperate because I couldn’t imagine how to live my life without all the above. I never dreamed that the solution would come in the way of a large rectangular state abutting Canada, with an entire population smaller than that of Chicago. That…and horses.
There we were—my husband with a great new job in a mountain town, and me with the opportunity to be a stay-at-home mother/writer, both of us exhilarated and terrified. We were stone silent as we drove our Volkswagen Vanagon into the Flathead Valley, staring at a glorious mountain-surrounded lake, the cleavage of the canyon which leads to the towering spires of Glacier National Park, and the ski mountain which would hold court over our small town and the next two decades of our lives. We were stunned.
Soon we realized that there was so much to do in this wondrous corner of the world, that we’d never be able to do it all. It was an embarrassment of riches. Conversely, in the way of man-made things, the city-spun sides of us were confused. I’d been accustomed to balancing my writing life with culture: bookstore readings, ballet, symphony, ethnic restaurants. There was little of the stuff humans created in the way of non-physical excellence in those years here, and I’ll admit it, I was a bit lost. Okay, a LOT lost. I wasn’t a great skier. I was afraid of grizzly bears and hence, afraid to wander in those towering spires of Glacier National Park. I wasn’t much of a river person—running class 4 rapids and rolling kayaks all seemed like bloodsport. I just wanted to be an artist, take care of my kids, and enjoy the elbow room of Montana. Those three things seemed bloodsport enough.
But you couldn’t buy a cup of coffee without someone asking you if you’d been up on the ski hill, or on an epic three day backpack trip in the Park, or climbed the ski mountain on your mountain bike, or run the river, or bagged the buck, or ridden horses into the Bob Marshall Wilderness packing mules. Everyone was so physically engaged in this community, and I simply wasn’t. I didn’t know how to be in my body. My life was out of balance, and I was sick of it. So I asked myself a question:
What is it that I like to do besides write? What outside of writing inspires me and wakes me up to my fears and moves me through them in a way I love and am passionate to visit day after day? What do I know of my physical body in the world, outside the cerebral world of writing and culture?
The answer was horses.
I’d been obsessed with horses as a child, sitting in my bedroom window seat reading every book that you probably read too. Oh to have a horse. To hop on and go hell-for-leather through a field somewhere. I rode as much as I could as a child. Whenever I got on a horse, something happened to me. Something that I couldn’t name, but suddenly, all the things that seemed hard about life, went away. It was how people describe mediation or intense prayer. I loved that feeling. But eventually I went off to school and forgot about horses. And found that meditation, that prayer, that ease…dare I say that freedom…in writing. Until my late 30s in Montana, looking for balance, asking my question:
What do I love that puts me in my body that is natural to me? Not forced. What balances out my writing life of the mind, but requires the same sort of third eye aperture? Instinct. Surrender.
And I started asking around. It’s amazing what happens when you get deliberate about your life. When you stop saying no and start saying yes. Within days, I was sitting with a locally respected horse woman—a horse whisperer really, which Pat Parelli surely is as well, talking about horses. How they inspire us to be natural and loose and centered and in the moment. About how they teach us to go with situations, no matter how scary they can be, rather than fight them. About how you don’t have to fight to win. And that if you do, with horses, you’ll likely lose. “And,” she said, “when we’re really one with our horses, it doesn’t have to be hard.”
That’s what did it for me. Here was something physical that at its best, brought on our natural state. If that’s not the definition of freedom, I don’t know what is. It was the yin to my writing yang, where I am most focused, and where I allow myself that presence of mind and heart and craft. And in that place…it feels natural. It feels easy. If horses would mirror that experience, but engage my physical being, then I was sold. So I bought a horse and worked with this woman using many different natural horsemanship techniques, including playing the Parelli games. And when we were ready, we ventured out to all corners of the valley, finally calling it home. That was my answer to balance.
Where else in life can we meet minds with what was originally a wild animal, ride it, and become one? Where else does predator meet prey and find a synchronicity that busts through fear and finds freedom and even grace? Where else is this dancing? I don’t honestly know. I simply needed it, found it, and my life is now in balance because of the answer to my question: horses.
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