VertigoGirl: 365 Days of Change: Horse Whispering

365 Days of Change: Horse Whispering

DAY 6 - COURAGE (August 26, 2012)

Summer of 1968: Our eyes passed over each other suspiciously as I was hoisted up by my older brother into the skittish horse’s saddle. There was something wild and pensive about those dark, glassy eyes that made me gulp hard; my limbs suddenly shifting from relaxed to rigid as I teeter-tottered to find stirrups and understand how to hold a set of reigns. My brother grinned from ear to ear as I searched his face for what I was supposed to do next. “Just hang on to the reigns, Lolly,” he beamed, “you’ll be fine, this will be fun.” So I trusted him, and tried to become invisible on the back of this snorting beast as if that intention in itself would settle things down. It was never his fault. And I never held a grudge towards the horse.

I wrapped my right hand around the leather reigns – once, and then twice, slowly flattening my left hand on the horse’s silky black and white mottled hair. One step forward, then two, and back again - a shift to the left, and then the clouded sky suddenly came into full view as my neck snapped sharply backwards and both legs flew up – folding me into a gymnastics-style launch off the horse's back. The hit came fast and hard with lights and colors and cleared the air right out of my lungs. An acrid taste of metal filled my mouth, so I kept spitting out the blood. I couldn’t move. Pain shot up and down my back. I began to cry, but no sound came out as the startled circle of faces filled my blurry view.

The memories of concussion, kidney damage that has left me vulnerable, and my mother’s hysterical reactions were not so far removed by time that they couldn’t be freshly summoned by resting one hand on a horse’s head. And there it remained. It took forty-four years to garner the courage to get back onto a horse. I wish to thank gentle “Cheyenne” and her Okotoks-based owners for offering to help me conquer that fear after I hiked Mount Ware this weekend.

Courage amidst fear is something we have to be ready to embrace, on our own seasoned terms. We can spend an entire lifetime waiting for it to take all the responsibility of liberating us, or take that leap of faith that says the window is now, or not at all! We all live with fears in one form or another. Courage whispers in our ears that it's ready, when we are. Listen for it. Then listen to it.

"Courage is being scared to death - and saddling up anyways." - John Wayne

Update - August 28, 2012: Congratulations to Spencer Madden, friend and fellow scrambler who found this story inspiring enough for him to take on his fear of "man-made heights!" Here he is standing on the windowed floor of the CN Tower in Toronto, after mustering up the courage to just make it happen. Good work, my friend!