The Defender

Last night, a friend asked me why I love horseback riding so much.  I told him that when I’m on a horse everything else melts away.  There is a partnership that is forged, bonded and welded in a way that can’t be recreated anywhere else.  Together, you and the horse are bridging two completely different worlds, and learning to understand and communicate with each other in order to accomplish something.  It synergetic to be a part of something so miraculous as communicating with a being other than your own kind, witnessing the intelligence they have and being united, her legs walking as yours.  There’s also much to learn when observing a broken in horse.  In responding to the rider’s gentle nudgings and promptings, the horse is demonstrating total trust and respect.  They are surrendering control and power when they don’t have to.

I spend a lot of time with animals, especially dogs and horses.  It is my job and pastime and I love it.  This week was no exception.  Between house sitting, dog walking, kitty checking, horseback riding, and juggling my sister’s dog and my own kitty, I’d say animals were my best friend this week (with the exception of my actual best friend who helped with the juggling act).  I concluded my busy week with hiking up to my childhood stomping grounds, Deathsmith Canyon, with Jax this afternoon.  We explored new trails hidden behind overgrown Aspens and Cottonwoods.  As we made our way through a pathway that had secretly been hiding here my entire childhood and adolescent life, I began to ponder upon the beauty in hiking to new places.  The aromas are unlike any you’ve experienced before, your step is slightly more attentive as your foot learns the depths of the new earth beneath it, and the scenery is unlike any other landscape you have ever seen or will ever see again.  It is a process of discovery and exploration that also expands your mind to new places.  Jax was loving it too, bounding ahead and periodically looking over his shoulder to make sure I was behind him, or lying down directly in the streambed that occasionally meandered through our path.   Having spent so much time with creatures of the furry kind this week, and hiking this trail with little Jax, my expanding mind was filled with a love for all living things.  I realized that, although I don’t own any of these animals that are in my life, I consider myself their temporary guardian and mother.  They are vulnerable and innocent.  They are pure and nonjudgmental.  What you see is exactly what you get.  They have mastered the skill of being totally present in the moment they’ve been given.  In this vein of thought, I started to ponder where this affinity for animals all began.

I consider myself a biophiliac, craving the closeness of nature, and since animals are organically part of the earth it makes sense that I would be drawn to them.  But I think the answer to this question runs deeper.  Let me rewind to my childhood and get philosophical for a minute.  I have always been a defender of the quiet, vulnerable kind – be it people or animals.  I remember a situation with a childhood friend who was extremely shy.  We were in a church play together.  While we were choosing parts, everyone started to speak up on what part they thought my friend should have; because she was quiet, they must have assumed she had no opinion of her own and didn’t ask her.  I piped in and said with a childlike force, “Why don’t we ask her which part she wants!”  I’ve found myself in many situations similar to this throughout my life.  I don’t know where this type of assertion comes from considering I was extremely shy myself.  I speculate it’s for that very reason that I have evolved into a defender.  I was shy because at a young age I felt acutely aware of other humans and the energy they were emitting.  I realized their powerful skill for judgment, which if used recklessly (in my little, child world) was the most powerful weapon in destroying ones soul if you let it.  This was all so different than animals, who lack that type of judgment and expectation.  They were safe and always accepting of a self-conscious little girl.  Plus, they had vulnerability and defenselessness that drew me to them as their defender and lover.  And now, all these years later, animals have continued to find their way into my life, but now I get to give back for all they gave and taught me as a child.  I get to be their defender, their guardian, and stand-in mother. <3