Horse Time

     I glance down at my watch and say, "Time is about up.  One more round of the arena and then it's time to dismount and give your horse a thank-you brush.

    "But I just got here," comes the plaintive reply.

    I understand.  I really do.  Horse time is different from regular time.  It slips through your fingers  like water, fast, fast, fast - so fast you hardly notice the minutes galloping away.  You arrive at the barn, breath in the familiar scent of hay and warm horse, and suddenly an hour has vanished.  Horse time is elastic, unpredictable, and utterly indifferent to clocks.

    At 80, I understand the relativity of time more than ever.  I am not sure where the years have gone; how they managed to sneak past me while I was mucking stalls, tightening girths, or brushing mud off a patient steed, but I do know this: horses have kept me moving, kept me grounded, kept me healthy in body and spirit.  That is the gift they give, quietly and without ceremony.

    But time has a negative side too, one that races faster than Seattle Slew.  Blink, and it's gone.  The moments of delight - those soft nickers, those warm breaths on my cheek, those perfect circles in the arena - flash past so quickly I sometimes wish I could grab them by the tail and hold them still for just a little longer.

    My days revolve around the barn.  Morning feed and scoop.  Mid-afternoon check-in.  Evening rounds before bed.  Unless I have an appointment, I am blissfully oblivious to he clock  More than once I have returned to the house to find my husband looking mildly concerned.  "What took you so long? I was beginning to think you were hurt of something."  I'm flattered he noticed I was missing, though I'm always amused that his concern never quite motivates him to leave the recliner or turn off the television.  For me, time with the horses is meant to be savored.  It is not a time for watching a clock.

    I sympathize with my students.  Their sessions are usually an hour, and if someone is scheduled after them, I do have to enforce that boundary.  But I tend to be generous with the "hour."  I understand their desire to linger.  Horses invite lingering.  They invite presence.  They invite a kind of attention that modern life rarely encourages.

 

    Riding is only a small part of the partnership.  I have spent hours simply being with my horses.  Grooming is soothing for both horse and human, a shared meditation.  I have taken books out to the pasture and read with a horse standing nearby, occasionally nudging me as if to remind me that literature is fine, but carrots are better.  Combining two pleasures (reading and horse companionship,) creates a kind of timelessness.  Time becomes irrelevant, or perhaps it becomes something gentler, something that flows rather than ticks. 

    I have known adults who come to the barn not to ride, but simply to exist in the presence of horses.  Horses are extraordinary listeners.  They don't check clocks.  They don't rush conversations. They don't interrupt.  They simply stand with you, breathing with you, accepting you. I don't believe they understand time in the human sense - except when it comes to meals.

    Horses may not have clocks, but their stomachs certainly do.  If I am late with feeding, I am met with anxious heads hanging over the fence, ears pricked, eyes wide with equine indignation.  But beyond mealtimes, I am not sure horses regard time at all.  Horse time is something they reflect back to us, our own longing for slowness, for connection, for meaning.

    There is one moment when horse time slows to a crawl: when a horse is sick and I'm waiting for the veterinarian.  Recently, Bay went three-legged lame.  I called the vet's office more than once, then waited for the doctor to arrive.  She was on another appointment, and the delay was reasonable, but time stretched unbearably.  Every minute felt like an hour.  Horse time is seldom what I would prefer.

     Many of my horses have lived into their thirties.  That has never been enough time.  Never.  I cling to them, to their familiar faces and steady hearts.  I'm doing that with Bay right now, holding tight to every moment, knowing how precious each one is.

    I remember working in the library.  As much as I enjoyed that job, there were certainly times when I became a clock-watcher, counting the minutes until I could go home.

    Home to horses.  Home to a different kind of time.  Home to a way of measuring life not in minutes or hours, but in heartbeats, hoofbeats, and the quiet companionship of beings who ask nothing more of us than presence.

    Horse time is unlike any other method of counting the minutes, days, and years.  It is the time that has shaped my life, sustained my spirit, and taught me again and again, that the best moments are the ones we allow ourselves to linger in.