The Fountain of Youth
A Praise Song for Water, Horses, and Coming Home
My Natural Habitat
I’ve got a thing for springs and old, sacred wells, those places of clean water where communities sprout and take shape, people coming together around the lifeblood of the earth: water.
My mother asked for a vial of holy water for Mother’s Day this year. She’s delighted by the little bottle I’ve kept on a tiny altar in the back of the farmhouse. We laugh about the kitten avoiding it when he’s filled with the devil and the zoomies.
I waited too long to acquire the goods and was dismayed when I discovered I couldn’t order holy water on Amazon. I thought about buying an empty vial instead, and I googled to see if it was bad form to fill it from the font at the nearest church. Also, I will admit that for a good five minutes, I considered filling it from the tap.
For future reference, filling your small bottle from the font of a church is totally acceptable. Gifting aftermarket, homemade holy water is probably not, but the only source I have for that information is my conscience.
I ended up express ordering a bottle from the Vatican and received bonus points for having it blessed at the intersection of two Popes. It arrived late, but it was worth it.
My obsession with water, wells, fountains, and springs goes way back. My travels form a line of secret watering places that span the globe.
I want to talk to you this week about the Fountain of Youth at my farm. Inspired by a conversation with Lakin, who was glorying with me over the horses here, in their 20s and 30s, and how shiny and healthy they look.
Like water, the essence of the horses can’t be pinned down. If you try to hold water in your fist, it spills over. Same with horses.
So I’m going to write around it all and spend some time in the mysteries.
Let’s get started.
Eat ~ Drink ~ Rest
The foothills of South Carolina are known for the purity of its public water system flowing from two protected reservoirs high up in the mountains. When the city was in its infancy, the first reservoir ran from the base of Paris Mountain — a big, lonely hill removed from the larger chain of the Blue Ridge, and a ten-minute drive from the farm.
There is a lesser-known hike within a state park that snakes through the woods and brings you to this bowl of smooth water, the old reservoir, and the remnants of the pump and pipe system that once brought the water to the city. It’s my favorite local place to visit.
The new reservoirs are at higher elevations and are kept free from human touch by constant patrolling and big, scary signs. There is also a Nature Conservancy easement, and they are one of the first reservoirs in history to be owned fully by a water works. The hardwood forests surrounding the reservoirs filters the water at the source, resulting in minimal additional treatment before it arrives in people’s taps.
It’s considered some of the purest drinking water in the US. I’m super proud of this fact but city water still tastes weird to me because I’ve spent my life drinking from wells.
The old well at my father’s house reached the end of its life when I was young. The water ran muddy with red clay after a rainfall. It dried up completely for a while, and we had to cart water each week from my grandparents’ house on Paris Mountain. The water in those years smelled like plastic from the big trash cans my father stashed in his car trunk to haul the water in.
Some of my earliest memories are of going to the health food store each week to buy drinking water. The grocery stores in the late 70s weren’t shelved with endless selections of water bottles. The one natural food store in town smelled like crushed vitamins and yeast. The water in the bottles still smelled like plastic, but different from the trash cans.
When I was old enough to imagine a different life for myself, I drank tiny bottles of Perrier. At dinner, I filled wine glasses with grape juice and acted self-important.
Back then, water was an indicator of social status to me, meaning: only poor people drank from wells.
I once cared for horses at a farm that pumped its water using an electrical cord, a small contraption, and a hose, drawing water from the creek. That was a lot of work.
It was easy to take water for granted until I become the only person responsible for making sure my horses have a constant supply of it. For as powerful as water is, there are so many things that get in the way of it flowing: drought, freeze, power, fire ants.
Ants send out a signal to the others when they seek warmth in the switch box of a well. One gets electrocuted, and then an army arrives scoping out the scene, and one by one they too get fried. The little mound of their bodies between the switch connectors shorts out the pump system.
The guys who service the well at the farm taught me to keep a little paint brush and a can of ant spray handy to fix the problem myself and get the water running faster than it takes for them to arrive on an emergency call.
What I’m trying to say is — water really is life, and when I moved the horses into the wild, feral farm we now call home, they each took a long, deep drink of the well water and then fell asleep.
Eat. Drink. Rest.
We sure like to make it seem more complicated than that. I know I do.
Our roots reach deeply into the earth and find water. The well connects to an underground river. This land abuts the remnants of an old resort where people once traveled to “take the waters.”
Lakin and I were marveling at the way the horses come here and start to shine from a luster originating deep within their bodies. It doesn’t matter where they came from or how old they are. If a horse is supposed to be here with us, the land allows them to come into their own.
It does the same to us too.
The Source
I’m often asked where I find the horses that come to live and work with us at Bramblewood Stables.
The answer is: from everywhere.
I’ve found horses in fields, on the internet, by accident, and by word of mouth. I’ve bought horses, borrowed horses, and traded care for a horse’s presence.
The horses at this farm come from all over, but the single unifying characteristic of all is that each of them came here with a story.
Kind of like the humans — our people come from all over too and each of us took winding paths to arrive here.
You know how you need to be really comfortable somewhere before it feels safe to remove your mask and present your true self? Horses do that too.
When a new animal arrives, we give them three months to ease into a familiarity with the land, the routine, and the relational expectations of life here.
I bet the same weird time period is true for the humans, but their process is less transparent so most of their adjustments go unnoticed. We don’t watch humans like they’re in a fish bowl, but the horses are viewed like actors on a stage as we watch them closely trying to decipher their stories.
I’m constantly worrying — did that horse just take an off step? Is that one losing weight?
The Shape of Health
Humans are strange. We want our people to be thin and our pets to be fat, a strange contradiction.
Purposeful obesity is rampant in modern horses and metabolic disease is increasingly on the rise. Our eyes have become normalized to a false standard of health.
A 19th-century painting of a fit racehorse would be flagged for starvation these days, with amateur rescuers and keyboard warriors clamoring for more calories.
When a horse first arrives at my farm, we study their comings and goings, develop a menu, tweak their food slowly over time, and focus on movement exercises that encourage the horse to abandon old, protective postures and soften into some familiarity and ease — with us and with their own bodies.
But mostly, we sit back and wait for the horse to show us their true self. During that time of waiting, the water and the land work their magic.
As I unloaded the horses from the trailer our first day on this land, they each took a deep, long drink of the well water, and then they settled in and slept. Water, mixed with relaxation, is a tonic to rival most pharmacies and snake oils.
You know how when you’ve had a massage — or any type of meditation or body work — and you’re instructed to go home and drink water?
That.
Humans are so accustomed to complexity that we’re mostly blind to the most basic element: water.
As the horses settle into their new life at my farm, we stay out of their way. And then one day, we look up and see that a previously dull coat is shining. We start to see the horse’s personality. We begin to hear them speak.
A horse talking is like the sound of moving water. Just when you think you’ve deciphered the rhythm, the cadence changes.
Like water, horses don’t move in straight lines. Their paths seem chaotic to our linear minds, but they are simply finding the path of least resistance.
Humans are resistance embodied. I know I am.
From the people who traveled here long ago to “take the waters” to the horses shining from those same waters today, I’m writing to you this week simply in praise of the most basic, plentiful, sacred element on, in, and above this earth.
We need to tend our waters.
By tending our waters, we’re tending ourselves — and that’s not supernatural. It’s just good sense.
Coming Next Week
Summer camp begins soon at the farm, so next week I’m offering you water in a different form: a guided nervous system regathering session called The Horse Beside You.
It’s not a meditation. It’s more like a drink from a well you’ve forgotten you have access to. It’s short, easy, and fits into the time you don’t have.
I’ll be reading to you, and all you have to do is close your eyes and listen. Many of you have asked how I can bring the herd to you through a screen, and I have many exciting things in store — I’ll be talking about those too in next week’s post. This regathering session is just a teaser.
In The Horse Beside You, you’ll imagine yourself standing beside a horse. You’ll breathe. You’ll notice. And you’ll begin to hear your own body speaking again. The horses taught me how to come back to myself, and I want to pass that along.
Look for it in your inbox next week. It’s yours to keep — a small offering from the herd, and the water that holds us together. And it will come with a workbook filled with prompts to go deeper.
If you haven’t already, subscribe to Stable Roots so you don’t miss it.
Until then — I see you out there doing great work, and as
told me the other day (in case you need to hear it too): You’re doing a great job!Love,
Kim
"Like water, the essence of the horses can’t be pinned down. If you try to hold water in your fist, it spills over. Same with horses." This was the long, cool drink I didn't know I needed until you gave it to me.
Loved this post. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, I don't think anyone drank 'just water.' That focus on water and health came much later. But drinking water from pastic bottles is apparently not the best way to get healthy water. (Prince William is supporting a new technology that can replace plastic with a prodcut made from seaweed.)
When I first came to this area, I was in a Realtors office and there was a book about Greenville that included the history of Chick Springs. From that moment I knew why I chose this town and that it was and had been a healing center. But poor Chick Springs itself...I keep hearing about plans to restore, build a park, etc., but nothing ever seems to happen. I hope it will some day. I'd love to drink the water. And I am so glad to know our reservoirs serve us well.