The Magic of Waiting
What a Sleeping Mare Teaches Me About Patience, Connection, and the Unseen
Magic All Around Us
Magic has been around the barn, as intangible as her namesake, since we hauled her home with the trailer brake system malfunctioning in a jerky, indecipherable Morse code of starts and stops in 2022.
We intended for her to be a school horse in the traditional lesson program, and she was for a while until her subtle signals became loud noise telling us her riding days were over.
Magic is a little bay mare with big, brown eyes and a slight tilt to her head from arthritis in her cervical spine. It makes her look like she’s giving you a quizzical look — a practiced side eye — like she’s studying you and is about to call you on your BS. She’s good at calling out the disingenuous.
When riding didn’t work out, her next job in the farm was being a partner to Billy, a flea-bitten grey gelding who passed suddenly and inexplicably last year. Colic hit him fast during the evening closing shift and the vet on call took one look at him and an ultrasound to confirm suspicions of a kink in Billy’s small intestine.
There’s no coming back from a colic like that.
Colics usually last longer before major decisions have to be made — I’m talking days and sometimes weeks, but the vet urged us to take fast action and ease Billy’s suffering. There wasn’t time to alert the family who so graciously allowed Billy to live with us and I was so involved in the moment that I didn’t realize we’d neglected to give Magic time to say goodbye to her boyfriend until I walked Billy up the dark driveway toward his final resting spot and he let out a single, bold call.
In the barn, Magic neighed loudly back.
Until this weekend, I’d not heard her make another sound.
In the weeks following Billy’s passing, I stood with Magic in the field she and Billy once shared and I felt grief coming off of her in waves.
I was fresh home from the call of whale song in Hawaii and my filter wasn’t clouded by life. I’d connected with something on Hawaii Island that brought me closer to our source, to the information-filled energy that flows invisibly between us all the time. Magic’s mournful presence taught me it was real, this feeling that there was more, to stop second-guessing myself, to get out of my own way so I could swim in the deep, mysterious currents.
After Billy’s passing, I waited for Magic to give me a sign that she was ready to join the herd in another paddock or that I should introduce another horse into hers, but everything in me, and Magic, said to wait.
Today, Magic mingles with other horses in the barn and in the arena, but afternoons and evenings she is a solitary figure on the upper hillside, the first horse seen as you enter the farm. She’s a sentry, keeping watch over the community, but she’s also removed and not an active part of it. She’s intangible, hard to decipher, but her current runs in deep, deep waters.
As we neared the first anniversary of Billy’s passing, I questioned what we should be doing with this little mare. I don’t use Magic with many clients because her no’s are big and her yes’s are subtle. She’s small, but her directness can be scary. She is a master at teaching boundaries but few humans are ready to do the work it takes to learn how to notice and to enforce their own.
has worked with Magic (practiced Magic?) a ton this past year. I trust Laci. She is ready to go deep with horses but she is equally ready to go as deep with herself.Magic insists that we take notice and act.
As I watched Laci with Magic a few weeks ago I was bewildered by what I should ask them to do next. This is weird for me. I usually feel the pull of the next pathway of the horses and humans but like keeping Magic in her solitary paddock despite all my better judgment, it felt like Magic asked us to stay still and steady in a holding pattern.
She asked Laci and I to wait with her, to be still, to listen.
Horses ask this of us all the time, but Magic didn’t suggest it — she demanded it.
Slowly, Magic began to soften with Laci. They connected through groundwork and we saw the little mare take a deep breath, relax her jaw, and doze in a bright corner of the arena near the driveway where the slight grade of the river sand pools the rain into a tiny pond.
“She looks like she may lie down and take a nap,” I said. And this would be cause for rejoicing in any of our unmounted work, a horse feeling safe and secure enough to lie down with nearby humans and have a deep sleep.
But as quickly as it came, the spell was broken and Magic quit dozing. She went back to pushing Laci to where she wanted her to be with her beautiful, white-blazed, bossing face.
Magic faces the world head on.
I respect that.
I want to be more like that.
A Crossroads
The farm is a grand central station of things passing through.
One of the last preserved woodlands in a city that has experienced exponential growth since the pandemic, wildlife seeks the old-growth forests to establish new habitats. Frequently, humans arrive telling me they didn’t know the farm existed but felt the pull to come here.
In the corner of the arena where a little pond forms when it rains, there’s a crossroads of paths leading to the paddocks and up the hill to the well house. Between them is a copse of trees and vines shrouding an old, rusty gate that leads nowhere. We call this the haunted corner of the ring because of the way otherwise unbothered horses will spook at the woody shadows.
Beneath this little grove, the water pipes supply the farm from the nearby well that connects to an underground river. Whenever sensitive people walk the land they comment on how there is water everywhere beneath them. And the entire area was a Cherokee landmark revered for its rich, mineral springs.
The bathtubs in the farmhouse and the buckets and troughs in the barn are lined with mineral deposits that we scrub and soak before filling. When my first load of horses moved here, they stepped off the trailer, drank deep, and slept.
The Other Side
Matilda was a horse made of dreams. One day I’ll write her whole story but this essay is about Magic and how learning to patiently notice what is happening around me changed my life.
Matilda is a part of this because of the nature of her passing. She was the kind of horse that inspired artists. I have a pencil drawing of her likeness framed and propped in the dining room window, a picture sent to me by someone in prison who drew Matilda without ever having met her. He said she visited him as he slept not long after she died. I also have an oil portrait of her on the wall that occurred by inspiration in an artist’s group.
The way Matilda left us was notable because she died suddenly and with no warning. This isn’t how horses usually go. She ate lunch with little fanfare and a rider tacked her up for a lesson. They entered the ring brightly and I watched them warm up.
Matilda was huge and white with blue splotches that had faded to barely perceptible grey with age. She was young considering the general combined age of our senior herd but had battled squamous cell cancer since she was a baby — skin cancers are common in light-colored horses.
As she and her rider came down the long side of the arena toward the wooded, haunted corner of the ring, Matilda let out a call like a trumpet, like she saw something in front of her. Her body filled with energy, all her attention focused on something only she could see in the shaded edge of the ring.
She sees a horse, I thought because the manner of her greeting was an enthusiasm I’d only seen horses give each other. But as I turned to look, assuming one of ours or a neighbor’s had gotten loose, Matilda dropped to the ground and was gone within minutes.
She folded in a careful way that gave her rider a chance to get free of the saddle.
I held the rider close and used my body to shield her from Matilda’s seizures as I called out to her mother to come help, but while my logical brain went into emergency action, my heart searched the corner of the ring to catch a glimpse of what Matilda saw in her last moments.
Beyond the Veil
I never stopped looking to find what Matilda saw in the spot by the little rain pond and the island of trees. That corner of the ring adjoins the place in the driveway where Billy called out to Magic on his last walk up the hill.
Time fades the sound of whale song to a story and so much of what has happened this year has been awful and heartbreaking, altering the landscape of the farm and my life inextricably. I spend most of my time trying to calibrate my internal compass so I can catch my bearings.
The demands of living this year haven’t left much time for ghost hunting.
So this past Saturday as I watched Magic and Laci do groundwork, I looked at them with grief caught in my throat.
I finished a coaching session filled with unmistakable serendipity, the kind that made my jaw drop and my bones ache for confirmation of the mysteries, for an assurance of hope.
After the session, I introduced my clients to Laci and Magic and demonstrated how we use our hands along the top line of the horse to offer them space to release any tension they might be holding.
Before I even touched her with my palm, Magic began to yawn.
Magic isn’t a yawner. She rarely releases anything. She isn’t a physically demonstrative horse. She, like the rest of us, has made a life of holding on to her old shit. Laci and I notice kindred spirits when we meet them, and it’s that thread of recognition that keeps us showing up for Magic, looking to her for clues to help us find solutions to our own lives.
Magic yawned. And yawned. And yawned.
Laci and I agreed that if that was all we accomplished with Magic that day it was enough. It was everything we’d been working toward.
I wandered off to introduce the clients to other horses and people. The grief in my throat lessened and I gloried in the flow of conversations and connections.
Laci and Magic moved to the sunny corner of the ring near the little rain pond, parallel to Billy’s goodbye, the spot where Matilda called out to the unseen, the haunted corner by the trees that surprises unbothered horses, the place where the underground river flows to the well, the water that the horses drink deep from and rest, leading the way for watchful humans to notice and do the same.
“She’s about to lie down and take a nap,” I said and motioned for the humans to stand back and give Magic some space.
Magic drowsed in the sun and her knees softened and she sank down into the damp sand like a prayer, like a genuflection of peace, like everything.
Like her unprecedented yawn, Magic went down and slept within the circle of us and the busy Saturday of the ring for the first time.
She’d never done this before.
Magic sleeps lying down in her stall often. When horses lie down out of context, we rule out sickness or sleep deprivation. Horses spend just a few hours of recumbent, deep sleep a week, unlike humans. To achieve deep rest lying down, they have to feel safe and know that the herd keeps watch because they’re immensely vulnerable to predators in this position. A horse will often have a quick lie down to roll, but deep, long sleep is different. We don’t witness it at the end of a lead line often.
Sarah brought a block over for Laci to sit because she knew what was happening was so rare, so incredibly special, that Laci would quietly keep watch for hours if Magic chose. We would gladly act as sentries for this healing sleep for as long as it took.
I videoed Magic and Laci and took photos from every angle, needing to document it, afraid to miss anything — but when I looked at my phone screen I knew I needed to stop everything I was doing and be still in the sacredness of it. Sharing space with this little sleeping horse was an opportunity to be a part of the mystery, to see behind the veil. Everyone felt it. Visitors walking down the drive beside the ring were quiet. They walked carefully, not needing an explanation to join the reverence.
I put my phone down and stood with Laci behind Magic’s back, watching how the line of her spine rose and fell with her breaths.
Magic began to make little sounds. This is normal, caused by the weight of a horse’s body against their lungs as they sleep lying down. The sounds merged into little wuffles, which is also normal because horses dream and talk like we do in their sleep — like how your dog makes little whoops and paw twitches in deep slumber.
Magic’s sounds grew and grew while her nose rested against the damp sand and her legs were folded against her body like a tucked lamb.
Her sounds grew until she called out in full whinnies, a series of loud neighs, the kind of sounds horses make when they’re talking to each other, the way they talk when they’re separated and looking for each other through sound.
Magic talked to another horse as she slept.
Physically, her body showed no distress. She was in utter rest.
Laci and I watched her in amazement but paid attention to each call Magic made as if we could translate her sounds into meaning, into words that made sense to humans.
And then mid-call, Magic rolled and jumped up.
She shook off the sand and went from complete sleep to full motion, searching the arena for something, for someone. There were several other horses nearby but Magic dragged Laci purposefully around the fence lines. She looked desperately for something that no one could see.
As abruptly as it began, it was over. Magic took a deep breath, relaxed her body, and looked at Laci and me as if she said, “What? What are y’all so concerned about?”
The moment passed.
The spell was broken.
Saturday continued on as usual.
Except for me, Laci, and the others sharing space with us in the ring that day, nothing can ever be normal again. Magic’s sleep changed us, or it gave us permission to stop pretending that the things we can see and smell and taste are all there is.
I urged Laci to journal about what happened and I can’t wait to read the experience from her perspective.
There is magic all around us.
And the horses are here to show humans the way home.
Love,
Kim
Field Notes:
I could talk to Jane Pike all day, but it was an absolute pleasure to press record and capture her thoughts on creativity, balance, the role of mystery, preserving our wild lands, and so much more on the latest episode of my podcast. Listen here or find Relatively Stable on all your favorite podcast platforms. Next up I’m talking to US Olympic equestrian Kim Walnes about navigating the unseen through the wisdom of the horse.
Click here to help people in the Blue Ridge Mountains recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Helene.
Click here to help the beloved member of our farm family who is living the daily trauma of unimaginable loss.
The number one thing you can do for me and for this little farm is to read, listen, comment, share and subscribe to my little corner of the internet. Let’s make this world a better place together.
Just beautiful. Amazing when we realize we need to “put our phones down” so we can be fully present. Documentation takes but an instant. Then we watch from the heart and not through the lens. Journaling brings the experience forth as well. This was lovely to read. And I did enjoy a photo or two! Balance always. ❤️
Hearing from your point of view about this experience was amazing. I am beyond grateful to have had you by my side for this amazing moment. I’ve already journaled my view and it will be up soon.