The Art of Horsemanship

It’s customary in our culture to use the word “art” to describe activity. We often speak of the art of conversation, or the art of the athlete, but we don’t often treat most physical activity as if it exists on the same mysterious plane as drama, dance, music, or sculpture. However, there’s a reason we inherited this old verbal habit from the ancients, and it’s worth exploring the modern incongruity between our words and our actions. More often than not, when we investigate these connections we discover rich meaning behind phrases whose purposes we’ve forgotten.

This year, I’ve had the delightful opportunity to come back to the art of horsemanship. I grew up in Texas, and from the time I was ten until I graduated high school, I rode at a little stable near my house. I’d been obsessed with horses ever since I’d learned what they were, and when I started taking lessons, it was like walking into a new world. But as a child, even a teen, my understanding was limited. I listened to my instructor, did what she said, but without the ability to understand why shifting my weight in the saddle caused the horse to slow down, or why taking a deep breath and straightening my back calmed a horse ready to bolt. I was only painting by numbers—I didn’t have any notion of inspiration for the portrait.

In August, I took out a lease on a green horse. For those unfamiliar with the terminology, a green horse is a horse that is trained, but either so young that his immaturity makes him unpredictable or so newly trained that he’s just as likely to rely on instinct. At seven years old and only under saddle for the past few years, the horse I ride is the equivalent of an eighth grade boy. He’s also a Percheron-Quarter Horse cross; at about 1800 pounds and descended from horses who, for millennia, have been bred to haul heavy wagons, this horse will win every battle. I have no earthly hope of forcing him to obey me. And if I were painting by numbers, I’d have to quit; but horseback riding is an art, not merely a skill. There’s an air of the mysterious about it, and that mystery is the ability of one species to communicate with another.

I haven’t stumbled on a new truth. Xenophon wrote about this in 350 BC, and he was building on previous scholarship from, among others, Simon of Athens and Kikkuli of the Hittite Mitanni Kingdom:

  If you desire to handle a good war-horse so as to make his action the more magnificent and striking, you must refrain from pulling at his mouth with the bit as well as from spurring and whipping him.... but if you teach your horse to go with a light hand on the bit, and yet to hold his head well up and to arch his neck,you will be making him do just what the animal himself glories and delights in.

When was the last time we judged our interaction with each other by whether or not we help one other find what we glory and delight in? If we can’t even do that for the animals that keep us company, how can we hope to do it for the people in our lives? As real life horse whisperer Buck Brannaman said, “If I treat animals this way, do I treat people this way, too? We all know the answer to that.”

The key to horsemanship is not dominance; it’s communication. There is no art in beating a fellow creature into submission. Xenophon refuted that 2350 years ago.

For what the horse does under compulsion, as Simon also observes, is done without understanding; and there is no beauty in it either, any more than if one should whip and spur a dancer.

In a way, horseback riding is a dance. Two partners try to move as one. The art is in the mystery of reaching across a seemingly insurmountable barrier and developing a relationship with a powerful animal not based on fear, but by understanding his needs, fears, and delights, and working with instead of against them. With my horse Minky, I’ve learned that when the other horses in the pasture stampede, he feels responsible for their panic and bolts because he needs to lead them out of danger. Horses’ survival instinct leads them to mimic the emotions of the horses in their herd. If one horse scents a predator and grows frightened, it makes good sense for the other horses to mirror that emotion without seeking verification. If I can show him through my voice and body language that there’s no danger nearby and he can relax, he will. Knowing that, I’ve learned how to tell him to stop being impatient by making sure I’m being patient with him. It’s done more for the order of my own soul than anything else I’ve learned since the last time I was in the saddle.

That’s what makes it an art, not a skill. Skills are actions learned by repetition. Art requires inspiration, a process so elusive we’ve spent our entire human existence trying to define it. But in a society that measures success by strict numbers, we’re in danger of losing one of the most ancient truths of our existence.

We were created to live in a Garden, not a stadium. And when we embrace the mystery of art in our interaction with each other, and with the creatures that surround us, it won’t just bring us virtue we can’t find elsewhere—it will help us better hear the echoes of Eden. Only then can we see the beauty of the relationship that inspired Xenophon and generations of others. Buck Brannaman said, “That horse is a mirror—all your horses are a mirror to your soul. You might not like what you see in that mirror.” Like all art, the art of horsemanship doesn’t just show us what is pretty; it shows us what it means to be human. Sometimes, perhaps oftentimes, it takes looking to another species to learn just what that means.

Comments

[Jessica Snell]

Linds - this is fascinating. Thank you for sharing it!