Author Archives: stablewomen

A friend told me that she saw a headline about a Las Cruces resident returning from Hawaii and some arrest being made. Turns out, the person had a home security system that alerted them while on vacation to a break-in going on in New Mexico. It had nothing to do with me – but my friend had a moment of “hmmmm…”

And well she should have, to be honest. I have had the police called on me several times. Yep. Never justified, but done nonetheless.

When I was a teenager and had moved to New Mexico from West Virginia, I rode the bus back to visit old friends on several occasions. I stayed with friends, even lived in a friend’s car… was the house guest of two junkies and their sister who was trying to heal them and get them sober (I was known as the granddaughter of a healer).

I boxed up a dry tumbleweed in New Mexico and sent it by bus to my friends who were still at the college I had attended. You can see this one coming, I bet.

I had started college at age 15, so was only 17 years old when I arrived on the bus for a visit. The tumbleweed had preceded me. I had attended a school in Virginia, was staying in West Virginia, all on the border, going back and forth with no clue that one of the administrators of my former school had a warrant out for me in Virginia – believing I was bringing drugs there from Mexico. (I had moved to NEW MEXICO, it’s in the USA)

The tumbleweed was the catalyst. My friends had hung it from a light in their dorm room and the faculty member had broken off pieces to have it analyzed, so I was told. He did not wait for results, he apparently was so freaked out that he became convinced I was a drug runner. Here is a photo of me from that year in my life.

Scary chick, eh?

So, I ignorantly was going back and forth each day from VA to WV, visiting friends, visiting the newspaper where my Dad had been production manager and riding dirt bikes on the hill climbing track. A close friend at the newspaper grabbed me one day and told me what was going on. Crikey! He asked me for honest answers about what all I was up to, the tumbleweed and who all I was hanging out with – I was totally honest, nothing to hide, nothing weird going on. He wrote an article about the “witch hunt” and made me even more popular with the faculty and administrators at my old school!

We got me down to Tennessee to catch the bus for home, just in case going through Virginia was gonna be risky, but, as I later learned, the whole thing was dropped. No charges, no more suspicions, no more worries.

Then, decades later, when I was living (alone) in the shack on the side of the mountain, a neighbor called the police at 2:00 AM. She said she had heard my dogs barking and thought there was an intruder – I was asleep in my house with all my dogs on the futons with me – no one had barked.

My house/shack was kinda pitiful and there was no way to lock or block the sliding main door… so, the policeman knocked once then walked right into my house! Then my dogs started barking! He left the door open so three dogs ran out into the open, right past him and he had his gun drawn! I realized how blessed I was that he didn’t shoot any of us.

So, me in only a T-shirt I had grabbed from the laundry basket (I sleep naked), standing with only night lights on the walls and him with a blinding flashlight, I said, “What the f*ck are you doing in here!?” Not my best choice of words… but, WTF, it was an absolute intrusion!

He started the explanation and demanded to see proof that I lived there. Really!?

I turned on some lights. He lowered his weapon. I got my purse and had to show ID, my checkbook with the address, all the while my little dogs were loose outside – in the real middle of nowhere. I told him I had to get my dogs in and just left him there with my purse. After rounding them up and getting everyone safe, satisfying the policeman that I really did live there – sheesh – and finding yoga pants to pull on right in front of him, he finally believed me and left, drove away without even a breath of an apology.

Later many friends pointed out that his ID should have been demanded, recorded and his arse presented to me in a sling through a lawsuit. I don’t know, it was too surreal for me to think about being proactive.

Then, I was in a mobile phone store (won’t say their name!) years back, trying to cancel a contract and even PAY the penalty when I said, “Crikey, it’s just a phone!” And I really did say Crikey. They called in two policemen to wait until I left. Sheeeeesh!

Funny thing is, my grandfather was a WV state trooper and a revenuer; a highly decorated colonel in WWII and had ridden border patrol (he was kinda well known and very well loved, he was a good man). So I have always respected those who serve in the military and as peace officers… granddad was a real peace officer.

On another note, an officer pulled out behind me at night a year or so ago as I was driving home. His left headlight was out. He pulled me over, blinding lights flashing, and came up to the window, “Ma’am, do you know that your license plate light is out?” I looked back at his car… so did he. “Officer, did you know you have a headlight out?” I asked.

“I do now”, he said and he smiled, shook his head and tipped his hat to me. He walked back to his car and drove away. That one time made up for the others. He was just as nice as he could be. 🙂

I spent my morning teaching one nice lesson, then started mucking while watering my trees before the predicted winds. I had hoped to be “before the winds”. I was not.

With my MP3 player clipped to a pocket and the ear bud lines run through my braids, I mucked as long as I could stand the dirt and poop whipping up into my face. My patience was stretched a bit. I’d had 2 and a half hours of sleep last night and no more than 3 hours the night before. The owls have returned.

Now, I love the beautiful owls. Their song is even beautiful… up to a point. WooooHoooo, WooooHoooo, hour after hour from the time I retire to bed until the sky lightens loses its appeal quickly. The owls sing in the big Cypress trees just outside my bedroom window.

And there was carnage – at daybreak, when I fed the horses, I had to scoop up bunny parts (including two heads) into the shovel and transport them to the mass burial site over the fence to the south. So sad. I keep all my little dogs inside after dark. So, the sleep deprivation has me wonkier than usual and the bit of shifting that occurs puts me slightly between worlds. Not necessarily a negative thing, though.

I was visiting with a friend here, discussing my lack of sleep and talking about coffee. I have one more cup’s worth of Kona beans, for tomorrow morning… then all I have is Yuban organic coffee. Sorry Yuban, you ain’t Kona! But a strange deja vu washed over me at that moment with a friend, in the kitchen and I realized (as I always do, as I believe) that I am in the right place at the moment. Wonky, shifted, dazed and confused – I’m where I’m supposed to be. For now. Yet… some sleep would be nice. (can you tell?)

The owls have made me nervous about my small dogs since the dog yard is also right beside the big Cypress trees… but we have a door to close after dark and if my rugs get peed on, so what. They clean up. Makes me think of The Dude. And the Dude abides. I’m just not going to take chances with my beloved ones. I’ve always been overprotective and proud of it. (It’s called love)

My deja vu was intense a couple of times today (being between worlds will do that). And another weird thing did an OZ number on me. I had loaded my favorites list into the MP3 player. Listening as I worked, all was predictable. Then out of the blue, an Australian band (that is NOT on my list nor ripped into my computer!) came on the player. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even skip a beat lately with this stuff, but this one made me ponder awhile. I just figure all will be revealed someday. Or not. I can flow with the weirdness.

But I can’t flow with no sleep. I think I will download the “Dreaming with Jeff Bridges” tape – maybe it will help. The bottle of Shiraz I got yesterday might, too. Not the whole bottle (hopefully), just a glass or maybe two.

My brother is back to his house early today. He got hold of a “bad burrito” and has food poisoning. Crikey. I got charcoal and, later, ginger slices in him. Think I’ll just have nice, safe cereal with soymilk for supper… hmmm, that does not sound good with wine…

The wind is still blasting from the west. The tumbleweeds that were stopped by the fence from the east wind last week have left for the fence line down the road. That can be handy.

My bedroom is on the west side of my house. The wind tonight with owl song and some major mind bending thinking to do about relationships will likely prevent sleep. Perhaps this “cowgirl” needs to start sleeping during the day time… whenever I can… pretend I’m on the other side of the world. Whatever it takes to gain peace.

Chiron is a centaur… “the Wounded Healer”. When I did my first Vision Quest, a centaur came to me. Usually, one communes with a more “normal” animal or nature spirit.

The Vision Quest is simply being alone in Nature for a period of time to “cry” for your vision. I sat on a mountain after the death of several animals I cherished. I was feeling as if I needed to join them. I wanted to leave this life. I needed my vision. When, at night with a bright but not full moon, a being of human and equine merging appeared to me, I knew. I saw my vision as a calling to merge our worlds and our spirits – horses and humans. And to heal. To be healed and assist the healing of others.

To talk about it is difficult because it is a supremely personal experience. Yet, what I gleaned from that experience was something to share.

I had always taught gentle horsemanship and classical Dressage (NOT the kind of “Dressage” being practiced these days), but to become the centaur was a new way to see the relationships. First, I felt a need to abandon all the “let him know who’s boss”; “be the leader”; “you have to win” (and the horse loses?) rhetoric. Yet, we could not have horses walking over and through us and galloping off at will… so, I practiced my connection with my horses and taught a more integrated handling system of compassion and gentleness with enough assertive behavior to maintain safety. It worked. While I was aware that the wild Mustang needed to be approached with a kind of “morphed” horse/herd language expressed by the human – the horse who had grown up with us strange beings had a pretty good handle on what human language was all about.

And the healing, well I had been taught by the best. Herbalists and Reiki Masters and Travelers had honored me with their methods and knowledge. Horses would show me what they needed. As I studied modalities from Ayurveda to using Zeolites, I found that no one system applies in every situation. Simple was always best. Flexibility was imperative.

Chiron… I think all healers are wounded. We are wounded by loss. We are wounded by life, even wounded by love. What makes a healer rise from the devastation a wound can inflict is an awareness of things much larger than ourselves. Voices calling us to task from our own heart, singing us across the pain to see through new eyes. We become the merging of life and death, recognizing the bound relationship between the two and the truth that neither need be feared.

I am grateful for the times I was (and will be) guided by forces of Light and Love. It is truly the only way to live a life full of reason and, ultimately, joy.

Onward.

If someone’s life is a little bit better because I exist – then my life has meaning.

I was just turning out some horses while the two elderly dogs I took in are sleeping on their cushions, covered up and cozy. I watch the bunnies who hop up to me to say good morning and the quail who bring their babies right to the water while I am close enough to touch them. They all trust me. They trust me because I love them. I genuinely cherish and will care for every being who lives here. Period.

That love is healing. It also creates an environment where the horses are “trained” and developed with so much compassion that they are willing to help us and teach us. They know they are safe. Even if something goes awry, no one is chastised, no one feels diminished.

I have been “standing back” and watching the horse world work its way through “leadership”, “herd mentality”, “chasing”, “forcing” and pretty much confusing a lot of horses – who, by the way, are so deeply capable of loving us that they try to comprehend and comply with all we ask no matter the methodology… Good on you, horses… you so often prove to be the higher life form.

This isn’t negative on people – I love people, too. Most of us cherish horses and are working to do the “right things”. If we can fill all of our “Wells of Experience” with positive “drops” of love based experiences, we will all grow together.

Just as a horse approaching a round pen – where a previous equine was brutalized, chased or frightened – will feel the energies and be reticent to enter that pen; a place filled with and surrounded by love will draw all beings into the “circle” and heal what needs to be healed.

Compassion Not Compulsion

The outside rein is the regulator. The inside rein softens. Bend a horse by stretching his outside not by contracting his inside.

The horse’s nose tilts toward the side that needs more leg aid.

Yield from base position, do not take.

If in doubt, start over.

Some things are real mind benders for me (and I often use a different word than “bender”). My first time to go anywhere in years was the Hawaii trip. I went on that incredible trail ride across mountains of pastures and we rode until the sun set.

I rode with a great family whose daughter had never ridden. Her Mum was an experienced horsewoman and her Dad had ridden, so we all watched out for the girl and the wrangler had her on an awesome horse. I enjoyed that ride so much that I dream about it once a week or more.

We all said our goodbyes in the dark after the ride and exchanged emails.

Days later, my cousin took me to Mauna Kea to see the telescopes, then we stayed in Hilo and went to the volcanoes. I still am in awe of the entire experience. At the volcano, we were walking around the park when I heard, “Katharine!”… this was puzzling for me since I knew no one besides my family on the island. I am used to people seeing me at the market here at home or at a park or a fair (and there are hundreds of students I’ve taught just in the past couple of years). But in Hawaii?

I kind of ignored it, figuring it must be an exclamation for some other Katharine/Catherine.

Nope. It was for me. It was the Mum from the trail ride (what were the chances!). I had the best time being able to visit with that sweet family again. And another example, just like so many thousands of them in my life, of the synchronicity that I live if I just flow and observe and enjoy. I could let myself get very confused by life, but I just choose to love this life fully and hold those I love and try to love in my heart always.

Life is its own answer. I’m feeling a great power in loving people, even if they are not involved in loving me. That isn’t the point of love… it isn’t bartered or divided up. Love is its own answer.

I had a dog who was my soul mate. Namaste’ was a male English Setter who I assisted in his birth – and lived in a shower stall with him for 10 days as he barely survived the horrid disease “Parvo”. I sat with him adjusting IV’s as he expelled blood from his bowels into the drain and I held him, gave him Reiki and gathered the vomit. My human partner at the time brought me meals and spelled me so I could brush my teeth and use the toilet.

Namaste’ lived and after a year of being anorexic, he thrived for years. During the Parvo he received plasma and his mother, who barely survived the whelping of his litter, had to have transfusions and an emergency C-section for her last puppy (I paid on those Vet bills for 2 years). I had to raise her puppies on bottles (feedings every 3 hours around the clock) because she was so ill… with her on a mattress in my room and the tiny puppies in a basket. One night, one of the puppies, eyes not open yet, managed to get from the basket to her to try and nurse. I awoke to find them and I still cry at the memory of the sweetness it expressed.

The reason for this dog’s birthing and health problems was an insidious preservative (Ethoxyquin) that was in the “high quality” dog food we were feeding (decades ago). The legacy of that poison was a family of canines needing extra care throughout their lives.

Namaste’ later got pleuritis and my Vet allowed me to live with him for 3 days and nights in the kennel at the clinic, holding him, monitoring his IV, giving Reiki and echinacea to him around the clock. He healed well.

Whenever I had to take him in to the Veterinarian, I had to carry him. Literally, and he was big. But, he had such PTSD from his past, he was terrified… I couldn’t just be brutal with him. He would always hold his forehead (third eye) against mine. He would hug me with his forelegs. I felt in my heart that he must have been the puppy to get out and find his way to his Mum, although I am not certain of it.

He and his Mum and my little Basil were my family for years. The day that Namaste’ had to be euthanized to stop his suffering (he had nasal cancer and I used a baby’s syringe to suction the blood from his sinuses while giving him herbs and pain killers and asking him each day if he was ready to pass…) he walked calmly into the Vet’s office and lay in my lap through the process. His ashes sit beside me with his Mum’s ashes and Basil’s.

After his passing, one night I awoke from a “dream” where he sang a song to me that was then embedded in my brain… a song I had never heard. “Look at the stars, look how they shine for you… and all the things you do…”

Months later, I fell asleep with the TV on PBS. I awoke to Coldplay (didn’t know them) on Austin City Limits singing the very song that my ghost dog had sung to me in a dream. I did not know the name of the song. I bought CD’s until I finally heard the song… Yellow… YELLOW! I would never have figured it out to be called Yellow. I liked listening to it. My brother advised me never to tell that story to anyone. I kept it to myself.

Now, I don’t care how wonky it might seem. I am surrounded by animals I adore, my life has been filled with animals I adore. I have no problem considering that someone I loved so deeply could connect with me from another realm, even someone of the canine persuasion.

A friend lost his dear dog this week. It brought this flood of feelings to me. So much has happened here in the past year, my heart is both full from the love and aching from the losses. So, I will share, every now and then, the stories of Namaste’ and his siblings (there’s more) and of Basil and her amazing, herbal life.

In the end, it isn’t how the world sees you – it’s how your beloved companions have seen and been touched by you that matters. It’s how you see yourself.

My best aromatherapy is a bag of fresh carrots. As a horse “crazy” child, that bag of carrots meant joy to the horses I visited at Art & Aggie’s Upper Valley Stable in El Paso, Texas. My wise Mum would leave me there all day on Saturday and Sunday every week where she would lease a horse to be “mine” each month through the summer.

Because I was able to ride and learn from so many different horses, it was better (in retrospect) than if she had been able to buy me my own horse. Although, at the time, it just felt like second best with a huge gap between it and first best.

To this day, over 40 years later and hundreds of horses later, I still get the butterfly tummy feeling when buying carrots at the market. Their color and scent have the ability to trigger the best memories from my young childhood – a time of brutal sadness and confusion in almost all other ways. Horses kept me sane. Horses kept me alive.

So, when anyone asks me about the benefit of having kids connect with horses, I can tell them realistically that horses will be the best thing they give their kids. Really.

Beyond the obvious learning of responsibility, resilience, compassion and patience; a horse will require honesty, self control and kindness from a person of any age. Not livestock; not a pet – a horse is a companion of the soul and a sacred vehicle of strength and swiftness capable of transporting one out of the mediocrity or the torture of a less than perfect home life… or a life with a disability… or an experience of horror… horses heal us.

So, I grab a bag of carrots and share them with my horses remembering, as if it were yesterday, the joy of doing so all my childhood. I smell the carrots and chew on some and delight in the process. When friends bring carrots for the Dharma horses, it pleases me to see joy all ’round and to know how healthy the treats are.

Pure and simple happiness.

Hot water always heals me. Especially mineral filled, super heated water from deep within the earth. After several weeks of fighting a respiratory ailment, I decided to treat myself today (on my birthday) to a long soak at the hot springs just north of here in New Mexico.

The pool in my room of choice was 112 degrees this morning. The steam rising from the water cleared my lungs and the deep heat, after I worked my body all the way into the water, loosened my joints and pulled the pain away from my neck and my fingers. It was the best choice I could have made for this day.

I had been missing all the water in Hawaii. My visit there had re-hydrated my skin and opened my breathing. Back to the desert and I found my skin drying out again and breathing dirt made my lungs more vulnerable…

Today felt so good! I spent 50 full minutes of my hour submerged and slightly spacey from the intense heat. External, cooler air passed continuously through the room by way of several vents and the ceiling fan keep it all in motion (I felt a little strangeness from the strobe effect of the fan and muted lights).

Being underground in the water was like being hugged by the Earth.

The drive north then home was its usual interesting event with the exception of the perpetual music from a Counting Crows CD stuck in the player… this disc has been refusing to eject for weeks… some cruel, weird joke played on me by the Universe (like so many others), I have listened to August & Everything After several hundred times, I’m sure… recently. An “album” I loved, then hated, then loved again, now feel frantic about – yet, even hundreds of times, it’s better than what’s on the radio (this attitude of mine might explain my never hearing back about the job at the radio station).

It felt good to be around the rivers and the lake. It felt great to be in the geothermal waters! I feel so much better tonight.

My brother took me out for a fancy dinner. Tomorrow I get a big load of hay and the special ed kids come to muck horse pens. I am starting “Forbidden Planet” on the TV in the bedroom and trying to get the dogs all calmed down (they were very excited to see me after a long day away, then my leaving again!).

I don’t know what this next decade holds for me. I know that I will appreciate New Mexico more… from White Sands to Hot Springs to forests, lakes, sparkling caverns, vast high desert and deep canyons… from ancient ruins to outer space, I just love this place!

The Heart Sutra is a “story”, a kind of “song” that is chanted by Buddhists of my Soto Zen lineage. I chant it in English and in Japanese (phonetically). My brother and I chanted it as our Mother died in Hospice – me on my knees at the right side of her bed, Billy on his knees at the left side. When in Hawaii last month, I chanted it quietly each night as I sat on my bed, looking out the open, west facing windows at the sea, the night sky and the lights of Kailua, Kona. I wept each time until the last two nights. As Hawaii healed me, I became more aware of parts of that Sutra.

In part of the Heart Sutra near the “end”, we chant about a dharani – “It completely ends all suffering, know this as truth and do not doubt, so set forth this profound wisdom dharani and declare, Gone, Gone Gone, to the other shore, attained the other shore, to beyond the other shore, having never left…”

I have led this chant a thousand times when I ran the Zen Center; I have chanted it thousands more times when I sat Zazen in the city and at the Tubac (AZ) Meditation Center. I know this Sutra.

But I did not know the “other shore” until I sang my mother to the other side then sat on another shore, strangely thinking about even another shore I wish to know…

Admittedly, my mind has been toggled and challenged in ways it has never known – but the cracking of the shell that encases my doubts, fears and comprehension has opened my heart again. I saw the loving couple (family of mine) who hosted my visit to the island and felt the rhythm of their lives spent helping each other (and helping me!) and I realized that a relationship really does have the possibility of working, of being based on compassion. The reasons that I would not fully believe such a thing are the relationships I have experienced myself and the sorrow of my parents’ lives.

Watching a couple who care about each other but do not smother each other gave me hope. And, since it has been years since I entrusted my heart to another (with the exception of the man I loved last year but never touched), I feel no urgent draw to “find love” – no need for a “Valentine” right now!! I just have a settled sense of the world being softer and brighter because I actually know love can happen, last and heal.

I wake up each morning to four precious dogs who adore me (and I them) and I waddle outside, half asleep at daybreak to feed seven loving horses who watch out for me and thank me with big neck hugs and slobbery kisses on the top of my head. I know love.

And I know how to love. One thing about this magical place called “Dharmahorse” is that all life matters. We have literally hundreds of bunnies here. There is a bunny I’ve known for 3 years now with a withered front leg and one with a mangled, but healed, face who I’ve known for 4 years – I sit with them and do Reiki for them.

We have a big bull snake and a younger one, 3 roadrunners, 6 hawks, 2 owls, at least 100 quail, 2 tarantulas, countless doves and prairie dogs, dung beetles, lizards and horned toads by the dozens. We are all safe here.

And the “tribe” of students, friends and even my ex’s (!) are a gathering of loving spirits, respectful of life.

“Attained the other shore, to beyond the other shore, having never left…”  I get it. I think about a man on the other side of the world, at “another shore” and I have a place in my heart that belongs to him forever. And I think about Hawaii and my gratitude for how the Big Island welcomed me, wrapped me in love and healed a very broken person (me), my heart holds that other shore deep inside forever.

So, bulbs are pushing up through the earth here, trees budding, bunnies dancing a mating tango and horses shedding copious wads of hair (too early, I fear, but they likely know better than I do) – all signs point to a very welcomed spring! The warm sun feels good on my face. My backpack stills smells like Hawaii! I look through photos and remember every moment. And now it is time to make some good, new memories… to reboot this life and get riding again.

I have a little plan held deep inside my soul, a plan to travel more. There are other shores I need to sit upon. But, I will live every moment here fully as well. If I feel an overwhelming need to feel sand between my toes – I know where to go close by!

^ White Sands, New Mexico ^