All women speak two languages:/ the language of men/ and the language of silent suffering./ Some women speak a third,/ the language of queens./ They are marvelous/ and they are my friends. —Mohja Kahf
When asked to describe a gallop, people say it feels like flying, but that's not quite right. It’s more like swimming a reckless, wide-mouthed river. You could easily slip beneath the current but, instead, somehow you float.
Last week, I led a group of fifteen women on a week-long, writing retreat to Zapata
in Mosca, Colorado. It was an intense and healing seven days. Lots of tears and cracking open and sparking dormant desires. Whenever you spend a lot of time in the saddle, you inevitably work some shit out.The last time I spent this much time on horses, I was fourteen and a camp counselor in small town Ohio. I couldn’t afford riding lessons and volunteering at a nearby camp was the closest I could get. On the weekends, we used to sneak the horses out of the stables and into the night fields. My horse, Jellybean, was an old gelding, but at a gallop, he’d go all in. I had no choice but to hold on and ride that thunder out.
At the time, I was only four years back in the U.S. after a childhood spent overseas. I was still acculturating, nodding at pop culture references I didn’t understand, studying American faces to decipher American meanings. But, that summer on horseback, I hovered apart from the midwestern life I’d been flung into. It was Jellybean and me against the world. The aloof girls and deserted lunch tables felt faraway. That summer, there were no locker rooms or proms or pep rallies— only sky, goldenrod, saddle.
Mary Midiff in her book, She Flies Without Wings writes: "Horsewomen often compare riding a horse to learning a foreign language, the difference being that it is a language learned through observation and touch rather than sound and speech.” Midriff adds: "Women have developed a talent for reading nonverbal cues," and argues that this is why they’re especially drawn to horses.
I remember being embarrassed to admit how much I liked horses. Scared to be labeled a horse girl, I kept my summer job under wraps, but horses were a language I learned quickly. A fluency I never forgot.
On a date, I once had a man tell me he always swiped left on women who had a horse in their profile picture. I had just mentioned to him that I’d started taking riding lessons again, and he pressed the matter by saying that, while it was cool that I liked horses, it was good I didn't have any pictures with them. Horse girls are just so uppity, he laughed, and I distinctly remember tipping back my chair in that small fancy restaurant to prepare for a small fancy fight.