The Point Where Language Stops

It was cold, and the lesson had stretched well into the dark.

My mare had been jigging, tossing her head, nerves and frustration building between us. I was behind the motion—late on every guidance, too sharp for my sensitive mare, and then too late to soften the recoil.

“Hold her in your hand like a cloud,” Theresa said. “Don’t let her slip away, but don’t crush her.”

Over the years I studied with her, I learned more about bringing a horse into focus than any book or clinic had ever offered. And how happy a horse is in that focus—how relieved, even. There was this astonishing place in the center, a place where heat, cold, distraction, fear all fell away. Almost a little timeless bubble I could step into again and again.

But getting there always felt like a small death. Right before the moment of clarity, my mind made one last desperate effort to cling—to unfinished tasks, frustrations, what-ifs, questions, the endless chatter begging for attention. Anything to stay out of the Zone, anything to keep me from simply feeling.

That night I was shivering. My back had stopped following my horse; the cold had crept in and stiffened everything. Seeing this, Theresa walked over quietly, took my reins, and created the shoulder-in for me.

There’s a point where the world of language simply stops—where words collapse under the weight of what feel can communicate. You can say “buoyancy,” but once you feel it, the word itself seems flat, almost embarrassing. There is no vocabulary big enough for the moment a person connects to a person through a horse, the horse becoming the conduit for that electricity.

Because a horse—when things are just so—does more than move; it swings, invites.

It lifts you into a place where definition ends and the rest of the universe begins. The horse carries you out of the world of explanation and into the world of experience.

The mind quiets, not by force but by recognition—by finally noticing the actual, living world around you instead of trying to interpret it.

And in that moment, you understand what your teacher meant all along. Not in words, but in feel.