I was nine years old when I met my first four-legged Angel. She was beautiful, incredible and all mine.
Her flaming-red hair glowed in the summer sun like perfect marshmallow roasting coals, especially when she was well groomed or freshly bathed. In her large brown eyes there was a kindness and a wisdom known by those who have lived long and well, but with their share of trials and tribulations. Her broad forehead was the perfect resting place for my cheek.
More than any other place on earth I loved to go to her place. Her place was one of quiet, natural order. Life there had a cadence and a rhythm all its own. It was simple, straightforward and made sense. The silence there was comforting, not unnerving. It bespoke of peace and calm and was, after all, exactly as it appeared. So unlike the tightly strung silence I was seeking respite from. To this day, the smell of a barn, a tack room, a feed room, dust dancing in strands of sunlight to the sounds of sparrows tending their nests in the rafters fills me with a calming sense of peace I rarely find anywhere else.
An Aries-born fire-child, I was too proud to show pain or ask for the attention I so desperately craved. With no outlet for all the soft feelings I wanted and needed to give, caring for her in all the many ways a horse needs to be cared for were, although I didn’t realize it then, a gift. Cleaning her stall, grooming her, making her bran mash with hot water, carrots and molasses mixed in on cold winter nights, making sure her blanket was secure, her stall clean and her tack well tended all allowed me to learn one of the most important lessons anyone can ever learn: To give is to receive. By her example, she allowed me to practice and receive unconditional love, showing me that sometimes the best parts of love are silent, needing no words to be understood, given or received.
Riding connected my mind, body and soul. I didn’t just want to ride. I needed to ride. During the years we were together, I learned much about riding and more about life. How I wish I could have understood and appreciated it then as I do now. For it is only with hindsight that I realize just how much she meant to me, how much I learned from her and how rare and special pure love is.
When we rode we rarely used a saddle. Just a bareback pad or an Indian blanket and we were on our way. The sound of her hooves clip-clopping along as we rode and the gentle rocking motion my body fell into as she moved were medicinal and meditative. On her back I could be anyone, anywhere. I was a rodeo queen proudly carrying my country’s flag around the arena at a gallop, waving to the crowd as they cheered us on. I was an Indian princess on my trusted pony riding across wind-swept plains with my tribe. In the blazing summer sun, I was once an Egyptian goddess riding through the ancient city of Heliopolis on my way to the cool waters of the Nile. Sometimes I was just me.
She was a natural born teacher. She taught me about Cause and Effect. I learned early on that when you ride if you are not responsible and don’t pay attention (cause), you will eventually get hurt, stepped on, or end up on the ground (effect), which generally hurts quite a bit. Over the years, I’ve discovered that this lesson expands quite nicely to cover many other areas of life besides riding.
She taught me about patience. She knew her sometimes-stubborn charge learned best by experience and never once abandoned me after I hit the ground and needed a few minutes to regain my senses and my breath. Instead, she would stop, turn around and walk back to where I lay. Standing with her lowered head over my chest, she would patiently wait.
She taught me about tolerance. Never holding a grudge, with a knowing look, she would wait for the effects of my cause to pass so that we could be on our way.
She taught me about loyalty during a period in which, even though she was free to roam the acre of land that we lived on, she still chose to lie down and nap below my bedroom window.
She taught me about trust. How to trust others by how they act, by their body language, and myself by how I felt inside. Sometimes late at night, unable to sleep, I would slip silently out to her stall. She would be lying down near the middle of it and with a soft hello to let her know it was just me she would relax and stay as she was. I would lie down with her and curl up in the nape of her neck, safe and warm. Common sense and training told me that I should never put myself in the direct path of a horses hooves, especially when they’re in a position where they may feel vulnerable. But intuition told me I was safe. Her hooves would not hurt me and she never failed to give me fair warning before she got up.
She taught me about forgiveness and what it means to love someone because of their flaws and frailties, not despite them. She loved me when my moods were dark and my soul on fire. She forgave me when I ran her too long and too hard, fleeing demons that, in truth, were mine alone to flee.
Together we would run both of us flattened out and low. She, running full out, her mane and tail snapping in the wind. Me, with my chest pressed against her withers, my legs clinging tightly to her sides, my fingers entangled tightly in her mane, the wind dragging the tears from my face. The power in her muscles was phenomenal. The pounding of her hooves elemental and hypnotic, like the ancient beat of a Shaman’s drum or the very heartbeat of Mother Earth herself raging against the injustices being inflicted upon her over which she had no control.
Finally, we would slow to a stop. She carried me through periods of blind terror into places of quite solitude, places that eased the pain my conscious mind was barely aware of. Both of us winded, we would recover, side by side under a tree, on top of a mountain, beside a stream…wherever that particular days journey found us.
She was a cooling salve on a festering boil, begat by betrayal, which would take twenty long years to erupt. She knew instinctively that sometimes what a hurting child needs most is a soft neck to cry into. She seemed to understand the healing embrace of her head resting softly across my back and the soothing warmth of the warm air blown softly from her nostrils onto my cool skin.
And while no one else could see her wings, I could. On some level I knew then, as I know now, that while all God’s angels may have wings, not all have just two legs. Some of God’s very best angels, in fact, have four.

For Apple…