The Good Medicine of Horses

Krissy, aka Cut Crystal

I spent my first summer here learning to read horses. Pressing my heels into the flanks of a white Arab named Krissy paralleled what I needed to grasp in my life. How much pressure to apply, when to demand and when to let up. How to get her to drop her head into the right position so I could ease up on the reins. Learning to recognize the moment at which to do that felt impossible: the spot seemed to move all the time. Learn this one thing, my teacher said. It will make everything else easier. 

Krissy, aka Cut Crystal, belonged to Sharon, my unofficial riding coach. Sharon became much more than that; our friendship distilled from the hardship and longing which followed my simultaneous cross country move and divorce. And Cut Crystal became much more than that, too. Her huge white form, muscled, mysterious, drew me into a different world. Her keen sense of touch made me feel the inadequacy of my human abilities. Her sense of spatial discrimination was better than mine, and she made me feel awkward, lumbering, next to her graceful limbs and arched neck. I became painfully aware of my failings: she’d plod around the arena until I matched her own subtleties in the way I articulated my leg pressure or held her reins. She taught me to be in synch with her animal spirit. Last month her vet, reluctant for her to endure another wet winter of standing on hocks lame with age, recommended that Cut Crystal be put down. She was 26, and I hadn’t ridden her in over a year. After work I drove through the Snoqualmie Valley farmlands to visit her.

As Sharon and I walked Krissy from pasture to barn, the horse’s left rear hock made a cracking sound with every footfall.  She didn’t mind. Blissed out on dosages of the anti inflammatories that might ruin her organs should she not be scheduled to be put to death the following day, she plodded along much the same way she did when I rode her, except now this was as fast as she could go. In rhythm with her steps, her white mane tossed back and forth, revealing a glossy sheen from a gel called Cowboy Magic. Horses learn you through scent, holding their nostrils towards your face and blowing out in great chuffs of air. I had missed Cut Crystal’s amiable horse-stink: a blend of rancid sweat, horsehair, and sweet hay-breath.

            I stayed in her stall as dusk descended over the valley. Krissy had been good medicine to a lot of people: foster kids up the road, a neighbor girl, me during my first exhilarating yet distraught year here. Of my torn up life, Krissy cared naught, but she had let me cry on her neck, lowering her head and nuzzling my breath.

That last night she nudged my hands with her mouth. She wanted more of the carrots I had brought her, and the scent remained on my palms. She shied her head when I tried to hug her goodbye, so I ran my hands down the curves of each haunch, making sure I touched all of her ripe body. As if her shape could remain in my memory, as if that shape could recreate the salve her living had been. Sharon watched us through the bars of her stall, blinking away tears. Already standing in the future, I remembered Krissy even as I stood next to the heat of her, her terrifying bulk, her quizzical eyes, the leaf-sized ears that swiveled towards strange sounds and things I could not possibly hear or understand. The following morning she would join forty-five million years of ancestors, going all the way back to the mesohippus: a striped horse- like beast. I imagined her cavorting with all of them on some primordial green grassland. As I pushed her stall door shut and stood looking at her through the bars, I whispered my last words to her, my gift for her next life: Run like the wind, Krissy.

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