Check In(gine) Light Part 3: When Your Horse Becomes the Warning Light
Alegria was not agitated about the crowds - which is pretty amazing for a horse - but she was definitely ‘inquieta’
There is a particular kind of energy that surrounds certain events. Whether it is New Year’s Eve with its pressure to ‘have an amazing time,’ or a massive local festival, these moments arrive with an unwritten, heavy expectation:
You must have fun. You must stay up late. You must immerse yourself in the crowd.
As though by having enough fun, or staying up late enough, you can somehow prove your worth as a human - I am a fun person! Look at me! Look at how much fun I am having!
Even if an event is objectively great, yet you find yourself dreading the thousands of people, the long lines, or the late hours, the inner critic immediately starts tossing out ugly labels. You are boring! You are old! You are just a stick in the mud!
It can be easy to tell ourselves to just suck it up, paste over our hesitation, and force ourselves to join in.
But sometimes, even when we are completely unwilling or unable to listen to our own inner guidance system, our animals step in and act out the truth for us - and there is no ‘pasting over’ that. Alegria did just that for me - whether I wanted it or not.
Each year here in La Mision there is a wonderful, beautiful, and also massive festival called Fiesta en La Mision (or just Las Misiones, for short). Cultural folkloric dance troupes participate from across Mexico. There is a lasso competition. Bull riding. Barrel racing. Food stands offering every flavor of Mexican cuisine you can imagine. And, a giant, literally tree sized, bonfire that is lit by men riding in on horseback, carrying torches. It is truly a spectacle - legitimately spectacular.
The lighting of the bonfire
I’ve been attending this fiesta since I was a young girl and have many fond memories of it. My grandmother attended the first one back in 1979. So, there is a fondness and a nostalgia surrounding it for me.
In theory it sounds amazing. And it really is. But this year I found myself a bit hesitant. I was already resisting the noise, the crowds and the late night, even before the event began. I was inquieta - a bit restless, conflicted, and trying to talk myself out of both. But, I figured, it will be fun! I will ride Alegria there and we will enjoy it like the vaqueras we are.
The opening of the first fiesta in 1979 (my grandmother’s photo)
Now, horses are ultimate somatic mirrors. They have no filter, no social conditioning, and absolutely zero capacity to “fake it” for the sake of appearances. They live entirely in the raw, unmediated truth of the present moment.
The moment we arrived at our designated spot, Alegria became completely unsettled. Inquieta. She didn’t want to stand still. It was her dinner time, she hadn’t been out much all week, and she was suddenly surrounded by a loud, tight crowd with no room to stretch.
She wanted out.
I tried to manage her. I tried to let her eat a little grass, then walk her in small circles to calm her down, but the half-measures only made things worse.
Eventually, the restlessness became too much, and we had to head back to the ranch, unsaddle the horses, and return in the truck. I ended up entirely missing the one specific part of the festival I had actually wanted to see: the lighting of the giant bonfire.
It was only the next morning, drinking my tea, that the comedy and the wisdom of the situation finally landed.
Alegria wasn’t being difficult. She wasn’t behaving badly. She was just mirroring. She was physically acting out, for everyone to see, the exact internal conflict I was trying so hard to suppress. So much for suppression.
Because horses possess a massive, sensitive nervous system, and because Alegria and I are quite in tune with each other, she didn’t just sense my underlying reluctance—she absorbed it. She became the loud, physical megaphone for my quiet, hidden desire to be anywhere else. She spoke the “No” that my mouth wasn’t ready to say.
It made me ask another question: What if an event can be objectively wonderful, and it can still be ‘not so wonderful’ for you?
What if choosing a mellower, more relaxed rhythm doesn’t mean you lack a youthful or adventurous spirit - it just means your definition of ‘fun’ looks different?
What if ‘fun’ is galloping down the beach, or just hanging out with your horses, or puttering in the garden, or reading a good book?
What if fun doesn’t have to be loud to be legit?
What if we don’t have to make excuses for our preference of early to bed, early to rise way of being in the world?
Nothing is at stake when we skip the crowd except our own energy.
The next time you feel the heavy tug of obligation telling you to ignore your dashboard, take a moment to check in with the environment around you.
If you won’t listen to your own check engine light, pay attention to your animals. They might just do it for you.
