Into the Shared River
Most days, I sit down at the computer and I am ready to write. I have a specific story in mind, an opinion, or an observation. Today, I seem to be coming up blank. It is not a frustrated blank, or a bad one—it is just a present, content space. A quietness. Maybe it is not so much blank as present.
Yesterday, I attended Zuli’s high school graduation. Zuli is my niece—the daughter of my dad’s cousin Tom and his Mexican wife Linda. Tom passed away just over a year ago, so the milestone was bittersweet. We were celebrating her accomplishment, but missing her dad.
I found myself getting teary during the ceremony - but I realized, it wasn’t out of sadness. It was something else. Tenderness? Nostalgia? Or maybe it was the sudden, beautiful realization that there, in the midst of all the Garcias and Gonzalezes, was a beautiful, young, smiling, Dunigan.
I felt a connection that surprised me. A feeling of being part of something larger than my own individual life.
When my grandmother retired to Baja in the early 1960s, I’m guessing she could have never predicted that she would have a granddaughter who would be sitting here decades later, attending her great-niece’s graduation.
When I first moved to this small town, local men around my age would often ask me, “Dunigan? How are you related to Anna Dunigan?” Being a small town, most people who are born here, grow up here, and stay here. These local men had known my grandmother, who I only saw occasionally on visits, perhaps better than I had.
When I told them she was my grandmother, the stories would start. “When I was a boy, I would sweep the patio for her and she’d give me a quarter.” Or, “When I was a kid, I’d ask her for a glass of water because I knew she’d always give me a cookie, too.” Or, “When I didn’t have shoes to go to school, she found me some.”
Sure, when I moved to Baja I knew that I was living in what had been her house. But I hadn’t realized the legacy I was actually stepping into. I hadn’t understood that I was walking into something much bigger than my own individual life. She hadn’t just lived here; she had allowed herself to be absorbed into the neighborhood. She had made her life here, outside her own world and her own culture, woven into the daily life of the town.
Not long ago, at a funeral service for a man near my age who had been a central member of the local baseball team for years, one of the people sharing memories remembered how ‘Señora Dunigan and her good friend Señora Ginn were Fernando’s biggest fans.” More than forty years after her own death, my grandmother was being remembered.
My grandmother’s photo of the baseball team - cerca 1970’s
Maybe that was what touched me so deeply at the graduation—that sudden, grounding sensation of being claimed by a history so much bigger than my own self.
As I sit here in the quiet this morning, the presence has allowed the words to begin flowing. I can’t help but connect this sense of stepping into something far more vast than my own little world to my time with the animals.
Over a decade ago, when I encountered my first mare Luna—skin and bones, abandoned in the estuary—I think I assumed I was “rescuing” her, even though I didn’t like to use that specific term. Rescuing has so much baggage, as if the human is always the hero. The truth is, I thought I was simply “getting a horse.”
On that day back in 2013, standing in the estuary, looking into Luna’s eyes, I had absolutely no idea what kind of river I was stepping into. I couldn’t have predicted how much my life would change from that one offhand decision.
But now, all these years later, I am beginning to learn that the river is even more expansive than I realized. I am not the ‘owner’ of these animals; I am a participant in their world. I feel it when I am just standing with Fortuna, being present, learning from her, and letting the logical mind quiet down. I feel it when somehow, in some way, Alegria lets me know what she needs from me, with no obvious language communicating the message.
In all these ways—choosing to live in my grandmother’s house, being there to accompany Zuli, giving a starving horse a home—I thought I was just making isolated decisions.
I thought I was an island. I thought I was navigating these waters entirely on my own.
Turns out I wasn’t on my own - I was being held by a current that had been carrying me the entire time.
If you’ve found this intriguing and you’d like to go a little further, here are a few ways we can walk together:
✨ Take the Reins: A monthly practice in agency. Join our intimate, hour-long community gatherings to explore how the wisdom of horsemanship can help us navigate modern human challenges. Second Sunday of the month, 10am Pacific.
🌿 The Return: A 10-Week Journey Home: A self-guided audio journey back to the energy, ease, and vitality you know are possible, but somehow went missing. Explore the fully unlocked 10-week audio archive inside a private Marco Polo Sharecast entirely at your own pace.
🧘 The ABCs of a Deep Seat: A free guide to finding your centered, grounded connection—that frequency that keeps you from being thrown when the trail of life gets rough.
