The Presence is the Path
I am sitting here at my desk (which is really just the dining room table) strangely, again, a bit blank. Normally I have a queue of thoughts waiting, ready, wanting to be shared and known and heard. But as I sit down this morning, again, nothing.
Strange.
I love to sit down and write. I crave this time. I feel incomplete if I don’t have it.
But, here I sit. Blank. Wondering.
Am I disconnected?
My fifteen minutes of morning stillness were a bit distracted yesterday and today. My mind isn’t exactly still water—more like a dragonfly flitting about, creating a small ripple in its wake.
Disconnection...Connection…Horses…Fortuna!
It was as though the flitting mind had somehow clicked into place - and once again, an interaction I had with Fortuna was the teacher.
Horses are always trying to connect with us, but as humans, we aren’t particularly great at it. This is something that I learned years ago from horseman Mark Rashid, and it has stuck with me ever since. Mark suggests that when we are with a horse, there is a tube that leads from our center to theirs—perhaps from our heart to the horse’s heart. He notes that we humans are constantly pushing our own agendas down that tube. “Here I am!” “Let’s go!” “I want to connect!”
But what we actually need is to stop filling the channel with our own noise and become available—to create space and let the horse send something up to us. We are often like the person who walks into a room, talks the entire time, and takes up all the air, thinking they have done everyone a service when in reality all they have done is make noise.
Recently, I have been reading a fascinating book called Kinship With All Life by J. Allen Boone. Written in 1954, it describes the accidental relationship that Boone developed with Strongheart, a German Shepherd who was one of Hollywood’s very first silent film stars in the 1920s. Boone was asked to care for the famous dog while his owners were away and ended up being completely transformed by the experience. He quickly realized that Strongheart was always communicating; Boone just had to get quiet enough to make himself available to receive it.
The same is true with horses. The horse waits. Patiently. Waiting for us to become quiet enough to pay attention.
Back to Fortuna, yesterday.
I had her saddled, her mane braided, ready to go. But the moment I untied her, she began to fidget and move away. Seeing her restlessness, and knowing that I was about to mount, young David quickly hopped up to help me hold her still.
“No,” I said, catching myself. “Actually, when she does that, she is just telling me: Hey, wait a second. You haven’t even greeted me yet, and you’re ready to jump on my back?“
Sure, I had just spent the last half hour giving her a bath, brushing her, and carefully braiding her mane. But to Fortuna, that was just prep work. It wasn’t the ritual. Fortuna has taught me that I cannot just untie her and hop on. Well, I can try—but she will absolutely let me know that is not how the relationship works.
She steps away, rotating her hind end out of reach so I can’t quite catch up to get my foot in the stirrup. Her head turns toward me, as though reminding me.
Yesterday, I had forgotten. I had been busy doing other things, and by the time I approached her, it was getting late and I was just ready to ride. I untied her, looped the lead rope, and immediately felt that shifting weight. The stepping away.
When David stepped in to hold her still, the lesson clicked.
She’s only moving because I skipped a step. I forgot to say hello.
She wasn’t standing still because I wasn’t still.
I paused, reached out, and put my hand flat against her muzzle. I let her breathe me in. I acknowledged her—one being to another.
The moment I did, Fortuna shifted. She stood completely, beautifully still. She gave me all the time I needed to lift my left leg up into the stirrup—she’s a tall horse, and I am a bit vertically challenged—and hoist myself into the saddle. David sat in front of us, watching the entire thing, grinning.
“See?” I told him, looking down from the saddle. “She just needed me to greet her first, instead of assuming I could just jump on and go.”
Sitting at my dining room table desk this morning, I realize - it is as though the muses are saying the same thing to me.
Stop. Be present. Acknowledge us first, before you ask us to go galloping down the page with you.
I wonder, how many times we do this in life?
How often do we rush in, thinking we have a perfect plan, completely ready to go, without ever stopping to consider, to pause, or to simply acknowledge the space we are walking into?
How often do we rush past the stillness, in a hurry to get where we are going, without realizing—the presence is the path.
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.
