BY CARRIE MATTERN
Mr. Ed was my only experience with horses as a child. Wait, that’s not entirely true. There is a picture of me at age two, sitting on my mom’s lap, who is atop a beautiful milk chocolate Morgan on a ranch in northern Texas. I do not remember this experience, but in all, that is my horse history.
Fast forward 43 years, and I am moving my family across the country from Michigan to Southern California. It was long overdue that I move: I had been teaching in the same high school classroom for 17 years, and my circumference of life was an hour north to an hour east of where I was born in Flint, Michigan. My children were less than happy, but I needed to leave my home, and they needed to experience more than what our city offered them.
Once settled in the dry desert of southern California, we knew no one. A co-worker of my husband mentioned that he was a volunteer at a rescue horse ranch in Coachella, so I researched the spot and signed up to volunteer. I thought it might help me make sense of the move, meet new people, and get me out of the house once a week, but it has completely changed my perspective on life.
Our volunteer training began, and I remember being asked what made me want to work with rescue horses. I never gave it much thought, so I said, “I have a lot of love to give.” Looking back, it seems that has always been my phrase. Every time we got pregnant with a baby, people would ask, why did you decide to have another child? “We have a lot of love to give.”
I realized later that this was more of a pacifying answer to people rather than the truth. It was also an answer that led me to think about protecting my own heart because I was not there in the beginning to give love to horses (and one very sassy pig). I volunteered because I was carrying more than I knew how to handle.
And the horses have taught me so much.
The two main lessons I have learned while volunteering for over a year are about consent and grief. Consent has always been a focus for me as an educator. I teach high school English, and we read a lot of stories that do not include consent, so it has been a lesson I have adopted over the last ten years of teaching. It is also a life lesson for students who often take videos or pictures of their peers without consent. Enter the rescue horses in Coachella.
Before mucking their stalls, I announce myself and ask them if it is okay that I come in to clean. You might find that hilarious or a little odd, but just entering their space feels wrong to me, so I always ask ahead of time. I also ask if it is okay that I clean their poop. Most often, they comply. One of our new horses, Buck, likes to curiously smell me before I get to work each time. I
imagine this is his form of a consensual relationship. Some ignore me, all too interested in the food cart coming by from the sounds of it, while others like to nudge me with their noses to say hello.
The space I am entering is not mine, and it does belong to them, so consent, to me, is a critical way to move through the world and practice navigating spaces that are not my own. Too often, humans tend to neglect this part of their learning or travel, and a small group of formerly abused horses in Coachella reminds me weekly why it is so important and rewarding.
Another important lesson I have learned while mucking is that grief is a cycle and best faced in community. Humans tend to grieve in an array of ways based on belief and culture, but as I have gotten older, I have noticed that so many people isolate themselves to grieve rather than insulate their world with others who support them.
Horses grieve together. They often mirror each other when it comes to grief or other challenges. One evening, I arrived at the ranch, and it was eerily quiet, even with the food cart already making its rounds. Most of the horses appeared lethargic, and it wasn’t even Southern California hot out yet. Many of the horses had their heads down rather than alert, which is more typical when we arrive. I knew something was different.
We had lost our sweet Honey.
She was, like all of them, a rescue who had been neglected and literally kept in a dog pen in someone’s yard for years before we got her safely rescued. She and her nearby best friend, Chico, would whinny to one another often and nuzzle each other over their stalls.
But today, Chico was sullen. Along with the others.
Even Mabel the pig was situated near a stall nestled into a corner by her favorite horse, Clay.
At that moment, I realized that when I needed community the most, I had gone internal rather than opening up to my friends and family. I felt alone because I chose to be alone. Educating teens can be the most rewarding career, but it is also a career that takes a lot of love. And with love comes loss.
Over my twenty-three years of teaching, I have lost far too many students. My first year teaching in rural Michigan was likely the most tragic loss I have encountered, but years in Flint, from the poisonous water to Black Lives Matter to Covid to police shootings to gang-related violence, car accidents, and losing my mentor teacher next door to cancer, were too much to carry alone.
Instead of turning to my family and friends, I got lost inside my own head.
Moving across the country and listening to horses taught me that grief is cyclical, but healing happens in community. And like the horses, sitting quietly together is healing. I will carry that image and lesson with me always.
Carrie Mattern is a mother, educator, writer, and hiker who recently fell in love with horses.
