Seeking The Silence

My horse breaths deep like a dragon. His immense lungs, bred for racing, draw in and blow out with audible bass you can hear from pretty far away. His pounding hooves touching into the turf underneath me, there is a sort of rock symphony to it. The cadence of percussion mixed in with his drawing and releasing air.

As we increase or decrease speed, the harmony of it changes. My breath makes no sound muffled under his, we tend to breath in time. Through all this rhythm and almost deafening sound of breathing, footfalls, and tack there is a moment of complete silence except for the whoosh of air passing my ears and the hum of movement as we clear a jump.

Landing on the other side, it all comes back like in a movie where they take the sound away for some monumental point and then suddenly bring it back. The breathing and the thunder of his feet comes back, my muscles absorb the concussion of each stride, until the silent hum comes again, no view for my eyes except between his ears, feeling weightless and unbound by the Earth. Not on some high because of a delusion that I control his power, instead becoming a part of it and it becoming a part of mine.

Back in the saddle again after touching down and returning to the world and to sound, everything fits. Everything is as it should be as if his legs were mine all along. Once you have achieved that you need it to feel like your soul is whole.

My horse tosses his head, light on his feet, feeling it too.

This is why we do it.