Wild Horses In My Heart And A Mountain Lion
- Asha Wolf
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Ivana was the incredible guide for our encounters with the wild horses. She has led over 250 guided horseback trips, and has been riding the lands of the Inyo National Forest for 27 years. Ivana has witnessed the changes in the land, the ecosystem, and the wild herds of horses. Her personal horse has gone nose to nose with the more curious of the wild horses. She has returned a lost foal to its stallion and mare. A young lone stallion has followed her all the way back to camp and lingered with her there before making his way back up into the hills. Ivana doesn’t just know the land. She is a part of the land. It was an immense honor and a gift to witness that. I told her so as we said our final goodbyes.
The late Jane Goodall had expressed that her time in the forest and with the chimpanzees lives inside her. I believe the land and the wild horses live inside Ivana. I deeply hope that my memories of my time with Ivana and the wild horses won’t be forgotten so that maybe a touch of that wildness and deep peace can live inside of me, too. I want to always know what it is like to carry inside of me the experience of connection with the land and the wild horses.
We had a connection with another part of the wild while we were there. The mountain lion. A lion hangs around camp, shared Ivana. She verified some lion scat for us. It was right on the side of the main path that passes through all the tent sites. There were three different sets of lion scat in that one pile. Lions like to mark the same spot, Ivana told us. The most recent scat deposit happened one of the nights while we were sleeping. However, no human has had a direct encounter, and the outfitter has been using that camp for years. Our string of horses get nervous in the corrals sometimes, and that lets us know the lion is near. But, this lion has never attacked the pack horses.
On the second day we took the long path that leads us out of our base camp to start our journey up into the hills. As we rode out of camp the wrangler’s horse at the back of the string got spooked by what was apparently the lion lurking in the grasses. He tore away at a gallop from the scary lion while almost all the other horses remained steady. I didn’t verify, but I imagine his horse was a new one in training and wasn’t used to the way of things here just yet.
I thought about the lion sometimes as I walked around camp. It felt strangely communal. I was sharing space with the lion. Sacred space. I wasn’t scared; I trusted Ivana and our outfitter. I also just trusted in the special experience we were all having. Sometimes us humans are too quick to judge and fear the worst without ever giving the wild ones a chance. So many humans want to kill what we fear and do not know. Or, we want to extinguish the wild, believing that it will somehow abolish the wild inside of us that we both hate and fear.
One of the participants asked me to talk to the lion. As the group’s animal communicator, she wanted me to make peace with the lion; she wanted to know she was safe. Understandable, as it was her tent that was closest to the pile of lion scat. When I laid down in my tent to go to sleep, I connected with our lion at camp. The lion’s energy came in immediately and the lion’s peace treaty was clear: “I am no threat to you here.”
“I am no threat to you here.” Those were the lion’s words, and that was all that needed to be said. I didn’t try to further the communication with the lion. It felt like that was all that was meant to transpire. But, it got me thinking about our conversations with the wild horses. Hasn’t that been what we’ve been doing? We’ve been moving around the wild horses, co-existing with them respectfully, and showing them “I am no threat to you here.”
Our trip of a lifetime came to an end, and I was back in my car driving east. It was a two lane road and I had it to myself. Until I saw them. There they were - eight wild horses on the side of the road. Two of them were foals. I stopped and rolled down my window to take a few photos. I had those horses all to myself in that moment. Their wildness and my life meeting on US-6. They stood and looked at me. I looked at them and whispered, “I am no threat to you here.”
I continued driving east checking in with my heart, making sure I could still feel myself carrying inside of me all of the wild horses I had seen. I eventually hit a lot more traffic as I continued east. Driving west always seems better than east, even when you already live out west. I drove east all the way to my house and my life. So many people and cars and noise and congestion. I’ve done my best to integrate back in, but part of me does not want to. My heart is still back west with the wild horses, in community at their watering hole, sharing lunch with them in the meadow, encircled by them all, my body reverberating with their wildness, and for a long moment witnessing the lone wild stallion and wanting to know what it is like to be him.
