Thunder Heart- text with audio version

By Jim Kepner

©Copyright 2024, James I. Kepner, all rights reserved.

By the time I met him, Thunder Heart was an old guy. He had his own pace and his own way of doing things. He would not be rushed.  Thunder Heart was the grandfather stallion of the herd, and I thought of him as retired. I was wrong.

The herd’s lead mare, Be (pronounced as in bumblebee), ran her herd with an iron hoof. She disliked her herd members dallying when she had already called them in from the field, but, she made an exception for Thunder Heart. A good thing, I thought, as he was always the last to return to the paddock, and, as I said before, he would not be rushed. Thunder Heart would amble in, his bones creaking, on his schedule.

Thunder was a big white-coated horse, a mix of Percheron and Thoroughbred, which meant he was bigger than the average horse and quite beautiful as well, even with signs of aging. His back was swayed and he had that bony look one often saw with horses and people, who have lost weight and muscle mass as they get up in years. He was thirty-eight years old, which is about ninety in horse years, so he was quite the elder, and there was no denying Thunder’s presence. He had it in spades, and then some.

It was all too easy for me to attribute his pace and his particular habits to advanced age and infirmity. Both were true, but it turned out that I was missing the point. I had to spend time with Thunder Heart to learn that age, infirmity, and retirement were human concepts. Thunder was still on the job, he just didn’t require some fancy stallion posing to do the job anymore. 

Thunder Heart had a distinct effect on people and horses. He had this aura of calm and steadiness. And then there was that big heart-thing he had of exuding an immense loving-kindness. It just settled a body down. I watched this with others and, of course, he had the same effect on me.

I spent some time out in the field with him, getting to know his character, or so I thought but now I’m pretty sure that what was going on was that he was getting to know mine. And he was waiting for me to settle down. Whenever I visited my friends Jackie and Herb, on whose ranch Thunder and the rest of the herd resided, I would spend time with him. 

I’d learned always to pay my respects first to Be, the lead mare, as Jackie had taught me that acknowledging the one in charge was a good idea in horse culture. Be was sometimes referred to by Jackie’s human helpers as “Queen Be” after all. There are some pretty amazing stories to tell about Be too, but I’ll leave for some other time. 

After greeting Be I’d walk out to where Thunder Heart was grazing in the field. He would often be by himself, away from the main group of five or six horses. Sometimes he would be grazing with one other horse nearby. Often with him was an old grandmother horse named Lilly. Sometimes he’d be accompanied by one of the younger stallions in the herd. The other horses sought Thunder Heart out for the same thing people did, to soak in his calm and his steadiness. This was especially true for the younger horses. 

To me, it always looked like Thunder Heart was ignoring his horse companion, just as he seemed at first to be ignoring me. It turned out that there was a lot of conversation going on, once I was able to listen. Horses converse in gestures, shifts of posture, ear flicks, and sounds. They speak body to body, not head to head. And most importantly, to me as an energy worker, they transmit to each other through the subtle energy field of the earth, with which all four of their hooves are connected.

I would wander along with Thunder Heart as he grazed, having to slow myself down to listen to the unspoken conversation. So much of his conversation occurred through his presence and energy, along with the vocabulary of stance, earflicks, posture, and movement. Through this, I came to understand that Thunder’s unparalleled alignment with his nature was a whole monologue in itself. Who he was, moment to moment, spoke entire volumes. Thunder Heart was, always, exactly who he was. It was clear that, by contrast, I couldn’t say the same for myself. 

Being exactly who you are, as Thunder Heart was, completely aligned with your intrinsic nature, is a rare thing among us humans. Yes, yes, I know most of us believe it to be otherwise. And it turned out to be rare for horses too. Horses also can have self-doubt about who they are. They can have insecurities about their place in the herd, and they can be as clueless about their intrinsic nature as we humans. But for we busy, busy primates, I’m convinced it’s even more rare than it is for horses. They don’t call it “monkey mind” for nothing. 

As for me, it became clear during my time with Thunder that I spent way too much time in a mire of self-doubt to be exactly myself. Well, to be exactly anything, it seemed sometimes.

Eventually, I judged this a bit less harshly because I started to grasp that some of this primate self-doubt could be our species’ greatest strength. We evolved to be upright, with only two feet on the ground. This certainly freed up our eyes and hands to be tool users, builders, and creatives, and it grew the capacity of our brains. Our brains came to mirror the busy nature of our hands, always thinking and figuring things out. 

But this two-legged stance is inherently an unstable one. Especially when compared to a four-legged’s like horses. For some reason, this insight helped me to let myself off the hook for feeling uncertain and unstable at times. It seemed obvious that the pervasive feeling of insecurity for humans was simply one of the costs of becoming “handy” as a species. A basic reality of embodied human life. A guy can’t blame himself for biology, right? 

Also, I noticed that horses in general, and Thunder in particular, valued our primate hands. He knew that hands could give him great back scratches and comforting rubdowns! 

Over many visits, Thunder Heart’s communications, through the language of his presence, his warm heart, and his steady patience, got through to me. It’s almost sinful to put his wordless conversation into words, but we humans seem to need words. As we busy monkeys have great imaginations, I’ll do my best to approximate. 

What Thunder Heart said to me was something like this: 

“This is who I am. This is what I am. Get it?”

Clever old guy, asking a monkey if he ”gets” a thing. Said monkey will never let go of trying to figure out that mystery!

So, did I get it? Well, I got that I did a lot of fussing in my head. I certainly got that I questioned myself, a lot, about whether I was doing it right, or if I was liked, and so on. More importantly, I got that the essence of his question was, “This is who and what I am. What about you?” 

And, I also got that it wasn’t a thinking kind of question. Horses don’t give a flying fuck about what you think. And they especially don’t give a flying fuck what you think about yourself. Horses would never join Facebook, because “face“ without substance, is worse than useless. It’s dangerous.

To horses, who you are, makes for what you will do. And horses really, really care that you are reliable at being yourself, because in that lies the survival of the herd. If a herd member can’t be relied on to be who they are, then they can’t be trusted to respond reliably, when survival is at stake.

Thunder Heart’s question served for me much like a Zen koan would, except I had to contemplate it as a horse rather than a Zen master. The Horse Buddha required me not to meditate, but to join with him as a herd member. To join Thunder Heart, join with his way, join with his pace, and with his nature, was to be with him as a proper young stallion would. To join with this big, beautiful old stallion who was nothing but his nature, and let him tune me up. It took a while. 

Somewhere along the way as Thunder Heart worked to shape me up, Jackie invited me to teach with her. We were to do a workshop for one of her groups on embodiment, a specialty of mine. By now I had noticed how disembodied and ungrounded we primates are compared to her horses, so we thought her herd would have something to teach us. 

Jackie and I worked with the participants to learn and practice grounding skills, body awareness, centering, breathing, and sensing. We emphasized the importance of being grounded in one’s body before relating to a horse, and that it would make for a more connected relationship with them. Then we divided the class into small groups, instructing each group to work with each other using the practices, and then the group would choose a horse to be a group member and see how embodiment affected their interaction with their horse partner.   

They were very excited to put this into practice. I watched the small groups of participants spread out into the field. They looked to me exactly like chimpanzee troops I’d seen in videos, who spread out the same way as they foraged and hunted in the wild. I realized that this was not at all how horses behaved. Horses moved into a novel situation by aligning with each other and moving in coordinated tight groups. But we humans behave just like predators do as we spread out in hunting groups, even when we believe our motivation is to join rather than hunt.  

“Wow,” I thought, “we have no idea how we appear to a prey species like horses.” 

I remembered that horses don’t care what we think about our motivations. But the embodiment practice indeed worked to settle each other down, and when they moved towards their selected horse they were more calm and collected together as a group. 

I walked out to stand in the middle of the grazing field where I could more easily track the different student groups from afar. Thunder was grazing a bit away from the main herd, as he often did. Jackie walked out to join me, and we stood for a while, watching the participants engage with their horses. We chatted about what we saw, Jackie telling me about the horse side of the interactions she observed. After a bit, she walked back to the house to do some prep work. I continued watching the groups and hanging out with Thunder Heart. 

After an hour, some of the groups had finished the exercise and followed their horses back to the paddock where the horses got a long drink of water and sought shade to nap in. The human partners also got a drink of water and then proceeded to chatter with each other about what they’d experienced. The sleepy horses opened one eye at the noise, appearing to me to be wondering why those primates didn’t know enough to get out of the hot sun.

I shouldn’t talk, as I too remained out in the hot sun in the middle of the field. I had a distinct sense to stay where I was, and to be on watch until the whole herd, human and horse, were finished. I was certain about this, and yet, even still my busy primate brain continued to question: didn’t I think these were all competent adults? Why did I think they needed watching over?  Maybe I should go back to find Jackie and do some planning? 

Whew! Seems like it’s built into the equipment! Just can’t shut it up.

Meanwhile, Thunder had foraged his way over to me, never looking up from the grass, as if I was some tree or rock. With his proximity though, it was clear as the air that he too was watching and guarding. It was suddenly obvious to me that this was why Thunder Heart was always last to exit from the grazing field. It was not due to age, or dawdling, or because he is an old guy and stuck in his ways, as I’d thought. I just couldn’t see it as a horse would before today.

Because the old stallion was on the damned job, and he took his job seriously. No, that’s not quite right. It wasn’t about taking his job seriously. That’s a human view. Because the job is completely his nature. It’s what he is, and it’s not in him to leave until he judged that the rest of the herd had first safely returned. 

I didn’t have to figure any of this out because it all became clear as I stood in the field with the big white horse grazing next to me. And it came to me direct and obvious that these things just were that way. As Italian horses say, “Capisci?”

Thunder Heart continued grazing, chomping at the grass as if I wasn’t there. But in his proximity, my fussing mind had shut off, and with the absence of that noise, what remained seemed simple. Do what is in your nature to do: watch and guard.

Thunder, wandered even closer to me, close enough to feel the warmth of his body. He stood still for a moment, head at the level of my own while he chewed. His broad, mud-stained, white flank was close enough for me to touch. He gave me the nod, I felt it, and in human terms, it was something like this.

“About time, young fella. Doing the job. Being what you are.”

Yup, I got it. I was finally being the stallion. I was watching and guarding the herd, human and horse, not to fulfill some role, but because it was my nature. No figuring out required. 

There were still a few groups of humans and horses in the field finishing the exercise.  Normally, Thunder Heart would have waited until all the herd was in before he returned. But this time he snorted, and moved towards the paddock, shambling slowly back for water and shade. He had turned the job over to me now that I was acting like myself. I could be trusted to watch and guard until the whole herd had gone in.

I remained where I was, steady as a fencepost, on watch until the exercise was finished and all had returned to the paddock. As the last group crossed through the gate, I was no longer on duty, and strolled back to join them, honoring what my mentor had taught me as I mirrored his slow and easy pace.

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To learn more about Thunderheart and Jackie Lowe-Stevenson and Experiential Learning with Horses and Nature go to www.spirit-of-leadership.com