One of the more remarkable cases involves Rowan Isaacson, “the Horse Boy.” In 2008, Rowan was an autistic six-year-old in Texas who would erupt into such violent fits that he couldn’t attend school. “Our lives were tantrums,” Rowan’s father, Rupert, would recall. “Tantrums and the time in between.” But whenever Rupert took his son riding, Rowan’s mood suddenly calmed. He became so relaxed and focused that Rupert was able to teach him to read while in the saddle. Rupert couldn’t explain how it worked, but he had a feeling who might: the wandering horsemen of Mongolia who first domesticated wild ponies more than four thousand years ago. Rowan’s parents actually took him on an expedition deep into the Mongolian outback to learn from these master equestrians, and by the time they left, Rowan was a changed boy. Gone were the eruptions, the anxieties, the odd spinning rituals, even his violent opposition to potty training. “Rowan is still autistic—his essence, his many talents, are all tied up with it,” Rupert points out. But “he has been healed of the terrible dysfunctions that afflicted him.”
Since their return to Texas, the Isaacsons have thrown themselves into their own Texas-based version of a Mongolian nomad camp, creating a center where other challenged kids can do their school lessons on horseback. One of the lead counselors at the Horse Boy Foundation? Rowan himself. Maybe Rowan’s transformation shouldn’t be so surprising, says Temple Grandin, the celebrity scientist who overcame her own acute autism to become a world authority on animal behavior. People like Rowan and her, Temple explains, think visually. So do animals. That’s why “animals, especially for autistic kids, can often be the connecting point between the autistic and the ‘normal’ human world.”
Horse-based therapies have also shown impressive results for issues ranging from combat trauma and sexual abuse to anger management, eating disorders, and addictive behaviors. Few peer-reviewed studies have been produced so far, but the reports that have come in are promising. One survey of veterans struggling with PTSD found that 72 percent showed significant improvement after several weeks of working with horses, while teenagers in custody for at-risk behaviors have shown significantly better impulse control and social skills. And all you need in order to understand why horses are so effective at reducing stress and anxiety, according to researchers at the University of Toledo School of Medicine, is a set of eyeballs: Look at the size of those things!
“The horse weighs easily a thousand or more pounds,” the researchers point out in their study of adolescent equine psychotherapy, and the animals’ sheer size provides “opportunities for riders to explore issues related to vulnerability, power, and control.” When you’re working with a force of nature that is extraordinarily sensitive to human cues and will act up if approached by someone who is feeling angry or tense, you learn pretty quickly that you’d best keep an eye on your moods and maintain total attention to the moment.
In return, you’ll get a comforting surge of endorphins and dopamine—an evolutionary endowment from your hunter-gatherer ancestors, who first relied on horses as hunting partners, escape vehicles, and early-warning security systems. That sense of well-being from animal contact became so firmly encoded in our DNA that, today, we’re still instinctively soothed by the sight of whiskers and the feel of a warm pelt.
* * *
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Yeah, well. Maybe that’s half the story, but according to Curtis, it overlooks the special virtue of donkeys. “Everything about burros is rhythmic,” he explained. “Their breathing, their movements, all 1-2-3…1-2-3…Like the perfect waltz partner. They’re desert animals, so that’s the way it has to be. Keep your rhythm, keep your cool. So Ben comes along and his heart, his breath, all slow to the rhythm.”
“You become what you behold,” he concluded. “How’s that for a little cowboy philosophy? It’s really Huxley but sounds like something from the range.”
With Curtis as their guide, Hal and Mary were already sitting Harrison on a bareback burro when he was still a toddler, letting the two of them connect with nothing in between. With Hal leading and Mary spotting behind, they gradually wandered out of the paddock and up into the woods.
Ben Wann prepares for white water and high peaks ahead.
“We often sing, recite books, and point out the different types of trees, wildflowers, and animals that we see along the way,” Hal noted. “We noticed right away that on the days when Harrison rode, and even on days following a ride, there was a marked improvement in his disposition and behavior, and fewer tantrums.”
But Mary was just as impressed by the burros. Keep in mind, these aren’t petting zoo ponies; these are powerful animals with fierce self-defense instincts who hate, more than anything, being spooked. Every chromosome in their bodies has been refined by thousands of years of natural selection to stay as far as possible from explosive noise, sudden moves, lunging bodies—Harrison, in other words. An autistic child is a donkey’s version of a flashing red light—Danger Ahead! Beware!—yet Hal has never had to bring in a burro especially for the Blur. Whoever he happens to be racing with that year always works out just fine.
“I still don’t get it,” I told Hal and Mary. Even though I saw it for myself when Harrison did his Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka onto the pasture gate and the donkeys didn’t blink, the evidence of my own eyes wasn’t enough to explain why any animal would suddenly suspend its No. 1 survival instinct just because some kid was having a bad day. They weren’t even the same species. I’d been told about Harrison before I got there, and even I was slower than the burros to process what was going on. What were they seeing that I wasn’t? How did they grasp in a blink that something that looked and sounded exactly like an attack really wasn’t?
“We base our decisions on logic. Theirs are based on sensory perception,” Mary explained. “While we’re assembling information in our brains, they’re relying on a really keen sense of smell and hearing. Their judgment is amazing and lightning fast.”
The Blur wasn’t the only one benefiting from the Walters’ homemade therapy. By nature, Hal is hands-on, independent, a little impatient. He likes to do things his way and do them now, and if something gets in the way, he has a solution: lower his head and go harder. But well before Harrison was born, the burros were teaching him the hard way that bulling ahead would get him nowhere. “Pack burro racing was my training for fatherhood,” Hal said frankly. There’s no way you’re going to alpha-male a burro into doing what you want, so Hal had to take a step back and recondition himself to accept, adapt, and improvise. The burros were leading him to insights he might never have discovered on his own. Like:
#1The only thing you need to do is the thing you’re doing.
“Laredo and Boogie taught me the best lesson for dealing with a child like Harrison: you have to have more time than they do. If you rush, you lose.”
#2Lead from the rear.
“You’re asking a burro to do something very unnatural. Leave his buddies, leave his food and shelter, and run thirty miles into the mountains. You have to make it seem like it’s his idea.”
#3If they do something wrong, it’s because you didn’t do something right.
“Their instincts don’t always line up with your intentions,” Curtis Imrie said. “When that happens, you lick your wounds, get your panther blood back, and go again. Because when they like you, they’ll do everything short of open the gate and jump in the trailer. They become your partner. Your buddy. They join you for the adventure.”
But just when you think you’ve got things figured out, that’s when the rope is ripped from your hands and you feel like you’ve been kicked in the chest, and you realize that you—Father of the Year, Mr. Seven-Time World Champion—don’t know jack. Good thing your old pal Harper Lee is there to throw a lifeline and remind you of the most important lesson of all:
#4What, you think Atticus had it easy?
“I wanted you
to see what real courage is,” Hal likes to recite to himself from To Kill a Mockingbird. “It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”
Hal peeked out the window at the dipping sun. We’d talked a good while and it was getting late.
“Up for a run?” he asked.
“Okay. Yeah. Well, if you think—” I stammered, mentally scrambling for a way out. Half the reason I’d flown across the country and driven into the Rocky Mountain hinterlands was precisely for this opportunity, to learn at the feet of burro racing’s grand master and reigning world champion, but now that the hour had arrived, self-preservation was kicking in with a vengeance. Steph Curry just offered to take me out back and shoot threes, which sounds amazing until Steph Curry actually tosses you the rock and says, “Let’s go.” If meeting your hero someday is on your bucket list, take it from me: you will never feel more naked, more awkward and useless and stripped to your bare insecurities, than being invited to stand next to your god and show your stuff.
But my chance to back out disappeared the second Hal heard “Okay.” He and Harrison immediately headed for the door, and by the time I changed into shorts and followed, they’d already haltered two mammoth burros and were waiting in the driveway. Harrison was dying to come with us, but he agreed to stay home with Mary after I promised I’d teach him my technique for throwing steak knives. Mary, who’d clearly mastered very chill parenting protocols of her own, didn’t seem to mind, and scooted Harrison back inside.
“Four or five miles all right?” Hal asked.
“Sounds good.” The short course at the World Championship was three times that distance, so if five wasn’t all right, I was in trouble.
Hal took Laredo, the seasoned old vet, and handed me Teddy, young and spry but a bit of a numbnut. Hal would lead, figuring Teddy would stick right behind Laredo. But if Teddy got frisky, I was supposed to swing wide to the left and pull back, which would turn Teddy back on himself.
“We’ll go easy,” Hal promised.
Thirty seconds later, I was alone and empty-handed, watching Teddy disappear in the distance with Hal and Laredo in hot pursuit. I wanted to help, but…no way. My head was swimming, my chest was heaving, and if I didn’t stop right now, I’d go facedown in the dirt. Holy hell—this altitude was killing me. We’d started off slowly, just as Hal promised, but Teddy was feeling happy and crowded in on Laredo, pushing up the pace. Still, it wasn’t bad—until it was suddenly impossible. After a hundred yards, my temples were throbbing and I couldn’t catch my breath. I pulled back on Teddy to slow him, but he ignored me. Failsafe plan was turn him by the halter, but when I sprinted a few steps to reach for his head, the world went woozy and my lizard brain took over. Let go of this rope before you die, it commanded, and my hand obeyed.
Hal ran Teddy down and waited for me about a quarter mile up the road. I jogged-walked-jogged toward him, trying to save face but feeling the altitude suck the wind out of me every twenty yards or so. Hal’s home sits nearly 8,000 feet above sea level, which is far above Mile High Denver but still waaay below the summit of the World Championship course at more than 12,000 feet. Jesus Christ! Even racing the World Championship’s fifteen-mile short course instead of the twenty-nine-mile long course was going to be brutal. Mika and Zeke had never run that far in their lives, let alone up here in the freaking Himalayas. And how were the donkeys going to handle it?
“Don’t worry,” Hal called as I wobbled toward him. “You’ll get used to it.”
I waved my arm, saving my breath. I hadn’t even asked him about the creek crossings yet.
20
Zekipedia
The clock was running out, so early one morning in May, we decided to go for broke and take the donkeys into the maze. The time had come to ask Tanya two questions that only she could answer, and the maze was standing between us.
“Ready to rock?” I asked Zeke when he arrived at seven thirty in the morning, barefoot and still a little sleepy-eyed. For once, I already had the donkeys roped and waiting. I’d even brought out his triple espresso so we wouldn’t have to doink around inside. “Chuck this back and get your shoes on,” I said, handing Zeke the mug. “We’ve gotta scoot.”
Sherman must have sensed that something special was going on, unless he was getting a contact high off Zeke’s coffee fumes. He was tanked up on nervous energy, nipping at Flower so she’d chase him and annoying the hell out of Matilda.
“Why’s the Wild Thing suddenly so fired up today?” I wondered out loud.
“The Sherman mind is a mystery,” Zeke said. “We need donkey Freud to figure him out.”
I got between Flower and Sherman, separating them with my body to put an end to Sherman’s shenanigans, and led Flower to the road. Mika came out of the house with hand-strap water bottles for me and Zeke, which we both—stupidly—declined. Mika shrugged and kept one for herself, stuffing the zip pouch with some almonds, and then pulled on the visor that she wears when the sun is blazing.
“Everyone good?” I asked. “All righty. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Flower must have picked up on the excitement in the air, because before I even growled out a command, she was off. I struggled to stay with her, wishing I’d either warmed up or chosen a longer rope. Luckily, salvation was just ahead: after three months of passing the same sign for AK’s Saw Shop on the gravel road every single day, Flower still hadn’t gotten over her conviction that she was doomed to die at the hands of something flat, orange, and inert. She skidded to a halt, giving me a chance to drop my hands to my hips and suck wind. Already I was soaked in sweat.
“Gonna be a hot one,” I said, as Mika and Zeke caught up. “But we should be in and out of this thing and on our way home before it gets too toasty.”
“Sounds good,” said Zeke, who didn’t know me any better.
“Are you sure about this?” asked Mika, who did.
I wobbled my hand, so-so style. “Pretty much.”
The maze was something I’d been eyeing for a while but never had the nerve to try. Hidden in the woods about three miles from our house, on a steep hill dropping down to the Susquehanna, is an ancient slate quarry dating back to the 1700s. It had been abandoned nearly a century ago and swallowed up by the forest, leaving only a few thin threads of hunting trail. Nearly every time I’d gone in, I’d Blair-Witched around in circles, hunting for the road but constantly finding myself on the edge of the same fifty-foot cliff over the river. Eventually I’d stumble out, exhausted and thorn-scratched and never where I expected to be. I kept at it over the winter, exploring the maze whenever we weren’t running with the donkeys, intent on finding a route we could run from end to end. One day, I gambled on a path I’d always avoided because it obviously led straight to the water. I followed it through corkscrew twists and ravines, feeling more lost and regretful by the mile, until suddenly I popped out of the trees. To my confounded amazement, I was on a dirt road that led right to Tanya’s front door.
I didn’t know what kind of crafty animal logic created that curlycuing roller coaster, but it worked. The trick, I realized, was to ignore my sense of direction and go right anytime my brain screamed “Left!” Whether I could keep that straight while dealing with a trio of donkeys was another story, but that was a big part of the reason we had to try. If we made it to Colorado, we’d be flying blind in those mountains. It would take us at least two days, maybe three, to drive there from Pennsylvania, leaving very little time to scout the terrain. Come race day, our biggest nemesis might not be alpine thin air or thundering creeks, but six different brains making their own survival choices. All of us would be stressed, and weary, and absolutely sure the other five didn’t know jack. We already had the odds stacked against us, so if we couldn’t pull together when things got awful, it was game over. The maze could be the perfect provi
ng ground.
“Heeeey-YUP!” I called to Flower. She glided into a trot, and now that I was loosened up, it was a pleasure to coast along behind her. We clattered to the end of the gravel road, then leaned into the Big One: a mile-long climb up Slate Hill Road that led to the outer edge of the maze. The Big One is a never-ending grind, but Flower handled it like a dream; she flowed uphill so smoothly, I could forget about her and worry about myself. Within a minute, my chest was heaving, so I lowered my head and began counting my steps. One, two, three…
I made it to ten, then started over, focusing on the numbers to distract myself from the urge to quit. One, two—
WHOMP. I slammed into Flower’s rump, knocking what little wind I had out of me. She’d stopped so suddenly, I never saw her freeze. I looked around, but I couldn’t spot any of her usual roadside triggers. No skid marks, no hanging tree branches, not even her own shadow. Mika and Zeke pulled up, panting.
“You okay?” Mika asked.
“Just some Flower weirdness,” I said. I called Flower back to action—Heeeey-YUP!—but every time we got a head of steam going, she froze again. Flower was supposed to be our big gun, the ace runner who would pull the rest of us along behind her, and before we even got to the maze, she was screwing things up. Or was she? Pissed off as I was, I couldn’t forget Curtis Imrie’s words. “Bunch of bull, blaming her,” he’d snort. “Figure out your own mistake before you start crying about the burro.”
So when we started back up the hill, I quit counting steps. I glanced back and forth between Flower and the road, scanning for her secret phantom, and there it was. I watched her big brown eye roll to the side and look right at…
Running with Sherman Page 21