The Horses That Taught Me To Listen

There are some memories that don’t fade — they hum quietly in the back of your mind like a song you never stop hearing. For me, that song sounds like hooves on dirt, the low creak of a barn door, and the way a West Virginia morning smells before the sun has fully climbed the mountains.

My grandparents’ land sat tucked between hills that rolled like waves — slow, steady, and alive. I can still see the fog draped across the pastures, the horses standing still in it, heads bowed as if they were praying. Maybe they were.

That’s where I learned peace doesn’t have to be silent — it just has to be honest.

When I was little, I didn’t understand how deep that place would root itself inside me. I only knew that the horses understood me in a way most people didn’t. I could walk out into the field barefoot, whispering nothing, and they’d lift their heads — slow and deliberate — like they’d been waiting.

I never needed to speak. I think animals can hear what hearts don’t say out loud.

Those horses showed me what communion with creation looks like. The way their breath clouded in the morning chill, the sound of their hooves on soft ground — it all felt like a language I already knew but had forgotten how to use.

And somewhere in all that quiet, I learned that’s how God talks, too.

Not through thunder or grand gestures, but through stillness. Through eye contact. Through breath.

Even now, when life feels too loud, I close my eyes and go back there — to that field in the mountains, to the smell of hay and sunlight, to the rhythm of peace that has never left me.

Those horses didn’t just teach me to listen. They taught me to hear.