Warmblood S
By Scot Tolman
omewhere, I have a picture of an eight-year-old me, astride my first pony, Beauty. At the time, I was obsessed with Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty—since
my pony was bay and not black, the name had to be abridged. Beauty had been abruptly retired from the pulling-pony vocation because, when the weight got too heavy, harness and all, he would lie down in the arena and refuse to pull. I think my Dad paid $50 for him. In this picture, my chubby, short legs are sticking out almost parallel to the ground, stirrups in tow; my elbows are straight out in front of me; there’s no helmet; and someone never told my mother that round children do not belong in horizontally-striped shirts. Nonetheless, the smile on my face and the near, unabashed rapture in my expression capture something I still feel today when it comes to horses: adoration. Although some of
you may deem this next statement idolatrous, horses are my religion. Oils-on-porcelain portraits of our mares adorn our chapel; I tithe to the spiritual houses of The Cheshire Horse and Monadnock Equine Veterinary Services; my knees bend daily in supplication to the sitting beat of the posting trot. There is comfort and security in rituals—they help us avoid the inevitable and give meaning to our daily lives. Histrionic? Perhaps. Based in undeniable kernels of truth? Absolutely. People need something in which to believe. At the times in my life when I’ve seriously wrestled with the most basic existential questions, it is not God to whom I turn, but horses. Today is January 29th. It is the 24-year anniversary of my younger brother’s death—which may well account for the especially reflective and slightly maudlin tone of this column. It was in the weeks after Gary’s death that I first felt the true depths of loss, and it was the first time in my adult life that my somewhat-
98 March/April 2013
purposeful departure from the Congregationalist God with whom I’d grown up was seriously tested. I clearly remember lying on the floor in one of the far wings of the Atlanta airport, waiting for my connection to Gainesville, during my return to school from the funeral, searching within myself for some kind of meaning or purpose--something to hold on to as I began the journey forward through the uncharted waters of grief and getting on with my life. The answer came suddenly, but ever-so clearly, and I spoke the words aloud: “I need a horse.” The next week, while still a graduate student at the University of Florida, I bought an old Thoroughbred mare named Pretty Mares. After an eight year absence from horses, I was back in church. (I can see my editor’s
reaction now: “UUGGHH! We tell Scot no more pieces about politics, and he writes about religion. How many subscriptions are we going to lose this time?”) What are you going to
do? You can only write what
you know. Instead of the fat little kid on his bay pulling pony, reading Black Beauty so many times that the pages started to rip when I turned them, now I’m a fat big kid on his bay Dutch Warmblood, in better clothes, anxiously waiting for the call from The Cheshire Horse that my Breyer model of Totilas is finally in. Horses save me. They give me hope, direction and something in which to believe. Isn’t that what religion is supposed to do?
Scot Tolman has been breeding
Dutch Warmbloods for over 20 years at Shooting Star Farm in Southwestern New Hampshire. Read more of Scot’s writing at
shootingstarfarm.com.
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