I was getting to know a river whose path wandered through the willows and cottonwoods near our house. We’d found a place to land, in the wake of my father’s death, thirteen miles down a bumpy dirt road. According to contemporary maps, we were living along the San Juan River. Yet this river had many names long before words written with the english alphabet. I’d been talking to the river to find out what she likes to be called. Her name had something to do with dancing waters and singing rocks. She was a river of healing waters, that was clear.

Walking barefoot in the gentle currents and collecting water-smoothed rocks became part of everyday life. Jasmine, my four-legged friend, was not fond of getting wet. Even so, one day she waded across the river, tail wagging, to approach a pair of coyotes who’d come to have a drink. Through the summer months, grieving my dad’s dying and sorting through questions about my life, the river became a companion, a healer, my teacher and guide.

Water carries memories of long passages of time and extraordinary cycles of change on our earth. Every drop of water is alive. Water droplets gather becoming puddles, ponds, and oceans all the while evaporating into the air. Clouds and fog float in the spaciousness between earth and sky. Snow, sleet, and rain fall from above to below. River waters and ocean waters eventually meet up.

When wild and free, rivers shape their paths in relationship with the land. Incredibly diverse beings – plants, fishes, four-leggeds, birds, humans, frogs, snakes, insects – flourish in and near the waters, instinctively drawn to nourishing sources of life. Rivers find their way around all sorts of obstacles with their currents, eddying pools, and creative flow. The river’s medicine was moving through me. I could feel it in my bones.

As fall turned to winter, the waters of the river froze. My daily walks along the riverbank offered new understandings of the rich life of this river. Artistic patterns formed in the ice, a changing mosaic to explore. A crackling symphony heralded the morning sun warming up the frozen surface. Wherever I took a step, I listened for the sounds that signaled the ice may break open to the moving water below.

Stillness settled into the frosted lands and chilly waters, inviting inner quieting and a deepening sense of peace. Following the river upstream, I greeted the herd of horses who grazed on a hill nearby. Jasmine romped around in zigzagging trails, nose to the ground, following scents, purely exuberant about every little thing.

“Hey you there, on the river!”

A harsh commanding voice rattled my reverie. Turning around, I saw a car parked on the bridge that I’d walked under a couple minutes ago. The passenger door was stamped with an official seal and bold letters: Sheriff. Tinted windows blocked any view of who was inside. A square speaker box was set out on the hood of the car.

I stood still for a moment, trying to figure out what was going on.

“Hey you there, on the river!” the stern voice boomed from the speaker box. “Get off the river! It’s not safe!”

I felt a chasm open up between where I stood along the riverbank and where he sat shrouded behind tinted windows and authoritative stance. How could I bridge the gaping expanse between us to share my experiences and point of view?

Then seeing myself through somebody else’s eyes, a creepy sensation crawled under my skin. Well-conditioned fears raced through my body and mind, those fears entrenched in hierarchies and legacies of human-to-human harm. There I was, a woman alone, out here in the middle of nowhere. Anything could happen. No one would ever know. The potential danger, to me, had nothing to do with the frozen waters beneath my feet.

I waved. Everything is fine ~ is what I wanted to convey. The biggest risk on this part of the river is that my hiking boots might get wet ~ is what I wanted him to know. There’s so much more happening out here than you can see ~ is what I knew.

I turned away and continued following the river upstream, soothed by the rhythm of my footsteps and Jasmine’s unceasing delight in our adventure.

A sigh of relief carried away the stress once I made it around the bend in the river, finally out of sight of the car parked on the bridge. Though I appreciate being cared about and having someone watching over, that encounter was more troubling and invasive than comforting. Hopefully, he would move on to other official duties before I headed back home.

Later in the morning, when I followed my path back around the river bend, my heart dropped. The sheriff’s car was still there, parked now along the road on the north side of the bridge. The dirt road and the river were my only routes home. There was no way to avoid crossing paths.

As I neared the bridge, readying for the interaction, I focused on calming my nerves and breathing steadily with each step. I reached out to my dad, hoping he was somewhere around in spirit, asking him for protection and help.

I heard rustling on the hillside and sounds of hooves tromping on frozen ground. The horses who grazed in the meadow had formed a majestic beeline. With unrelenting momentum trotting downhill, the horses were heading directly toward me. This had never happened before.

Were the horses going to make a river crossing? Would they demonstrate the strength of the ice? Was the herd going to accompany me home?

As they trotted beside the sheriff’s vehicle, the horse leading the way abruptly dropped to the ground. She rolled back and forth on her back, whinnying loudly, legs waving side to side, belly open to the sky. Pure delight. Unbridled freedom. No hiding. Fully alive.

Astounded and grateful, I marveled at the magic that was happening. We’re all fine out here ~ is what Horse seemed to be saying in a way that was visible even through tinted glass. There’s a belonging here, a web of relationships, beyond what your eyes have been trained to see. There’s so much more to each and every one of us than what you’ve been led to believe.

We seemed to have a kinship, the horses and me. A shared instinctive knowing. A co-existence and connection, even with such differences in our bodies, languages, and ways of life.

I felt joined in a desire for the wonder and beauty of life to be seen and touched and felt, welcomed and held sacred, awakened and experienced all the more.

The free-ranging ripple effect of Horse’s brilliant and bold expression would keep rolling on, beyond the meadow along the river, across lands and waters and time, undeterred by official titles and closed doors.

I continued on my way, following the river home.