I turned 75 this month.

When Casey Sten­gel was 75, he said, “Most of the peo­ple my age is dead. You can look it up.” I did. He was right. In 1965 when he made that state­ment the aver­age age of death in the U.S. was 70. For men it was 67.

I was sur­prised to find that Casey’s pro­nounce­ment comes close to hold­ing true today. Even with all the advances in health­care, the aver­age age of death for U.S. men is now only 76.

That doesn’t give me much breath­ing room, so to speak, but at least I’m still alive on that mor­tal­i­ty table. Using an actu­ar­i­al analy­sis focus­ing sole­ly on the life expectan­cy of men born in 1947, I’m already dead. I passed away in 2012 when I was 65. For­tu­nate­ly, I didn’t notice.

Research­ing per­spec­tives on aging for this post, I found an arti­cle even more trou­bling than the death charts. In “Why I Hope to Die at 75,” Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel asserts that the opti­mum age to die is the three-quar­ter-cen­tu­ry mark. He says our health­care sys­tem has suc­ceed­ed in find­ing ways to extend life but has failed to delay the onset of dis­abil­i­ties and dis­ease. We live longer only to suf­fer longer. At 75 he believes most peo­ple are head­ed into a steep phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive decline, ren­der­ing them inca­pable of mak­ing valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to soci­ety. “(F)eeble, inef­fec­tu­al, and pathet­ic,” they inflict a crush­ing finan­cial and emo­tion­al bur­den on their kids and grand­kids. To spare him­self and every­one else the mis­ery of his descent into infir­mi­ty, he intends to com­mit a pas­sive sui­cide by reject­ing pre­ven­tive health­care mea­sures and life-sav­ing pro­ce­dures after his 75^th birthday.

Dr. Emanuel’s cre­den­tials make it dif­fi­cult to dis­miss his dour view of aging. An inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned oncol­o­gist and bioethi­cist, he is the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pennsylvania’s Vice Provost, Chair of its Med­ical Ethics and Health Pol­i­cy Depart­ment, was an archi­tect of Oba­macare, and cur­rent­ly serves as a senior advis­er to the Biden admin­is­tra­tion on Covid-19.

He also seems to be a good guy with a lov­ing fam­i­ly and a lot to live for. He was 57 when he wrote his arti­cle. He’ll turn 65 this fall, so I hoped grow­ing old­er might change his opin­ion about life after 75.

It did not. In a recent inter­view, he held fast to his orig­i­nal premise, and when ques­tioned about exam­ples of peo­ple who are men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly capa­ble and pro­duc­tive well past 75, he dis­count­ed their con­tri­bu­tions. Such “out­liers” are “a very small num­ber,” he said, “and when I look at what those peo­ple ‘do,’ almost all of it is what I clas­si­fy as play . . . They’re rid­ing motor­cy­cles; they’re hik­ing . . . that’s not a mean­ing­ful life.”

Not a mean­ing­ful life.

Three days before Christ­mas five years ago, I woke up in the mid­dle of the night with a sear­ing pain in the upper right quad­rant of my abdomen beneath the ribcage. It spread upward to my shoul­der and became so intense I had to stretch out on the floor on my back with my arms over my head to breathe. I pushed through the pain, and it went away at sunrise.

“It was no big deal,” I told Cindy.

“Call the doc­tor,” she said. “Now.”

When she uses her steely tone of voice, I do what I’m told. I slunk into the doctor’s office that after­noon. He said my symp­toms indi­cat­ed a gall blad­der infec­tion, a com­mon prob­lem, eas­i­ly treat­able. He ordered an ultra­sound to con­firm his diagnosis.

I lay on my back while a tech­ni­cian moved a hand-held trans­duc­er over my abdomen and chest, up, down, and across. The doc­tor said the ultra­sound would take fif­teen min­utes. The tech­ni­cian kept at it for an hour.

The doc­tor called me at eight-thir­ty that night, well past his quit­ting time. “You have a gall blad­der infec­tion,” he said, “but not the nor­mal type. The ultra­sound indi­cates you have Acal­cu­lous Chole­cys­ti­tis.” He said I had to see a gas­troin­testi­nal sur­geon the next day.

“On Christ­mas Eve?” I said, alarmed. “How seri­ous is this?”

“It requires imme­di­ate attention.”

I pressed him. Reluc­tant­ly, he dis­closed the fatal­i­ty rate for this con­di­tion as 30 to 50 percent.

I didn’t sleep that night.

The gas­troin­testi­nal sur­geon, a mid­dle-aged sandy-haired guy with a big nose and wide mouth, was skep­ti­cal of the ultra­sound. Acal­cu­lous Chole­cys­ti­tis usu­al­ly attacks peo­ple suf­fer­ing from anoth­er seri­ous dis­ease, can­cer or heart fail­ure. I had no oth­er ill­ness. He ordered more tests.

Strapped to a gur­ney in the hospital’s nuclear med­i­cine depart­ment for three hours, I watched streams of mul­ti­col­ored flu­ids on a mon­i­tor above me as they coursed through my diges­tive sys­tem. The test results con­firmed the ultrasound’s diagnosis.

They wheeled me into the oper­at­ing room at five o’clock on Christ­mas Eve. An anes­the­si­ol­o­gist, a tall bald­ing man with a reas­sur­ing smile, pumped the con­tents of a syringe into my I.V. “Here comes the good stuff,” he said.

My last thought as the lights dimmed was a drug-blunt­ed fear that I might not wake up.

I was under for two hours.

A spindly crack in an off-white ceil­ing came into focus. I heard tap­ping beside me. I looked over to see a heavy-set young order­ly dressed in hos­pi­tal blues work­ing at a com­put­er. He looked up. “You’re back,” he said.

“How do you feel, Dad?”

I turned to see my son stand­ing beside my bed.

Behind him sit­ting at a desk by the wall, my sur­geon gave me thumbs up. “Your gall blad­der was gan­grenous,” he said. “I got it all.”

I sobbed. “Thanks for sav­ing my life,” I choked out.

“It’s the drugs,” the order­ly told my son. “Makes them emotional.”

It wasn’t the drugs. It was the stu­pen­dous joy of being alive.

A week lat­er, the results of my gall bladder’s biop­sy came back. They found an infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly small gall­stone buried in the gan­grenous tis­sue. All the tests had missed it. It had caused the infec­tion. The diag­no­sis had been wrong from the start. I nev­er had Acal­cu­lous Chole­cys­ti­tis. I had a nor­mal gall blad­der infec­tion. The only way it could have killed me was if I had refused to under­go the surgery to remove it.

I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time. Think­ing I might die gave me an appre­ci­a­tion for the bless­ings that were to come in the days still ahead of me. If I hadn’t sur­vived the infec­tion, here’s some of what I would have missed.

Grand­daugh­ter num­ber 1 blos­som­ing into one of the top fifty soc­cer play­ers in the nation in her age group. Grand­daugh­ter num­ber 2, also an elite soc­cer play­er, stand­ing at the front of her fifth-grade class­room on grand­par­ents’ day, telling every­one about fun times with Papaw. Grand­daugh­ter num­ber 3 falling in love with hors­es at three years old and becom­ing an expert rid­er at sev­en. Grand­son num­ber 1’s pre­co­cious tal­ents as a karate war­rior, skate­board­er, rail­road enthu­si­ast, and stu­dio artist. The births of grand­sons 2 and 3, both wild and crazy guys now three years old, one a future offen­sive line­man for the LA Rams, the oth­er des­tined to become a world-class heavy-equip­ment operator.

I would have missed build­ing a horse barn, tak­ing up horse­back rid­ing, bond­ing with Marge, Lily, Wil­son, and Jack­son, and the equine ther­a­py of a thou­sand trail rides.

I would have missed the heart-swelling exhil­a­ra­tion and qui­et sat­is­fac­tion of craft­ing the plot and char­ac­ter inter­play in The Judas Mur­ders, the cel­e­bra­tion of youth­ful first love in The Princess of Sug­ar Val­ley, and the cathar­tic self-real­iza­tions in Keep­ing the Promise and 20 more blog posts since its publication.

I would have missed watch­ing my younger daugh­ter mar­ry and build a hap­py fam­i­ly with the love of her life, my son’s care­ful expan­sion of his pros­per­ous busi­ness with­out skip­ping a beat in his role as a lov­ing father and hus­band, and my old­er daugh­ter and her hus­band achiev­ing inter­na­tion­al acclaim and com­mer­cial suc­cess for their art gallery.

I would have missed five more years of love and com­pan­ion­ship with Cindy along with the chance to become her care­giv­er and coach through two years of painful recov­er­ies from dou­ble knee replace­ments, a small install­ment on my great debt to her for fifty-three years of sup­port and encour­age­ment, prop­ping me up and keep­ing me going through good times and bad.

This is the short list. The full list of what I would have missed in the past five years would fill more pages than all my nov­els combined.

I don’t con­sid­er my life mean­ing­less. In many ways, it’s more mean­ing­ful today than ever before.

I won’t reject pre­ven­tive health­care mea­sures and life-sav­ing pro­ce­dures now that I’m 75. I’ll take all I can get. Dr. Emanuel is a real­ly smart guy, but on the sub­ject of aging, I pre­fer the med­ical advice of the poet: “Do not go gen­tle into that good night,/Old age should burn and rave at close of day;/Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

I could go on about the many gifts of grow­ing old­er, but I’ll rein it in for your sake and close by updat­ing words I wrote in this blog five years ago.

I’m 75 years old; I’ve lived a long full life; I’ve still got a good ways to go; and you ain’t seen noth­in’ yet.

Last month, when the far­ri­er lift­ed Wilson’s right back hoof to shoe him, the twen­ty-year-old thor­ough­bred lost his bal­ance and almost fell. Hav­ing seen this before in old­er hors­es, the far­ri­er ran his hand along Wilson’s neck and back, and as he expect­ed, he flinched and nipped at him.

We called the vet. He stood beside Wilson’s hindquar­ters and pulled his tail toward him. Wil­son swayed, then stum­bled. “The nor­mal reac­tion,” the vet said, “is for the horse to brace against the tug­ging force and hold his posi­tion. Wil­son can’t do that because he’s not sure where his back legs are.”

Arthri­tis in his neck had dam­aged nerves run­ning down his spine to his legs. Arthri­tis is incur­able and relent­less­ly degen­er­a­tive. “All we can do,” the vet said, “is slow down the skele­tal deterioration.”

He pre­scribed pred­nisolone. “If the drug works,” the vet said, “Wil­son should be able to car­ry a rid­er bare­back or with a sway­back cush­ion under the sad­dle for a few more years.”

The next morn­ing, I dis­solved 400 mil­ligrams of the drug in water, mixed it with oats and molasses, and spread it over Wilson’s alfal­fa. Lat­er in the day, Janet, my train­er and good friend, rid­ing her horse, Jesse, ponied Wil­son while I fol­lowed on Marge. Wil­son strug­gled, espe­cial­ly on the down­hill slopes. When we fin­ished up, he was sweat­ing; his head was down; and he was drool­ing. Even a rid­er­less walk had bro­ken him down.

That was a water­shed moment for me. I knew then that I would nev­er again allow any­one, includ­ing me, to climb on Wilson’s back. Even if the drug worked, I wouldn’t take the chance of inflict­ing more pain on him.

It’s the right deci­sion, but I’ll miss my rides with Wilson.

I first saw him almost four years ago on a home-made sales video. A young woman lunged a hand­some, glossy bay in a dirt cor­ral in Bak­ers­field, then rode him on a bare­back pad over a dusty road. Doing his best to ignore a trio of mutts scur­ry­ing around his feet, Wil­son fol­lowed the young woman’s cues, care­ful­ly back­ing up, stand­ing still, and mov­ing for­ward, to enable her to open a gate with­out dismounting.

I liked his demeanor. The way he held his head and the look on his face gave me the sense he was a good soul, try­ing hard to do his job well. The ask­ing price was low and the young woman agreed to trail­er him to Hid­den Hills with­out charge, so I bought him.

She deliv­ered him on a cool, clear Feb­ru­ary evening, and Janet and I walked him up the hill on Clear Val­ley Road toward my barn. A big, tall horse, a lit­tle under six­teen hands (about five feet four inch­es from the ground to his with­ers, the spot where his neck joins his back), his dark brown neck and head framed by a peach sun­set, his black mane and fore­lock rif­fling in a light breeze, his head held high, his eyes alert, he looked around anx­ious­ly at the res­i­den­tial homes and man­i­cured lawns.

When you buy a horse like Wil­son, with no papers or pedi­gree, you know noth­ing about his his­to­ry, what he’s been through, or how he’s been treat­ed. More than like­ly, Wil­son passed through many own­ers’ hands, some who were good to him and oth­ers who were cru­el. Jane Smi­ley, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning nov­el­ist, wrote that such a horse’s life is like “twen­ty years in fos­ter care, or in and out of prison, while at the same time chang­ing schools over and over and dis­cov­er­ing . . . that what you learned at the old school hasn’t much appli­ca­tion at the new one.”

That pas­sage ran through my mind as I watched Wil­son prance ner­vous­ly up the street. Ear­li­er that after­noon, he stood on a drought-parched farm where every­thing was famil­iar to him. With­out warn­ing, the young woman came along, put a hal­ter on him, and loaded him into a small, cramped tin box. For the next two and a half hours, he jounced around inside the metal­lic stall, as it rocked and swayed over free­ways at sev­en­ty miles per hour, speed­ing him away from every­thing he’d ever known. When the trail­er final­ly stopped, the young woman clanged open the rear door, backed him down a ramp, and hand­ed his lead line to peo­ple he’d nev­er met in a place where all the sights, sounds, and scents were com­plete­ly for­eign to him. Head­ed up the hill toward my barn that evening, he had to be lost and fright­ened by the sud­den, rad­i­cal change we’d forced upon him, and yet I sensed he was try­ing hard to adjust to this new world.

We led him into his stall. He walked around appre­hen­sive­ly, check­ing out the gray stuc­co walls and the wood shav­ings on the floor. He drank from the water buck­et, then looked out the Dutch stall-door, tak­ing in the street below, the val­ley, and the oppo­site ridge. We gave him orchard grass and alfal­fa, and he attacked it like he hadn’t been fed for days. When I left him an hour lat­er, he’d calmed down a lit­tle and seemed to be set­tling in.

His name on the bill of sale was Chip­py. It didn’t fit. I’m not sure why, but the name Wil­son came to mind when I was with him that night in the barn. I went with it, and it took hold.

A few days after Wilson’s arrival, we put him in the cor­ral with his sta­ble­mate, Mar­garine, a lit­tle sor­rel alpha mare. She hates most oth­er hors­es. She tol­er­at­ed Wil­son for about an hour before attack­ing him. I ran a fence down the mid­dle of the cor­ral to keep the peace and called the vet to tend to Wilson’s bruis­es. For a more detailed account of their dust-up, see Ani­mal Pharm.

The vet said Wil­son was phys­i­cal­ly sound, but old­er than we thought. The young woman said he was twelve. The vet said he was six­teen or old­er. I didn’t care. I want­ed a trail horse who would be good with my grand­kids, and he fit the bill.

Janet spent the next few weeks train­ing him, and he adapt­ed to the neigh­bor­hood streets and trails quick­ly. I first rode him that spring. He wasn’t a com­fort­able ride. His walk­ing gait was irreg­u­lar, chop­py, and bumpy, and his trot was like sit­ting on a jack­ham­mer, but I liked rid­ing him anyway.

Horse­back rid­ing presents a thrilling para­dox. When you climb in the sad­dle, you must take a mea­sure of con­trol over your mount, but sit­ting on a twelve-hun­dred-pound ani­mal, you give up a lot of con­trol at the same time. Wilson’s tall frame and big bar­rel encase extra­or­di­nary pow­er, and his speed lives up to his breed. My aware­ness of his pow­er and speed made rid­ing him excit­ing each time we went out. He turned out to be a gen­tle giant, though. He was always a safe ride except once when he reared for rea­sons beyond his con­trol. See For the Love of Hors­es for a descrip­tion of that incident.

Janet deter­mined ear­ly on that Wil­son was “cold backed” (sen­si­tive to weight on his back until he was warmed up). We lunged him for a long time before each ride to com­pen­sate for that, but the steep down­hills still seemed to strain his back, so we rode him on flat­ter trails.

Look­ing back on it now, I feel guilty about some of those rides. He must have been suf­fer­ing, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the more recent out­ings, but he did what­ev­er I asked of him, always giv­ing his best effort, nev­er balk­ing or faltering.

About five days into Wilson’s treat­ment with pred­nisolone, the drug worked its mag­ic. When I arrived at the barn that morn­ing to feed him, he ran up the hill to his stall like a young horse. When we ponied him that day, the pain seemed to be gone, but I haven’t changed my mind. I know too much about arthri­tis. It crip­pled my knees until they were replaced, and I still have it in my fin­gers. Med­ica­tion eas­es the pain for a while, but it always returns. Wilson’s been through enough. His rid­ing days are over.

There’s a mys­ti­cal com­mu­nion between a horse and a rid­er. I had that with Wil­son. Although that part of our friend­ship is gone, our bond remains strong. I can still pony him, walk him on a lead line, groom him, give him car­rots, and talk things over with him, just like before.

I’m told that some own­ers would dis­pose of an old­er horse in Wilson’s con­di­tion, dump him on a res­cue orga­ni­za­tion, or send him to a kill-pen. I can’t do that. Wil­son did his job well for as long as he could. Now I’ll do mine. I’ll keep him healthy, hap­py, and safe for the rest of his life.

Post Script: “Take care of your hors­es and trea­sure them.” Jane Smiley

We were horse­back rid­ing on a shady trail. Janet, my train­er, rode her horse and ponied Mar­garine, a lit­tle sor­rel mare. I fol­lowed, rid­ing Wil­son, a tall bay geld­ing. A half-mile into the ride, Wil­son and I moved up close to Marge. He tensed up and began toss­ing his head, then sud­den­ly crow-hopped and reared. I leaned for­ward and held on. He came down, reared again, and came down again.

“Get off of him,” Janet said in a calm voice.

In the emer­gency dis­mount tech­nique, you free your boots from the stir­rups, lean for­ward, swing your right leg over the horse’s hindquar­ters, and push away to land on your feet, but I wasn’t con­fi­dent my knees could with­stand a hard, awk­ward fall. So I stayed put.

After pranc­ing around ner­vous­ly for a while, Wil­son set­tled in one place for a split sec­ond, and I was able to dis­mount in the nor­mal way. Cri­sis averted.

Although we didn’t know it when we left the barn, Marge was in sea­son (at the point in her estrus cycle when she was ready to mate). Sur­pris­ing­ly, one-third of all ful­ly cas­trat­ed geld­ings can still become aroused. When Wil­son came with­in range of Marge’s sexy vibes, we found out he was one of them.

I was for­tu­nate to be rid­ing Wil­son when this hap­pened. A gen­tle giant, he didn’t try to buck me off, and when he reared, he only went up about halfway, but it was still a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion for some­one like me, a begin­ning rid­er in his sev­en­ties with tita­ni­um knees. If my knee sur­geon had found out about it, he would have filed com­mit­ment proceedings.

Two years ear­li­er he’d warned me that my deci­sion to become a horse­man posed an unrea­son­able risk of seri­ous injury to a man my age in my con­di­tion. “Don’t do it,” he said. “Keep your feet on the ground.”

His advice was rea­son­able giv­en my his­to­ry. I’d enjoyed good health most of my life, but as I neared the end of my sev­enth decade, my body seemed to be wear­ing out. I’d come through five surg­eries to repair or replace fail­ing body parts, and arthri­tis had eat­en away all the car­ti­lage in my knees. Bent over and list­ing to one side, I could only walk fifty yards before the pain broke me down. I felt old. Real­ly old.

At that least oppor­tune moment in my life, when I was star­ing down the gun bar­rel of dou­ble knee replace­ment surgery, a sud­den ambi­tion to ride hors­es came to me out of nowhere and grabbed me by the throat. It made no sense to me, and I didn’t under­stand it.

My only expe­ri­ences with hors­es were min­i­mal and so far back in my past I had for­got­ten about them. There’s a pho­to of my dad steady­ing me in the sad­dle on a paint horse in 1948 when I was fif­teen months old. My moth­er wrote on the back of it, “You fell in love with hors­es on this vis­it to Paris, Ken­tucky.” I don’t remem­ber the hors­es or the trip.

There’s a lat­er pho­to of me at a pony ride. I was four years old the day Dad pulled our Hud­son off Route 60 into a dirt lot beside a field of tall grass where an old man lift­ed me onto the back of a tired pony and led us around a well-worn quar­ter-mile loop. Mom’s cap­tion on that pho­to says, “You had to ride this pony every time we went near Rich­mond.” I rode that pony four times, all told.

In my teen years, we moved to White Hall, Vir­ginia, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Moun­tains, big-time horse coun­try, hunters and show jumpers. While we lived there, I nev­er rode and had almost no con­tact with hors­es, but a vivid mem­o­ry of a par­tic­u­lar horse and rid­er from those years stayed with me.

I worked a few week­ends one sum­mer as a handy­man for Pete and Phyl­lis Jones, who owned Small­wood Farm where Phyl­lis trained hors­es and rid­ers. On a hot day I was stand­ing on the roof of the main house replac­ing worn-out tiles when a pick­up truck pulled a horse trail­er into the barn­yard. Pete helped an elder­ly man back a big, high-spir­it­ed, roan stal­lion out of the trail­er. When the stal­lion cleared the ramp, he screamed, bucked, and reared.

“I know you said your wife would train him,” the old man yelled to Pete as he strained to hold on to the wild stallion’s lead rope, “but he’s too much for a woman to handle!”

“She’ll ride him,” Pete said.

“But look at him, Mis­ter Jones! Ain’t no woman alive can ride him! He needs a man’s strong hand!”

“If he can be rode,” Pete said in a steady voice, “she’ll ride him.”

And ride him she did. The next Sat­ur­day, I looked down from the roof to see the big roan prance out of the barn with five-feet-three-inch Phyl­lis Jones in the sad­dle. She guid­ed him on a tight rein through the yard into the pas­ture. He broke into a trot and then a can­ter. About halfway across the field, Phyl­lis urged the roan into a con­trolled gal­lop, mov­ing with his action seam­less­ly, as if she was part of him. It was a vision of spec­tac­u­lar beau­ty, grace, and grandeur.

For a while after that I dreamed about rid­ing, but when I went back to school in the fall, I for­got about it.

Maybe it was those three long-ago mem­o­ries step­ping for­ward out of the dark mist of the past that inspired me to turn to hors­es more than a half-cen­tu­ry lat­er. Maybe it was the lit­tle boy at the pony ride knock­ing on the door of my con­scious­ness. “Hey! Remem­ber me? Remem­ber that time before you had to grow up when we loved horses?”

Or maybe it was the teenag­er on Small­wood Farm call­ing out to me from way back before all the years at UVA, teach­ing, law school, Lath­am and Watkins, and Safe­way piled up on top of his dream and buried it.

Or maybe the past had noth­ing at all to do with it. Maybe it was the unhap­py present, a rebel­lion against my advanc­ing age and all the phys­i­cal prob­lems I’d come through. Maybe it was an attempt to reverse the clock, to rewrite the lat­er chap­ters of my life to replace pain and frus­tra­tion with vibran­cy and vigor.

I don’t know, but what­ev­er my moti­va­tion, I didn’t heed my doctor’s warning.

In my six­ty-ninth win­ter, I broke ground on the con­struc­tion of a horse barn. The fol­low­ing June, the sur­geon replaced my left knee. My sev­en­ti­eth birth­day rolled by in July. In August, I got a new right knee. For the next four months, I worked hard in rehab, focus­ing on leg strength, core devel­op­ment, and balance.

In Jan­u­ary, on a cold crisp morn­ing, I climbed a mount­ing block and threw my leg over the sad­dle while Janet held Marge in place. Sit­ting astride a thou­sand-pound ani­mal, the ground looked hard, unfor­giv­ing, and a long way down. For a few dis­con­cert­ing moments I thought I might be as crazy as my osteopath claimed. Light-head­ed and dizzy, I swal­lowed hard.

“You okay?” Janet said.

I touched Marge’s mane and stroked her neck. The dizzi­ness passed. “I’m okay,” I said.

Janet ponied Marge and me away from her barn, and we rode the trails in Hid­den Hills for an hour. We rode again the next day. And the next.

Grad­u­al­ly, my strength came back and my mood lift­ed. For the first time in years, I felt good. Real­ly good.

I bought Marge from Janet. A month lat­er, we found Lily, a speck­led gray mare. Wil­son, a thor­ough­bred now twen­ty years old, came next. Jack­son, a pedi­greed Amer­i­can Paint quar­ter horse, round­ed out the herd.

I’ve been rid­ing for four years, four to five days a week. I’m not a great rid­er, but I do okay. I go easy, at a walk or a trot, some­times a can­ter. I play it safe, but no horse is bomb-proof. Hors­es think any­thing they don’t under­stand is a preda­tor and they run from it. Large­ly because Janet’s pri­or­i­ty is safe­ty, close calls have been rare for me, the most dan­ger­ous being Wilson’s “Hi Ho Sil­ver” imi­ta­tion. So far, I’ve nev­er been thrown or injured.

But the thrill of rid­ing is not the main rea­son my mind and body healed. It’s the horses.

A poster hangs in the tack room of my barn. Beside an artis­tic ren­der­ing of Secretariat’s pro­file etched in hand­writ­ten script are the words, “God made the horse from the breath of the wind, the beau­ty of the earth, and the soul of an angel.”

This is true.

A horse’s heart is about twen­ty times the size of a human heart. Some peo­ple claim hors­es can feel your heart­beat when you approach them, and they syn­chro­nize the beat of their heart with yours. I’m not sure about that, but this much I know. There’s a benign sym­bio­sis between each of my hors­es and me. When I’m stressed, they calm me down. When I’m trou­bled, they soothe my soul. Always.

I can point to a basis in log­ic and rea­son for all the big deci­sions I’ve made in my long life. Except for this one. This one time I closed my eyes and took a blind step for­ward. And to my great sur­prise, I stum­bled upon a mirac­u­lous gift, the love of horses.