I saw a movie about a rehabilitation program for people with palsies or other muscular/skeletal probems where they ride horses. There was footage of a little little girl standing on a horse as it walked. Her mother and father held her hands and she wobbled as she tried to ballance as the horse walked. This kind of therapy is called HIPPOTHERAPY. It has remarkable results and gives people a really hopeful and positive relationship to their bodies vis-a-vis the powerful bodies of horses.
In Greek mythology, many esp. male young people are done in by horses, and the challenge of controling horses has a lot to do metaphorically with controlling the thing you have to tame: this can be yourself, your wife, your pride. Which is hard when you are a teenager.
At any rate I was walking on the snow and I felt those different ballancing muscles working hard to make it so I didn't fall, walking in the shoes of my mailman, down my front steps, then on to the slick sidewalk towards the busstop. I know this is a training for something, using these muscles, but for what?
I know listening in the night, in the snow, there is also a stretch and strain in the silence. There is no sound. What am I learning?