That which is invisible, present in a form which is recognised, moving between concepts with a degree of fluidity.
In folklore, the horse, the fox, and the crow were considered boundary walkers — creatures that moved between two worlds. In human form, a boundary walker is someone who moves between two worlds, cultures, societies, collectives. Someone who embodies aspects of both, who is permitted to move within, but who does not fully integrate with either.
Learning to Listen
Belonging was a theme that kept surfacing as I worked through Louise Fletcher’s course, Finding Your Way — a month spent compiling a mind map, starting with myself at the centre and radiating out into all the aspects of self. A child out of step with the family and community she was born into. The felt sense of belonging arriving instead among the creatures I grew up with, and later, as an adult, the herd on the hill.
Being out of step teaches you something a settled belonging never has to. You learn to observe. To feel and respond to the physiological activation in a space before anyone names or acknowledges what is happening. To a child, this was survival, being sufficiently engaged so not to draw attention, present on the periphery, invisible.
Invisibility isn’t just safety. It’s a vantage point. It lets you witness objectively, seeking to understand the reasons for behaviour rather than reacting to its surface. Once you’ve had to learn to hear what was not being said in your own world, you carry that skill everywhere. Understanding what it is to be out of step in your own world gives you a way to understand another’s out-of-step-ness. Combine that with an enquiring mind, and it becomes a drive: to know, to understand, to integrate, with real curiosity.
The Herd as Bridge
The horses embody this back to me. There is a genuine curiosity in them, a willingness to engage, to find connection — I believe it’s the greatest gift the equine brings. Having worked on a farm with a herd of horses alongside a herd of brown Angus cows, the difference in how each responds to a human is stark. The cows survey you with a measured, knowing look — the way you walk, what you smell like — they know a hamburger has been on the menu. Calves move away. Foals come and have a good look at you.
The herd’s awareness knows you’re approaching before you even see the first shadow of a moving horse. Horses, like cows, see how we move, where our eyes sit, our linear way of scanning the world; they can smell what we’ve eaten. To a cow, all of that says leave. To a horse, it says: I see you, and I’m prepared to listen to what you bring to the conversation.
That is what makes the horses boundary walkers in their own right. They do not stop being horses. They don’t perform understanding the way humans sometimes do. They stay rooted in their own presence — and from that stability, they offer a bridge: to communication, to connection, to relationship, on terms that ask you to be listened to as you actually are, not as you’re expected to be.
The Space Between
Think of a transition zone in nature — the place where forest meets meadow. The ground between two ecological systems is always richer in diversity, richer in possibility, than either system alone. That’s what the boundary is. Not a rigid edge, but a threshold — an opportunity for real enquiry into the who, a genuine regard to understand, to expand your own awareness by letting someone else’s in.
Communication creates connection. Connection creates relationship. Relationship creates community. And listening, the kind that hears what is not said as much as what is — is what softens the edge enough to let that flow continue, to expand into greater awareness and understanding.
Trusting What You Can Not Hear Yet
My dear friend Carlene, explaining liberty work, once said: when your horse moves away from you, don’t think I have lost my horse. Think instead that the bubble surrounding both of you is expanding, getting bigger, the connection is still there. Draw your horse back, or go with your horse and see the other perspective. The intention is to maintain the connection while the relationship allows for expansion. Returning to proximity, builds cohesion, the more cohesive the relationship the more resilient it is.
That, I think, is what walking between boundaries really asks of you. Not to brace when the other shifts in a different direction, but to trust that the connection continues to exist, merely widening and to remain gently curious to welcome the journey.