In the 1960s, a group of girls in Lower Topanga roamed the land on horseback, riding in the creek, on the beach, and all over Sunset Mesa before houses were built there. “I was thirteen years old when horses came into my daily life,� says Lynnea Paxton-Honn. “One black named Dilly, and one bay named Mazie, lived in the neighborhood horse facility that our fathers built.� To buy her own horse, Lynnea got a waitressing job at French’s Wee Nook at the corner of Topanga and PCH, where Oasis Imports is today. A lover of Westerns, she confesses, “The horses, not the men who rode them, were my heroes.... My heart wanted the same communion... that was shared by Silver and The Lone Ranger, Trigger and Roy Rogers, and Champion and Gene Autry.� Her friend, Sara Lane, became a cowgirl actress on TV’s The Virginian, and Ingrid Lindquist completed the group that shared a “piece of heaven with me.� Now in her 70s, Lynnea has published From the Heart of a Horsewoman, a book about the love of horses which she and her friends still share. It examines the bond between humans and horses from a scientific, aesthetic, and spiritual viewpoint. Lynnea cites a 2010 article by Ellen Kaye Gehrke, PhD, called “The Horse-Human Heart Connection� about a study that was done on horse riders. The study noted that “each person synchronized his or her particular [heart rhythms] to match the horse’s specific frequency cycle.� In other words, the calmness of a horse has a real therapeutic effect on humans. According to sculptor Diana Reuter-Twining, horses teach us about beauty because they embody the Golden Ratio, which Lynnea defines in her own wonderful words, as “an asymmetrical balance that creates an ever-evolving movement, forever seeking to bring the whole into balance and forever recreating its asymmetry in a harmony that carries the eye into a mystery of searching.� Finally, Lynnea says, horses help us to grow spiritually. “A rider experiences their church on the back of a horse in nature.... This amazing, beautiful connection we have with horses is but a schooling place for the bigger connection that we have with all Life.� Horse lovers will be moved by the myriad ways Lynnea has found to explain their joy. n “From the Heart of a Horsewoman� by Lynnea Paxton-Honn (Little Publishing Co., 2020) $11.99, 70 pages, is available on Amazon and Kindle.