A seclusive ranch with inclusive equine therapy is helping Maui self-regulate
story by Mona de Crinis
photographs by Daniel Sullivan
Where the famed backroad to Hāna, HI-37, snakes across verdant expanses peppered with scoria and ‘ohi‘a trees, the Pacific Ocean churning below, cattle roam free and wild goats skirt the hillsides like pied phantoms glimpsed but never seen.
Out here, in the shadow of the House of the Sun, a person can breathe. Solitude wraps around you like a warm blanket, and you can almost hear the heartbeat of Haleakalā match your own. Along the volcano’s southwestern flank, pulsing with primal energy, the elements are feral, weary life stripped to shreds in the wind, emotional baggage splintering in the pounding surf.
Out here, amid the black rock and battle brush, where Bully’s Burgers and a honey stand mark the turnoff to Spirit Horse Ranch, healing happens. Operating out of Triple L Ranch – one of Maui’s few remaining cattle ranches – the nonprofit founded by ranch matriarch, Paige DePonte, provides equine-assisted learning, therapy and intervention for trauma survivors and their caregivers.
Handed down through Louis DePonte, Paige’s late husband, Triple L Ranch has been in the DePonte family for more than 70 years. Now widowed with sole responsibility, she supplements the island’s shrinking ranching industry with diversified revenue streams, including horseback tours, art, equine and wilderness therapy, and other wellness offerings.
Acknowledging the benefits of neocortex-to-neocortex treatment, DePonte is a trained mental health practitioner with certifications in multiple alternative therapies and often works in tandem with conventional therapists on difficult cases. Spirit Horse Ranch’s experiential approach fills in the gaps left silent in concrete and steel, while also suggesting that there can be moments of joy in healing.
Near the last lava flow and far from the noise of traffic, a pair of enclosed pens promise unrealized recovery in a scenic dell a short drive from the intake area – an open-air, three-sided, lounge-like structure with cushy seating and a safari-inspired floor where DePonte explains the process and potential results of equine therapy.
The client is assigned a therapy horse and trained facilitator, who ferries them down a scabrous dirt road to the pens where sessions take place. On the radio, an old Willie Nelson tune keeps time with each bump and every jostle as the truck pinballs across rock and earth.
“My oldest doesn’t like country music,” offered the driver, Maurissa, who is also DePonte’s daughter and one of the ranch’s four certified Equine-Assisted Learning facilitators. “But that one song, “God’s Country,” by Blake Shelton, I think – she loves that because it reminds her of this place.”
Tucked between the highway and the ocean in an orange embrace of flowering wiliwili, the natural clearing carries the positive vibration of neighboring Waiakapuhi Lava Field and the faint scent of sandalwood from the naio shrub. Below, the Pacific thunders.
In the first arena, a 12-year-old boy quietly reads to a horse several hands taller than him. Four weeks earlier, he wanted nothing to do with the gentle mare.
Diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder, the boy was fighting in school and was even worse at home, DePonte remembered. “We had Beauty work with him. She schools all the little ones,” she said.
At Spirit Horse Ranch, the horses are an integral part of the nonprofit’s therapy and intervention practices. Mental health practitioners and facilitators offer clients a different avenue to process trauma through equine-assisted activities.
The boy was clearly puzzled by Beauty at first. She would look at him, walk a few paces and wait. “What do I do?” the boy inquired. “Follow her,” DePonte responded. A few tentative steps, and he was by her side.
Beauty and the boy continued this way: the horse leading and the boy catching up, until they had circled the ring. On the last leg of their disjointed maiden journey, the boy reached for Beauty, and Beauty was there.
“They formed this incredible bond over several weeks,” DePonte said. “He read to her from books, and she listened like a patient grandmother.”
As of the last update from the family, relationships at home had improved and there were noticeably fewer incidents at school as the young man learned to identify, express and better regulate emotions rather than act out in frustration. By talking to a horse, he had found his voice.
DePonte launched Spirit Horse Ranch in 2021 to help Maui youth ages 13 to 17 – an underserved demographic, in her opinion –access the inner resolve needed to navigate an increasingly challenging world. “When you’re trying to recover from trauma, being in an open, safe environment with positive energy and few distractions is important,” she said.
When wildfires ravaged Lāhainā and parts of Kula last August, DePonte and her team of certified EAL facilitators expanded their mental-health services, offering free sessions to anyone on island struggling with the fires’ aftermath and cumulative despair enshrouding the island in recent years. “First there was the botched missile alert, then came Covid, inflation and then the fires,” she said. “We’ve had one hit after another – people need help. And they need it now.”
Working with horses helps ground clients as they process their emotions in a safe and supportive Upcountry environment.
Shiras Manning, a physician’s assistant specializing in trauma surgery, came to Spirit Horse Ranch to help her cope with the absorbed pain and grief of impacted patients compounded by several failed in vitro fertilization treatments over the same period. “It’s all been really taxing,” she said, adding that many in her field seek ways to shake off the residue and unearth long-buried unease.
Employing horses rather than human counterparts and an island paradise for an office, Spirit Horse Ranch presents a viable alternative or adjunct to traditional talk therapy for the more than 800 people who’ve since sought assistance.
“Some folks don’t feel comfortable walking into a therapist’s office with four walls,” acknowledged DePonte. “There may be a window and some pretty pictures, but it can feel claustrophobic. Outside people – like many of us on Maui – are not used to being shut in.”
Whether walking, brushing, stroking, talking to or simply bonding with a horse, these rhythmic, repetitive actions initiate the process of recognition and release as clients find comfort in the animal’s unconditional acceptance.
“Horses don’t judge,” DePonte said. “They love, and they listen. Except for Angel,” she adds with a grin. “Angel doesn’t like profanity. She feels the energy behind it, and she will let you know – in every language.”
Horses can tune into human feelings – even to our scents, DePonte said. They often understand human emotions before we can recognize them. The horses then communicate those feelings and emotions to facilitators who help the clients.
“We call ‘em poly horses,” DePonte said. “You can’t lie to a horse.”
If the horse makes a little nipping motion during session, it’s a gentle reminder to get real and be honest, DePonte said. An abrupt halt during a walkabout may signal a need for more time or reflection on a topic. A horse picking up unchecked anger or other emotion beneath the surface might dig the ground or stomp its hoof.
Sometimes the horse just holds space, the head dropping as the animal processes a human’s pain. “Sometimes the horses cry,” DePonte said. “Tears running down – we are trained to watch for the subtlest of signs.”
With DePonte or another facilitator guiding the conversation, they ask clients to describe what’s going on with the animal. As they run through scenarios – is the horse stressed? is she angry? is she unhappy? – the client begins to connect the horse’s external behavior to their own inner strife.
The goal of the program is to help clients achieve what DePonte calls “emotional stasis.”
“It’s all about resetting and rebuilding neurons and mindfulness,” she said.
“If we can shift it within ourselves, we can shift it to help others. Because on an island, no one feels good when our neighbors suffer.”
