White Horse Pilgrim

Waiting

Brena seems forever waiting to eat. She isn't disappointed when I am around. However I am amazed at how close she can stand to that electric fence tape and never get shocked. She is but millimetres away.....and with impunity.

We had a quick ride around the farm. Everything there seems so much more exciting to her than the big open spaces. That's odd. The farm should be familiar and comfortable. But it isn't. Obviously she is a true trail horse.

The trail does seem like our natural home. We move ahead, looking about us, sometimes exploring, relaxed yet alert to our surroundings. We become connected to our environment. We are free as the trails that we tread.

Minutes become hours. It is as if we vanish from time. Only the passage of the sun through the sky - and, all too often, down towards the horzon - sets chronology to our footfalls by the thousand. It is as if the seasons claim us, slowing us from time set by a watch to that of nature itself.

The ground is so hard that I am going to try working Brena in boots. Fortunately Doru's Old Macs fit her - size 10, the largest. She doesn't look like a horse with big feet, however they are. With a bit of luck I'll get off work early tomorrow and the weather will be good. Well, we do try to make a bit of luck for ourselves.

Late ride

With trailering at both ends, a two-hour ride means that I will be away from home for up to four hours. So, having left work at 5pm with an hour's journey home, it was going to be a late trip.

We set off with the sun setting golden at our backs, entering a quiet green landscape that embraced our disappearance from the world beyond.

In rolling sinuous valleys the air was cool and fresh. The chalk track glowed bright in the deepening shadow. Then back to the ridge as the orange sun slipped below a horizon decorated with filigree trees.

We arrived back at the trailer after the mid-summer sun had set, the world becoming grey with rising gloom. In near-darkness I returned Brena to her field, and got home in inky blackness.

Weather impact

I didn't get to ride because of the weather. Not so much because it rained during the evening - in fact the weather dried up nicely - but because the railway between work and home was struck by lightning. That knocked out the signals, which led to delays until repairs were made.

An airport control tower was struck too, which stopped operations for a while forcing planes to divert. In other areas flooding has been reported. I am just glad that, for the most part, this country is not hot or dry enough for wildfires to break out.

In a now dry early evening the two horses enjoyed their dinner. Whilst they ate I pulled ragwort from the field. This poisonous plant is becoming quite a nuisance. As budgets are cut, it spreads along roads and paths, infiltrating farmland.

Their neighbour is around forty years old and has little in the way of teeth. She cannot graze - though she tries - so lives on a special mash diet up to her knees in grass.

My two would level that field in no time. However such is the fear of laminitis that no other horse has been put in their to graze it down. This is a very reasonable precaution on land that has been re-sown with dairy grass.

Now all of the fields are taken. The farm has a delightful feel, with several dozen horses all turned out. Where fields meet they gather in small groups, grooming across the fences or simply congregating. In the long evenings there is activity right past nine at night, with horses being schooled or ridden around the farm. Sometimes I get back as late as ten.

Brena's feet are standing up to the work, though chipped and worn. She does have curious upright feet with great wide coronary bands. I could neaten them with a rasp, however I think that the less removed (and the more hoof material remaining in place) the better. I do remove broken fragments that are hanging off, however that is rather a cosmetic exercise.

She is sound on all surfaces but does choose her path carefully, as I would expect a natural horse to do so. I select places to trot and canter based on the going rather than simply where I feel like it. That, too, is an impact of the weather - springy going after rain or hard as iron in the dry spells.

Anyway we have five days of fine settled weather forecast. There will be plenty of riding. However it may be slow going on the bone-dry ground.

Evening riding

This is a curious, unique and quite wonderful time of year. There is so much daylight that I can work and ride daily without cutting back too far on sleep.

Not everyone understands one very simple and personal factor: for nine months of the year I shall regret every single evening when, for whatever trivial reason, I did not head out to ride.

This is my true summer, high noon, nirvana, otherworld, and Tir na Nog.

This is my season of freedom, too short and all the more precious for it.

Here I am young, the world wide and fresh, and troubles do not beset me.

This is a good place to be.

The pressures of work and riding may be exhausting. But each is worth it in its own way. I know that, a month hence, I shall be very tired indeed. But isn't the onset of Autumn a time when those who spend much time outdoors begin at last to feel fatigue?

The peculiar sense of euphoria with the horses in the pastures was special. The happiness of being out on the trail with a good horse is like none other. The partnership that I feel out there riding is unique, however good the people are whom I work with - and they are good.

Yes, I am recapturing some essence of past years. I am grasping a happiness that was not always a part of my life, but was present often enough that I long for it. I am taking hold of youth and freedom with the benefit of a little wisdom picked up along the way. It seems like a good combination.

I suppose that I have gained wisdom and also various aches and pains. Entering trot Brena always throws me up on a particular diagonal. Changing to the other my right hip joint twinged. I am getting old.

However I shall keep on riding. A door creaks on its hinges for long before it falls down.

Meanwhile in other ways being out there with Brena keeps me young - in spirit, in ideas, and in appreciation of the wide open spaces.

Sailing the broad green sea

Arrival back at the trailer from an afternoon ride transported me much further back, in fact all the way to the "old days" in Transylvania.

It was a very hot day, and I returned happy and thirsty. I needed to drink rather than just wanting to. But only after gulping down some water did I realise that hunger was present almost as much as thirst, the welcome liquid making me aware of another inner need. Arrival after hours on the mountain used to be like that, thirst slaked quickly giving way to hunger after a long trail on a warm day.

 
Brena, however, did not want to drink. She played a little with a bucket of water, but drank neither from that nor from puddles en-route. I do know that Brena will head for even a muddy puddle if she is thirsty, which is a useful sign.

The hills west of here are broad and green. I have used the metaphor of a vast petrified sea more than once before. Indeed there is some combination of the oceanic and the organic about that land.

 
Fields sweep boldly, some delineated by hedges, trees or belts of thorn bushes. Indeed it is the hawthorn that is the default growth here, for it is to these that abandoned hill land tumbles back to. Were these hills covered in thorn bushes before man cleared vast spaces for crop and pasture?

In the midst of these chalk billows lies an old farm, still used for livestock and storage though no-one lives there anymore. It is a silent, poignant complex of corrugated iron, the default material up here in the lean years after the Second World War. Indeed the rounded building is a recycled wartime military hut.

 
On a quiet stretch of trail we came across a multicoloured hippie bus around which chickens and geese foraged. Looking suspiciously at the geese, Brena walked past quietly if a little on edge. The geese, of course, retreated for such are noisy but not courageous.

And it was hot! A few clouds sprang up at the horizon, but only the few hedges and trees through shade upon our path. As usual I covered up rather than applying chemicals to my skin, wearing a very useful thin roll-neck pullover with long sleeves. That way is more comfortable than it sounds - better than sunburn anyway - though I suspect that the garment would stand up by itself after absorbing so much sweat.

 
Perhaps because of the heat there were few people about, and I saw no other riders all afternoon. It had rained the night before last, so the ground was not yet like iron in the heat. So we had a couple of good canters on gently rising and quite empty stretches of trail. As usual Brena drops her head when transitioning to canter. I've seen her do the same thing in the field so this isn't something that I'm causing. Now that I am not surprised and give her a long rein to balance herself there is no drama in transitions.

After all that, and just like the end of a trail ride in the "old days", I slipped off to listen to some traditional music. A group of fiddlers was performing in the town, and that made a fine and lively end to a great day out of doors.

Back to riding

I had a day riding, and it seemed like culture shock after a week of corporate stuff.

The trouble is that, superficially at least, I am good at both. That makes it harder to choose between them. But I like both so each is a part of my life.

Since I began to bond with Brena riding has been all the more satisfying. Now I invite her to enter the trailer (she goes in each time without question) and we head off for a ride without a thought of worry. After the tribulations of winter that sense of mixed certainty and security is appreciated.

Nonetheless I did feel, after a week away, that in riding I am applying a different part of myself. For a few minutes it did feel as if I needed to retrieve from within some skills that had been filed away. Momentarily I was disconcerted by this. Then I slipped into the familiar routine of riding a horse that I trust.

 
We had a curious ride. It is the weekend of the annual endurance race. They don't tell us where they will ride, so trail rides become a lottery. Maybe one will ride a narrow track where rider must squeeze by rider in order to pass, only to have two or three wanting to pass every minute, some impatient and not every one entrirely in control.

As it was we were passed from behind on a wide trail. Brena, whilst a little excited by oated-up Arabians, stayed fairly calm. Later on we met some of the same riders and Brena paid their horses little attention. So Brena has ticked that box and is ready to move on to whatever is the next challenge.

Away from the busy trails we seemed to melt into a timeless world, just us and the green hills beneath a broad sky and a warm sun. Even a few minutes of such an experience have a wonderfully grounding quality, calming my soul and reminding me that I have good strong foundations if only I would pay attention to them.

Back at the trailer I left Brena to graze on a long tether whilst I lay in the tall grass content. A man came over to ask me for directions, and that made me think that already I occupy a reference point. I see myself as a wanderer, yet I have assimilated knowledge. By now I have a strand of wisdom, so let me be humble amd mindful with it.

On returning enlightened

I'm back from a week-long corporate training course. For most of my waking hours I studied leadership theory for mutual benefit of my employer and I, and - fitted into spare moments- Jung's writings mainly for my benefit.

It was an intense week during which I hardly stepped outside. This was not especially easy.

There were some shocking case studies highlighting some destructive and sometimes literally fatal management failures. The ability of important people to screw things up - all too often because of hubris - is alarming. For all the progress that is supposed to be happening, the record of spectacular failures does not seem to be improve.

As for psychology, I returned to the matter of the Shadow, that repository of suppressed negative traits and characteristics. It was an instructive study, leading me to think about the characteristics that I try to pretend don't exist - impatience being one. The thing is to accept this and work on it, for denial only gives it more power.

Then there are the elements that stand in opposition to an urban technical job - love of open spaces and an esoteric disposition being two. Again suppression is a mistake that leads only to frustration and stress. In turn that will drive career choices concerning where I live and what I do so that my link to the wide open spaces may be maintained and reinforced rather than wither under the pressure of commuting.

The eighty mile journey home took an hour and a half, which is fairly good for a crowded motorway (which is a type of road like an Interstate). Then I went to the barn because I really needed to after five days indoors.

For all that managment theory, the practical exercise of leadership with a horse was as instructive as ever. As usual I needed to be purposeful, observant, understanding, communicative, responsive and ready to praise. Working thoughtfully with a horse is a powerful exercise, and so rewarding.

One imagines that perhaps aspiring leaders should be introduced to horses. However it has taken me two decades to reach this point, whereas my employer would like me to be "trained" in a week.

This whole matter of finding instant "answers" is so typical nowadays. Well I suppose that those of us who take longer and delve deeper will be rewarded through enlightenment, and that in turn may yield other more material benefits. Ours seems like a hard road, long and tricky. Perhaps the reward comes through appreciation of the details along the way?

I remember so many details of the trails that I used to ride as a guide. Now it is the beauty and variety of those things that I remember, the challenges overcome, the fragments of history, the places where splendid views unfolded. That seems to exemplify the path to enlightenment with a little hindsight.

Of life and legend

With a week away on training courses beckoning, I spent the weekend getting in plenty of riding. In this I succeeded.

That was not all. I also caught another episode of Camelot. I suppose that anything vaguely based on the local mythology can be expected to catch my attention. The series may be pure historical fantasy, but then the Arthurian legends began as literature drawn from folklore with little basis in actual people or events. However it is a gripping tale of human hopes and failings - the duality of character - against a backdrop of the moral code of chivalry.

The superbly dark, erotic character of Morgan - a woman capable yet flawed, intelligent yet unable to see truth - whispered a cunning greeting to my anima. The energy of such a character is intoxicating.

I keep a picture of Tolkien's Aredhel on my desk to remind me that the anima unchecked can be a fickle, divisive bitch. Of this fact I need reminding.

One night I dreamt of searching for an old woman in a run-down city – a place reminiscent of the back-streets of Transylvanian Cluj (or Kolozvar / Klausenburg depending upon one's allegiance) where once I lived – looking into one eccentric shabby apartment after another without finding her. Where is she, and what does she symbolise? Somehow she possesses some special knowledge, and also holds something of mine that I want.

Now it’s come to me. Within my unconscious I’m looking for my mature anima. I’m searching for the wise old woman who is stable, deep and intelligent - or, rather, trying to nurture her spirit within.

Up to now my anima has been rather of the sort with an over-developed Eros - here I am thinking of Jung's archetypes - immature, sexual, flighty and judgemental whilst possessed of energy, creativity and intuition. Typical of this archetypal image she balances positive and negative. She will, if given free rein, descend into bitchiness and division. She likes some women but detests others - those akin to her and, I suspect, better at it. Men who are leaders or just open-minded and creative she is attracted to, whilst despising the negative-minded and impatient with the plain dull. What a burden she can be to carry, and what joy she promises.

Perhaps I am looking for a role model. If so them I may find one more readily in fable than in reality, though I remain hopeful that either or both will yield something. Myths, of course, provide instructive examples of essentially good people secumbing to their own inner darkness or that of others. On reflection in my own storytelling I have written about wise old women who tend towards being role models and, at an intuitive level, in fiction I recognised them as such.

Neither Aredhel nor Morgan is a remotely suitable role model. Of course not. I've made that mistake in a tempting yet seriously misjudged marriage too. I should know better by now.

So I shall keep on searching, learning, creating and nurturing that a good mature anima might bless me. Just as I keep Brena in check when she snatches at vegetation, so also I shall try to keep the anima's wilder and less helpful excursions in check. This is quite a balancing act. It is a matter of maintaining equilibrium as I haul a burden up a steep, rocky slope. I just hope that a resting place will appear when I need it, and that good companions will join me along the trail.

White horse country

Today I rode across the broad swathe of land beyond the famous Uffington White Horse, that is to the south of that ancient and wonderful emblem cut into the chalk hillside.

Here is the material that I chose to carry me upon that ride: filthy after days of rain that created copious mud for her to roll in, and interested only in what there is to eat. But I love her.

 

We rode west into the teeth of an unrepentant wind, showers passing us to left and right for we rode beneath the clear blue separating cloud streets of epic proportions. Fluries of rain drops hit is, but not enough to warrant wearing a coat. My faithful stockman's coat was tied to the pommel, but I did not need it.

At one point the trail was obliterated by crops, so I took another track that seemed broadly parallel. Usually one does not trespass in England, partly because such ways tend to be obstructed, also because the farmer might see. But out here trails are wide open, and one sees neither farmer nor labourer outside the days of ploughing and harvesting.We traversed headlands, dropped down hangers and trotted up coombes until the correct track was regained, mapless and relying on the sun and a general knowledge of the topography. For a little while I rode as I had done in Transylvania, freely and by instinct.

 
Here is the Neolithic hill fort called Ufington Castle on the horizon, with the four thousand year-old Ridgeway track crossing from bottom left to top right. The White Horse lies just beyond the concentric chalk ramparts of the fort.

The weather was exciting. Storms swept by, bright sunlight and deep shadow strove for dominion of the earth, and all the while wind tore and roared. There was a raw quality to the weather, a deep authenticity, a powerful reality that drew me into a conspiracy of enjoyment.

Then Brena and I plunged southward, deep into a quiet land that sees few travellers. Great belts of woodland attenuated the breeze. A sense of tranquility fell upon us.

 

There are miles of trails like this. We walked so that I could enjoy the scenery. But in truth we could have gone a whole lot faster. The going was good after all that rain.

Later we did go faster. A canter up a rising slope became a gallop, and I was treated to the spectacle of a draught horse going very fast indeed. Brena seems to have a very good footing at speed, and that was a lesson to trust her.

 
I'm organising a riding club camp here in a couple of months time. Here's the place where we shall stay. It's the farm in the distance, barely visible beneath a triangular-shaped wood. The owner of the farm is an Arabian breeder and retired endurance rider.

This view does give a flavour of the downland countryside, which is all hills, meadows, fields and woods. This is a land that curiously combines spaciousness with intimacy: a friendly place yet big enough that one must work hard to maintain the relationship.

 

Here is the view from the place where I parked the trailer. It is such a typical downland view. There are fields and belts of trees, the occasional railinmg to turn racehorsse, and a bit of of the exotic. Do you see the field of Linseed turning into blue?

I love this place. And soon I shall have the opportunity to share these hills with a group of guests.

Solstice looming

The summer solstice is just around the corner. Each day should be long and bright. The air ought to be warm and fragrant. The landscape should be clear to the detail of a far horizon.

But it is not so. Rain falls, wind blows, and I can see clearly about as far as the trees across a couple of fields. I should be living in Tuscany, not on a storm-wracked island.

I wonder how Brena feels. She did live in Tuscany. In fact she does not seem to mind. I am told that she didn't thrive in the heat. Well she won't be troubled overly by heat in her new home.

As for me, I'm being sent away by my employer for a week on a training course. So there will be no summer solstice ride this year, not on the correct date anyway. I'll have to fit in a long, long evening ride when I am back.

It's true that I don't live in a Pre-Raphaelite dream landscape, warm, light and subtly detailed at every turn. This place has more of Tolkien, where the traveller does stumble through storm and darkness to reach - after sufficient trials - some welcoming hearth with simple food, ale and good company.

To enjoy this place truly the outer and inner worlds must meet. Myth must tramp the path alongside me that a fresh layer of detail may be added to vivify familiar places. Then one enters a timeless place ripe for population by story and idea. Then one is walking with the invisible spirit friend and guide who encourages and from whom one learns.

So perhaps my frustration at the bad weather is that it deters me from going out into the open spaces and travelling in timelessness with good companions, equine and spirit. The lesson, I think, is to be a bit less lazy when the weather is imperfect.