White Horse Pilgrim

Midsummer rain

This is island weather. Not summer showers where bright warmth is replaced briefly by a downpour. Not the showers of an inland area that pass suddenly leaving damp earth to exude that peculiar rich after-rain fragrance. (Wouldn't it be nice to buy that in a bottle so that, if I feel low, I can bring the aroma of summer woodland to wherever I am.) No, the rain drops firm and even from a leaden sky as if a tentacle of winter had reached out and snared this place.

Mud is back in a small way. Feet are caked. After feeding Brena I wiped my boots on a fence post, as I am accustomed to do in Winter. However vegetation is greener too. Grass is a strong green above the powerful brown of a rejuvenated earth. There is a beauty in this, stemming from the vibrancy of fertile land that supports new growth.

So it is on an island whose weather most often is driven by the surrounding seas. There is authenticity in this, for the weather feels very real and natural in such a place. Then too there is frustration, for now we are blessed with a great length of daylight but cannot go outside and enjoy it without getting wet. Perhaps the weather will improve for the weekend?

But the inner world too has been busy.I have had more dreams and scraps of dreams. Even a few moments dozing on a subway train led to a fragment of dream, in those seconds tangible and real, yet too remote to grasp when I crossed the border into wakefulness. Every night too there are dreams, often just pieces that I cannot hold on to. Are these symptoms of inner rearrangement and healing? Am I heading towards sought-after arrival?

That resting place may be a dynamic equilibrium, rather like riding a more lively Brena after the steadiness of Doru, Again the two horses provide a convenient metaphor. So much seems to be happening beneath the surface. Even foundations are moving. Places in dreams seem to reappear: familiar places from prior dreams, and yet only now seen in a fresh light.

All that inner processing, all that dreaming, they leave me deeply tired. Yet I am patient with the process as if a part of me intuitively perceives the value in that which is happening. There are moments when I feel like a bystander, hardly able to influence the changes within. But I am feeding the process, by observing, reading and thinking. Probably I am driving the process on more vigorously than I realise.

Food and foibles

Following on from a very satisfactory if slightly delayed wedding anniversary meal, this will be a short post.

This evening my attention was drawn to food, a connection with the primary focus of my horses' everyday existence.

They are quite predictable. Brena canters down the field when I arrive, then paws at the dust awaiting her dinner. Doru trots over - despite being retired for an arthritic hock - then waits patiently with just a few rude glances at neighbours in adjoining fields.

Brena is quiet when she eats, is happy to be stroked and to have me around her. Doru, however, bares his teeth and lays his ears back to drive everyone away when he eats. He stamps a back leg in blunt statement of his demand to be left alone.

When she is done Brena licks her bowl clean then walks away. Doru, on the other hand, is not satisfied and will lift the empty bowl in his teeth and toss it in the air. Only then will he walk away, well aware that his field offers plenty of grazing.

Out riding both are notorious vegetation snatchers. Of the two Brena is the easier to restrain since a little vibrating tension on the reins in anticipation of a lunge will cause her to think twice. On the other hand either will stand still to be mounted providing that there is something to eat - not a textbook approach but an effective work-around.

At least they will eat and drink away from home. That is one weight off my mind when we are away on a trip.

Observation

It's curious what one can see out on horseback.

This evening Brena and I chanced upon this deer, which simply stood and watched as we rode by. We stopped for a couple of minutes whilst Brena grazed and I took a couple of photos.

The deer seemed to perceive Brena and I simply as a non-threatening fellow herbivore.

Sometimes I sense that dogs, on the other hand, see her as a bigger dog to play with. That, I think, is why some dogs run around our feet barking excitedly. They want Brena to play.

Doru would have tried to bite a dog in those circumstances. However he was used to aggressive sheepdogs that merited being driven away.

That takes me back to bears. I used to see their tracks fairly often. The European Brown Bear eats a predominently vegetarian diet and isn't aggressive, so may have spotted us and registered us simply as a fellow forest dweller too large to hunt.

In the spring there might be tracks in two sizes - mother and cub. That was a little more alarming given the consequences of running into them. However most often we saw these tracks on fairly open trails in remote areas. The bears would have perceived us coming, and we'd have had space to see them. I am guessing that they were aware of us and kept away.

Occasionally I did run across deer carcases that bears had fed upon. Whether killed by a bear or by wolves I do not know, but suspect the latter. A bear would not have had the speed to take down a deer.

Primeval dampness

I awoke to the drumming of rain upon the roof. At the of the day the rain patters down more softly but continues nevertheless. This is a good thing for the ground and the crops need life-giving water.

There is a strange comfort in awakening to the sound of rain - providing that one resides in a watertight building. This is something primeval for, I think, deep down one knows that rain is needed. Fire fascinates and attracts, and so does its antithesis, rain.

I awoke slowly after a long night of deep dreaming. In the warm shadow of my unconscious a dream about a long journey unfolded, culminating in a safe, successful arrival at a place far away. Unusually for a journey arrival was the most important thing. This tells me that, after all my exile, with the preparation, thought and sheer hard work entailed, I am ready to arrive somewhere. To arrive safely is a reward, and I would like that prize after years unrecognised. Perhaps that is a character flaw? But it's a part of me nonetheless, and I will no longer use persona to hid my true self.

I found Brena damp and muddy. Applying the test of whether her ears were icy she was not cold though I spotted a hint of shivering. So to be safe I threw some hay into the dry interior of her shelter. Metabolising that hay will keep her warm through the night.

Meanwhile the sticky mud brought back memories of a long dismal winter. But for now I shall focus on the welcome light and greenery of summer.

Up on the hill a different world beckoned. From within the ring of a Neolithic encampment I looked upon the plain beyond, waterlogged beneath leaden skies. This must have been a bleak place to live, but beautiful too. The tranquility of the place soaked into me and I felt the urge to write, creating a fable for this camp, a people and their story. Knowing nothing is a vacuum, and nature abhors such.

In feeling, appreciating a place, loving a landscape and its history, I have made an arrival of sorts.

When I have the opportunity I'll ride Brena to this place. That will be about as close as I can get to the erstwhile inabitants, and to later travellers who passed this place wondering. Then we shall arrive in a moment of timelessness, a memory for me to carry through the ages.

Changeable weather

Changeable, the forecast said, and it was right.

Morning began with sun, then cloud swept in before the sun returned. In this second brightness of mid-morning I set off.

Two of Brena's neighbours dozed in the warmth, impervious to rumour of following precipitation.

The wind blew as it has blown every day for longer than I can remember. When was the last calm day?

So Brena and I set off for the hills.

After a night of rain the vegetation is luxuriant. Again this is a green land, fresh and bountiful.

This is a good day to be out, a day real and varied and authentic when the spirit of the hills comes alive.

The Ridgeway was busy, and the trails that strike out perpendicular singularly empty. In this nothing is unusual, for day-trippers are an unambitious bunch.

Here we are heading south beneath a sky majestically delineated by great cloud streets striding from horizon to horizon. This place is like a fragment of wilderness amidst a sea of cultivation.

And then we plunged down into a belt of woodland that might have been spread with boles and covered by a tree canopy from before the first people trod here. It was beautiful, tranquil and like a step far back into my heritage and the time of my ancestors.

I met a lady riding a forty-two year-old pony. It's true that he wasn't walking quickly, but what an age to reach.

Brena and I dropped down into a silent valley then bounced out of the far side in a nice canter. It was what we both wanted, meaning that we enjoyed a happy partnership in that endeavour. Motivation means a lot more to this mare than to her predecessor Doru the stallion. Riding Brena with any success requires leadership rather than mere direction. She is not simple!

Fortunately there is much that we both enjoy about riding through this landscape. Meanwhile how wonderful to have a horse to grow with, and what a responsibility that is.

Close yet remote

Here's the place to which I referred a few days ago. It's high in the Carpathian mountains. This is the caldera rim, with various jagged rocks showing, the remains of the crater being down to the left. It was a very impressive place indeed.

The trek up here on horseback was quite strenuous, taking three hours or so and involving some steep climbs and quite a lot of pushing through vegetation. In part that reflected the overnight accommodation that we used, a nice place down the valley, which required a ride along the crater rim for some miles. Few people came that way so the trail was very overgrown.

One April I came up here aloneto check the trail. It was early in the year and snow still lay a foot deep, part-melted with a hard crust that made progress slow. At one point my normally brave dog Mina grew reticent and started skulking behind my old gelding Marcu. It was then that I noticed the fresh bear tracks that paralleled ours.

My Romanian employees used to tell me that they could smell the freshness of bear and wolf tracks. I have rather a poor sense of smell so could not verify their account. However, as woodsmen, they did not tend to make up such tales. Certainly Mina had smelled something. At that moment I was not actually afraid, probably because I could not hear or see the bear. However I was on edge and kept going steadily as a way of maintaining a modicum of inner calm.

Here's a look down to the valley where a sizeable town lay just out of sight to the right. From here one could drive to the foot of the hill and hile up to the crater rim in an hour. However no-one seemed to do this. Well there were nice walks right from the town and fewer people owned cars than in the West so perhaps the lack of hikers was not a surprise.

Another curiosity in Eastern Europe was the tendency to mark hiking trails with symbols painted on trees and rocks. It meant that one did not need a map to follow a trail. Up here we were well away from marked trails therefore, so far as the locals were concerned, in "dark territory". Only those ready wanderers and geographical free thinkers, the shepherds, would pass this way. They came rarely and did not linger for, unusually in the mountains, there was little water on those high slopes.

My home lay in the middle distance of the third photo. Like the shepherds I was a wanderer and free thinker, and found all sorts of trails across that great wide wooded land.

This time four years ago I would have been riding six hours a day through remote terrain. Suddenly that seeems like a memory from my distant past. But now that I have a horse with which I connect, those days seem a little closer again.

The other lingering reminder of all that riding is a sort hip joint. A doctor commented to me today: "you shouldn't be getting that kind of trouble for another ten years or more". Well I guess that I gave it sixty years of wear in forty-five. It was fun putting in all those miles however I do wonder what the next few years will bring. Not surgery I hope.

Poppies and cavalry

Poppies are springing forth from the tilled soil with a rare energy, great strokes of red across a green landscape.

I love their richness and vibrancy, and indeed the new variety that their bright red brings.

The poppies are common on the dry upland soil, sometimes populating whole fields. Nor are they a new phenomenon, it seems. Near to the horizon of this image is a broad coomb called Deans Bottom, the word Dean being a corruption of Dane. There the poppies are called Dane's blood.

The Danes, of course, were the Vikings who terrorised this island and finally colonised it so that we are more of a Norse people than Saxon - though most people who associate with anything historical prefer the latter.

In the year 871 King Alfred led his Saxons to repulse a Viking raiding party. They fought a mile or two to the right of this view (that is, to the south). The battle was bloody however the Saxons prevailed, pursuing their foe over the chalk hills towards the slopes above the Thames valley, straight ahead. men were slain as they fled, their blood spilling onto the rough dry grass - hence Deans Bottom and the Dane's blood.

Nowadays the hills are a lot quieter. But it has not always been so. From the late 19th century to the mid-20th there were large military camps in the valley. Cavalry was trained here, and ideal it would have been for them. There are historical accounts of practice cavalry charges across the grass, and very excting these seem to have been.

These were summer tented camps so little remains, just the ruinous fragments of an old platform on a railway closed over half a century ago. But there was a rifle range too, and I have just discovered that a small farm building was in fact the range control hut. The range itself is now a racehorse gallop, but even that is disused for want of a tenant in these straitened times.

So I have plenty to think about as I ride up the valley, imaginging the sight of hundred of horses and men, rows of tents and the crack of rifle fire. The further I look, the more history there is to discover, a deeper patina of human endeavour on this land, and more people and horses who have passed this way.

Horse aesthetics

The corner pasture between Doru and Brena has quite a turnover of horses. Now Brena has a fellow skewbald for an neighbour. It's curious just how different a pair of coloured horses can be. Patterns and shades do vary greatly.

After a day struggling with unrealiable IT at work I was glad to get out riding. The day had been showery however as the sun lowered so the clouds fled leaving a cool sky of clear pale blue. A firm breeze bent the grass and made boughs dance. Bathed in bright slanting light the hills took on a sharp sculptural quality, their slopes and curves bright into sharp relief. The textures of crops and trees became distinct, tangible even. There was a quiet beauty permeating the air, there for all with eyes to see: myself, two dog walkers and three cyclists, for earlier rain seemed to have deterred visitors.

It is odd to be five miles from a town with a population of twenty-five thousand but see only a handful of people over two hours on a bright evening.

The experience takes me back to a ride that I used to arrange from time to time in Transylvania. It was a day ride that took us up to the rim of an ancient caldera, where we picnicked amidst massive towers of volcanic rock. From the highest point we looked down on a sizeable town, yet not once did we meet a single person up there.

It is wonderful to find a bit of solitude, and not too difficult if one isn't unduly fussy.

Today we made a circular ride, first dropping down hill to the floor of the dry valley. There was a two minute jaunt along a motor road between paths, but not a single vehicle passed us. A little later a brightly coloured car went by. From across the fields Brena stared, as she is wont to do, not in the least alarmed but deeply curious.

The return leg was a good opportunity for a couple of canters. The aim, again, was to show Brena that fast work can be fun and yet relaxed. There is no big deal in going faster. It's just something that we do from time to time. So I asked her spontaneously so that my anticipation should not make her tense.

It was a good ride, restorative for me and educational for her.

Anniversary night

The day after Brena's birthday cames my wedding anniversary. After past troubles the happiness of this relationship means a lot to me. So I shall leave readers with a picture of Brena because I am occupied with Danielle tonight.

 

Birthday horse

Brena is seven years old today.

She enjoyed a pleasant but fairly regular feed whilst the humans enjoyed a special cake.

Brena's birthday set me thinking about what I was doing on 6 June 2004, the day on which she entered this world as a foal. That day was a Sunday. I would have woken in an unusually quiet house for we had riding guests from Sunday afternoon to the following Saturday morning. Sunday mornings tended to be our only taste of tranquility.

On that day I had been married for just two weeks, so most probably I was happy and did not rise from my bed particularly early. Whilst that relationship did not last, it rescued me - rather roughly - from a very unhappy marriage to a pathological individual.

Four years later Brena would have been undergoing training, that is in the spring and summer of 2008.

That is when I had returned from exile and was re-entering corporate work. As such I too was being trained (or, really, re-trained) for my new role.

Brena's arrival in Britain coincided with a growth spurt in my development thanks to therapy.

So Brena's life and mine have moved in parallel. Her birth and growth have mirrored the steps that I took, both unwittingly and thoughtfully, from Transylvania to the chalk hills of Oxfordshire.

It may be stretching the parallel to say that I have eighteen years of work until I retire and that potentialy Brena has a similar working life ahead of her.