White Horse Pilgrim

Waking dream

Driving away from the yard with Brena in the trailer, I had a flash of waking dream. Since I was driving, it came as quite a surprise, though occuring at a sub-conscious level for I did not drop off to sleep. Indeed I sensed rather than saw these images.

I was riding through a fairly open woodland, most likely of beech. Ahead a sandy track ascended. A message came into my mind that I must ride ahead and explore. Now is my opportunity. I knew that each time previously I had deviated and circled round to the left, failing to find some special place that lay ahead. What lies ahead is beautiful and enlightening, and elusive too.

I wonder what this means. Something to do with grasping what life offers. About a sense that something is opening up ahead that requires exploration. Frustration at a lack of prior progress. A feeling that life does, indeed, hold a few surprises up her sleeve - and that some of these are good. How intangible is the message, and how keenly I desire to know its meaning.

A reminiscence of the beauty and tranquility of that vision remains with me. I will keep on thinking about it, hoping for a proper dream that will reveal more, and for a timely awakening that I remember some of it.

The image, incidentally, is Ivan Shishkin's Pine Forest in Viatka Province, which can be found at this useful site.

Tame and wild

Back at the trailer the world seemed tame and simple, even if tethers just never are long enough. The valley is sheltered, the grass so green and lush. The colours and textures bear the quality of a painting, vibrant and evocative. I could stay out there all day, looking at the landscape and enjoying the passing weather. A hut would be nice, preferably one of simple peasant style with a living room and a stable beneath one roof, and a covered balcony from which to regard the wide world beyond. That's a place that I can picture ever so clearly in my mind, perhaps because I have stayed in such huts and sat on their balconies.

Others have seen the wild expanse that yesterday I imagined this land to be. There is a vision of a great and almost boundless range, first cropland then pasture and finally forest.

Here is Alexey Savrasov's Rye, from 1881. Here is the vast field beneath a powerful sky that I dream of. Ahead is a path, and far ahead a refuge beckons. I have ridden in such places, beyond the Carpathian range where the next mountains lie two thousand miles to the east, in Kirghistan. Or, if one turned right after a thousand, there is the Caucasus. Far-off, wild, splendid immensity in contrast to a crowded island.

 

Changing sky and shire

As through the wild green hills of Wyre
The train ran, changing sky and shire,
And far behind, a fading crest,
Low in the forsaken west
Sank the high-reared head of Clee...

A E Housman's Shropshire Lad (XXXVII in this case) used to me more familiar territory. For the most part I've left behind Housman's simply phrased rhyming melancholy. However the phrase changing sky and shire remains in my mind. And that is what Brena and I did today, through hills closer than wooded Wyre.

These hills are shared between Oxfordshire and Berkshire, the actual border a sinuous remembrance of ancient parishes. Following old lanes, several times we crossed from one to the other and back.

The sky changed too. We arrived at our start point as a slate grey curtain drew past, soaking land to the north but not us. Climbing to the first ridge, a grey bar of cloud passed aloft, dropping a light drizzle that did not warrant a coat. And then the sun burst forth.

Here we are looking across Woolstone Down as it rises to Uffington Castle, there on the horizon. We were warm in the sun, that slight drizzle having quickly dried from us. The whole world seemed bright and beautiful, every tree and plant bountiful, the trails openly beckoning. "Come and ride", they seemed to say, as the hills embraced us in welcome.

We passed the neolithic barrow of Wayland's Smithy, then turned south along another silent lane. The old barn next to the grassy way stood part-filled with baled straw. But it is a long time since anyone lived up here, or a horse or cow was stabled. Modern agriculture takes place amongst the relics of the past - the barrows from thousands of years ago, medieval lanes, dew ponds a couple of centuries old, and barns built from war-surplus materials. And it is the oldest that seem most resillient.

Dark clouds sped in from the west, driven by a chill wind. It occured to me how little shelter this landscape offers, how open and windswept are the rolling hills. This place should be one vast grassland, perhaps dotted by woods, not constrained by agriculture. Thus it was for centuries, or perhaps millennia. There should be shepherds scattered about, wild men with cozy huts where the traveller might shelter shrouded in woodsmoke and banter. At the edge a forest would shield this fanciful land with all its hardship and romance.

As it is, I thought about the old barn, wondering whether we might shelter amongst the straw whilst loose paanels of corrugated iron creaked and banged in the wind.

But, yet again, the rain passed us by, her cloak brushing us with a few cold wind-scattered drops. This can be a bleak land, but not altogether unkind.

A shallow valley opened its arms to us, a low ridge affording surprising shelter. We were alone. Not a person was in sight, not a horse, just the occasional Red Kite wheeling above in search of small and unwary creatures. As we descended the shallow dry valley bottom Brena made the occasional lunge at green barkey ears, for it is food that motivates her most, and not dreaming or imagining. And I was glad that she is not a horse who needs to drink often, for their is no water here, none for several miles until the village of Lambourn is reached - it's very name a sign that here sheep were watered in the distant past when places were named. But we did not go that way, for truck and trailer were parkd to the left, over the ridge and down the other side.

We crossed the grassy crest in the sun, and descended happy and a little tired. My lunch awaited, a little late in the afternoon it is true, and grazing for my ever-hungry beast.

I lay in the long grass after eating, performing a few necessary stretches to take care of my back.

Then I sat up, and saw more sheets of grey rushing wind-blown from the west. There was no time to lose. I prepared the trailer, loaded Brena who went in willingly knowing there to be hay inside, coiled up her tether and put it into the truck. Heavy droplets of rain battered the roof as sharp gusts shook both vehicles. Lights on as in winter we set off for home.

Contrast

Morning was veiled by a curtain of rain. Even the sheep huddled beneath spindly trees seeking fragmentary shelter. Brena and I huddled in her field shelter whilst the trimmer attended to her hooves. I was damp from fetching her, she was wet and muddy from rolling, and the trimmer became filthy from her work on such a dismal morning. And this is summer?

The rain varied from thick drizzle to heavy downpour as the wind pushed by bands of cloud of varying greys. Beneath us the ground reverted to its natural state, which is sodden and sticky.

At least the beast's feet were awarded good marks for balance and strength. Brena is standing up well to long hours of work on the hard chalk trails. Most of her old pre-barefoot hoof has gone. The new now predominates. Soon it will have taken over.

I slept a little at lunchtime, awakeing to a sky clearing in the wake of a departed frontal system fleeing before the stiff cool wind. Rain came and rain went, and the sea wind kept on blowing across this island.

No further invitation was needed. It was off to the barn, hitch railer, load horse and head out, all one slick practiced operation. Then up to the ridge where the car park was empty thanks to the uninviting morning.

There was a lot of mud to scrape off. The upwind side was easy. Brushing the other side it was best to shut my eyes and mouth against a thick cloud of dust, grooming by feel.

Then off along quiet trails, past a group of well-prepared campers (they even had a tiny tent for their dog!) and away. Wind pulled as sun warmed, and I was grateful for three layers of clothes. What has happened to summer?

In the valley trails were wet and slippery, but on the hilltop all that rain had percolated through the chalk already leaving the way hard and dry. Such is this land, a contrast between hard and soft, open and closed, shared and intimate.

It's like a multi-faceted friend, one who is diverse, whose mood varies, who has a long and varied history, yet ultimately can be seen as integrated and whole. Yes, this land is like an old acquaintance to whom I have returned after exile.

Curiosities

So I spent the week, with some good colleagues, putting together a bid for a couple of hundred million pounds (say a quarter of a billion US$). Then the risk analyst turned around and produced yet another iteration of his data, at which point a decision was put off to next week. After all that work, there is more work. A bit too much curiosity, a little indecision, and we are all screwed over.

What a good thing that I have a nice horse to ride in the evening. We went out and I shed the cloak of stress. Then Brena and I were both very happy. I relaxed, she ate, and in between we covered a few miles. Then afterwards we returned to the truck, and I tied her up to graze whilst I drank coffee. A dog walker asked if she "was being rehabilitated" by rest and relaxation. No, that's me. She's fine.

Then an odd thing happened. A rather furtive man crept past us, wordlessly. From his mutterings I sensed that he was foreign. Into the bushes he slunk, crouching half hidden. Goodness, I thought, he's having a dump within sight of us, frankly within smelling range too! But I looked more closely. He had not dropped his pants, but was fiddling with a small plastic box. Then all became clear to me.

There is a geocache in the scrub behind the parking place.

So, hey, Lytha, when you visit to see all that Tolkien stuff, I can lead you to a geocache too. Or should I make you find it?

It has a sign on it telling viewers that "the contents are harmless". That may stem from a recent incident where the security services blew up an urban geocache with a bomb disposal robot, having arrested some people who had visited it. (As usual they are paranoid, and arrest white Europeans knowing full well that we face a demographically distinct enemy.)

Brena grazed through this. It is not as if the plastic box contained anything edible.

There are still surprises in the area around where I live and ride. That is good to know. More to see, more to discover. The trail ahead will be interesting.

Good to see, and not so good...

The farmer is busy making hay on the fields around the barn. He seems to have the knack of timing his labour just right to catch the best weather. I am impressed, and glad that he is making the hay for our horses.

The long windrows looked so soft and green, so perfect in their symmetry that it seemed almost a shame to bale them so quickly. Yet such is life, and of course the true joy is in seeing hay securely stored in a weathertight barn.

I slipped out for a brief ride with Brena, enjoying the warm sunny evening. The countryside enveloped us, now a bright land of yellow grain that is also nearing harvest. The whole land seems fruitful and ready to yield the necessities for surviving a long winter.

Not all is good, of course, as I saw on my travels. There is an ongoing row with the organisers of the local endurance ride over aggressive trail marking. This evening I found more trees spray painted with arrows and lengths of trail festooned with orange tapes that no-one can be bothered to remove.

The organisers claim that their people "could not have marked the trail in this way" because it is against the rules. Communications have reached the point that the national endurance riding body is accusing those who have complained of libelling them.

However tapes were hung and paint sprayed in the days before the ride, along the routes that the riders took. No-one has gone out to clear up after the event. It makes me wonder whether a few riders went out the night before the event and added to the official markers. Stranger things have happened.

Diverse satisfactions

Work does not bring quite the same satisfaction as riding, nor the same frustrations. To start with, horses cannot play politics, which is a good thing given how large they are.

I've gained some satisfaction from preparing a new document that is far better than its predecessor, which revealed who feels threatened by my work. The next bid - the one that will keep some colleagues in jobs for the next five years - is a bit trickier. Not everyone takes it entirely seriously. One would have expected that they would.

At least horses are direct and serious. Or perhaps I should simply say "authentic"? The open spaces are big and real. Riding can be "more of the same". However repetition allows me to relax. Besides, there are small changes - flowers coming into bloom - and bigger ones - different weather, various effects of the light - that changte the whole character of the hills.

The sun shining across a freshly cut hay field or a broad green valley brings a joy that one seldom encounters in an office.

Meanwhile colleagues send me emails at 7am and are still going at 10pm. It's "herioc management" at its finest. How can we fail?

They do not know how many times in an evening I have replied to an email whilst mounted on my horse!

The old camp

This is the place where the cavalry was trained from the late 1800s to around 1940. Where the trees are tallest lay a station on a railway that vanished half a century ago. Before and behind the station were the rows of tents and lines of horses. The hill in the background was used as a rifle range.

In the silence of a summer evening, surrounded by a vast sea of crop, it's hard to imagine this area noisy wth men and horses. At a stretch I can picture tents, however an animated scene is harder. But there would have been more: the smell of sweat and manure, the crack of rounds fired on the range, the tap of hammer and clang of pots, smoke from cooking fires, orders barked, bugles sounded. All for men and horses soon to be dispatched to the heat and hardship of Egypt, Palestine and South Africa.

Trails and responsibilities

It was a good day riding, as it needed to be, for the next week will be very busy. By Friday I need to put together the commercial bid that will - if successful - see a group of my colleagues employed securely for the next five years.

It seems strange that such responsibility falls upon me after eight years of exile in the far Carpathian mountains. But such are the cards that fate has dealt me. A part of me is glad for the challenge. Another part simply misses wild places. The balance is intangible and swings with the seasons.

The trail beckoned. A short drive took us to a shady parking spot behind a belt of trees. In the sun beyond sheep grazed contentedly. I prepared Brena, then mounted from a rickety gate behind which poppies sprung up amidst the grain.

Rich, beautiful and indefatigable, poppies are the emblem of the ploughlands of these hills.

Brena and I headed along the Ridgeway with its hard white chalk and flower-strewn turf, then headed south along a silent trail. Even mounted vegetation reached my waist. Brena harvested the white heads of cow parsley with enthusiasm.

Swinging north after an hour I was delighted to see a characteristic figure. Two years ago I'd seen a lady riding a fine dark horse, her long fair hair flowing in the wind brightly lit by the sun behind. Her approach had a cinematic quality, like that cloaked rider appearing across the shimmering desert in Lawrence of Arabia. It was a thrilling moment, culminating in her turning aside and disappearing into a shadowy copse like some elusive elf maiden.

This time we met, stopped and conversed. Clearly my imagination had been busy two years ago, and since. Flowing hair she had aplenty, however it was grey. She was a wise old rider, and not some lively Arwen or Eowyn riding errands abroad. Anyway it was good to meet a fellow traveller on the wild hills.

In a dip I found this old farm, long abandoned. Barns such as this dot the hills, for there are fewer livestock up here now, and fewer people too. I do dream of making a home in such a place, enveloped in grass and silence.

Anyway, a busy week beckons. It may be days before I have time to post, or indeed ride and get enough sleep. I'll be glad when Friday comes, and others shall be glad to know that I have done a good job.

Group ride

Today I enjoyed a whisper of my old job - leading a trail ride through the hills around here. There were only three other riders, and we were only out for about three hours. However this is the first group ride that I have led since October 2007.

It was a great pleasure to show the quiet and beautiful local trails to visitors. Much of the joy of guiding is to show people things that are good and interesting. Of course this ancient and historic landscape makes it easy to enthrall visitors. Frequently I am entranced by these places.

The old professional behaviours - explaining what to do, pointing out features, warning of hazards and generally being aware of our surroundings - came right back to me. The mechanics of guiding had become pretty well engrained.

We had a couple of good canters. I was happy that Brena behaved responsibly, not treating cantering with other horses as a race. She led some trots at a nice even pace too.  This gives me all the more confidence to lead rides, knowing that my horse and I can work as a team.

On the strength of today I shall organise another group ride for August. Then we have a weekend riding camp in September, staying out at a farm amidst the hills. Clearly I have started something good. And, after almost four years, I have recaptured a part of myself.