White Horse Pilgrim

Not much to say.....dreaming

Today we finished the mammoth task that has been occupying us at work, draining me over weeks into a deepening pit of exhaustion. I've been so tired that I walked into a part-open door gashing my head to the bone, hardly noticing the injury save that it bled. Like the hardest days riding in the wilderness I've been snatching odd moments of sleep in order to maintain momentum. Now the bid is complete, documents all printed (beautifully too) and I'm ready to take everything across to the client at first light. That's first light two hours from here making for a final early start. One more night with too little sleep. Just one more.

I'm dreaming of green hills and freedom and beauty. I fed Brena this evening and stroked her thick mane thinking of how she symbolises a freer, simpler life. Right now that feels like an enviable existence.

The Roman Road

Roman Roads are straight, or so I learned in school. Well, some are, but not the example that twists and turns through our hills here as viewed from Brena's back.

I imagine a travelling Roman engineer being teased by fellows. "What, you couldn't get this one straight, Claudius?" Then a bit later, "Hey, Tiberius, what is the Empire coming to now that the roads don't go in a line?" It must have become quite irritating for the more sensitive engineers.

Or perhaps it was straight only to be made curvy by the depredations and neglect of the Dark Ages?  

But I think that completely straight Roman Roads are a bit of a myth other than the main highways, and the medieval Dark Ages are a modern construct too. ("The Romans were very clever then all that knowledge was forgotten until the Victorians came along." A nice try though - and a good excuse for lots of pretty classical architecture.)

Anyway the Romans seem to have left us with a good surface for this road is less rutted than many and drier too in wet weather. Besides, I love to ride along a way that has been travelled for a couple of millennia. It has history. It is the backdrop to memories. One cannot say that of any modern road. I do like this place.

Another horizon

Always there is another horizon to climb up to, a further slope to ascend, a summit to breast. There is a high rugged tree to rest beneath, my back exploring the knots and ridges of its trunk. There is grass for my beast who is forever hungry, a good thing as a greedy travelling horse will thrive. Curiosity is my greed, and upon this I flourish as a traveller. Between the ridges are dips down which to gather momentum. In the valleys are shadows from which I climb to escape. There is no equilibrium, just the occasional pause. On and on, down and up, step after step, that is the way. From light to dark and back to light. A view yields clues as to the way, guiding me to the next wild belvedere. Dusk falls and it is time to find shelter. Day will return.

The thorn bush and the rolling hills

Against a backdrop of bleak bare trees stands a solitary thorn bush: tough, resilient and yet colourful.

It is with the lofty beeches that I have identified myself. There is no shame in this: for the beech is stout, lofty and beautiful. A beech wood is a lovely place. Great boles rise like the pillars of a majestic cathedral. In summer the diffuse light beneath a beechen canopy is practically aqueous, like being underwater. Birds flit about like tiny shoals of fish.

But the beech is apt to be felled for timber. He is slow to grow and quick to be killed and burned. The thorn, however, remains through eternity: tough and attractive yet not valuable in any financial or practical sense. The thorn is an outlier of the society of trees, a niche filler, a poor cousin who thrives nonetheless because he asks less or prefers payment in alternative currency.

Better, I think, to be a thorn bush. He is smaller but more secure. Though tough he possesses rare beauty in both spring and autumn. He lives through the ages: Celt, Roman and Saxon recorded his citizenship of the lonely hills. He witnessed great things: nearby King Alfred worsted Danish invaders at Thorn Down where of course there thrive thorn bushes still. Travellers aplenty he saw: keeper of their dreams along windswept thoroughfares.

Hills roll green and inviting into the distance, smooth waves of chalk finely clad. Here at dusk lit by a low sun the downlands are especially fine: an ancient land still fresh and fair. I love this place: the land of my tribe.

Smooth slopes rise and fall like waves. The wind rushes and tumbles about them, cool and refreshing on a bright early winter day. For me autumn is over for the trees are bare. This is a joyful sunny start to the gaunt season of grey and mud, as if the Earth were granting a final dry-shod afternoon for a wanderer to cast lengthening shadows and enjoy the sight of hills softly melting into a gently rising mist.

A bright day for grief, for grieving should be a positive act neither filled with melancholy nor corrupted by self-pity.

There are good things to remember, explanations to understand, deeds to forgive, and ones own part to reconcile. Again three and four: a trinity of introspection about the departed and, standing to the side, probing self-examination of ones own deeds and omissions. There hangs a possibility to absolve the other whilst blaming oneself. Or, indeed, vice versa. My quantum of knowledge of the subject is finite since no new material is created whilst steadily one gains new information about oneself. But now I am standing in a field beyond right and wrong: that meeting place of Rumi. Uncertainty is the dwelling of the wise for they alone can bear such a place. This much I know: there is insufficient forgiveness in this world so let me generate a little more.

The trail winds on and up, hard and stony, sharp in the bitingly clear air. Rich are the colours, as befits a path of learning. Stark are the contrasts, for not every step falls beyond right and wrong. My dream of a warm inn at journey's end do not translate to this day's wanderings. That hope of a warm fire, a mug of ale and friendly company represents mere temptation: a desire to leave the journey for comfort signifying a lack of progress. Vocation leads me along the rugged way, which is my fate.

Blustery day

The chalk downlands offer scant shelter. The wind tears across them, up hill and down dale, buffeting the traveller. Rain drives and penetrates, the sparse thorn bushes providing no respite. On a warm bright day the heat shimmers and reflects from arid chalk, highlighting the lack of water in these parts. When the snow comes, a frigid white blanket extends, the powder filling every rut and crevice to create a sculpural smoothness.

Today the wind took centre stage. Indeed it played almost every part, major and minor. It flung leaves and flattened bleak grass, pulled at my clothes and created chaos amidst Brena's thick mane.

Four layers on top kept me warm, and I wore thermal leggings for the first time this autumn. That made for a cozy ride, physically at least. Emotionally I have much to consider, taking yesterday''s news into account. I felt quite alone, other than for a good mare of course. However alone is what I needed that I could have the space to think.

I feel sad and disturbed. The death of an ex-partner truly liberates strange emotions. Kelli and I became estranged, yet we were linked by the most intimate bond. Such a bond cannot be undone at every level, only diminished. But why be sad? She chose her road. I did my best to sustain her – and she rejected that which I had tried to provide.

I gave my best and tried to do what was right for her. If I had not the wisdom or resources to provide for her, that was not my fault. If she walked away from me just because I was imperfect, that is a judgement on her alone. Who is perfect? We could have flourished, but she chose another way.

On a ridge overlooking the Thames valley I gazed into a hidden fold of the hills. Here is a fragment of the ancient downlands, rough grass and stunted bushes: the land as it existed for a couple of thousand years. Perhaps it was wooded once, only for the Celts to fell, slash and burn for pasture?

This is my homeland: the rural Britain where Celt and Roman and Saxon trod. As Edward Thomas put it nicely, these are trails set upon the dreams of men. I travel upon the places where they dreamed imagining their passage and dreaming my dreams. I am just the latest traveller.

If I joined with a Native American who had stumbled into Transylvania, is it any wonder that she, being spiritually grounded, felt out of place there?

The wonder is that I did feel at home there for so long. I was comfortable until the hardness of life and my discovery of the true history of that place became repellant. Even so I was functioning at a higher level, somewhere between heart and intellect. Here, amidst my beloved hills, attraction wells up from my unconscious. Archetypes drive me, my connection to the breadth of humanity. Disturbingly I wonder whether it was my Shadow that attracted me to Romania. I found none of Jung's Archetypes constructively displayed there save for the occasional wise old monk.

Kelli Michele Fremming - may your soul rest in peace

A part of me loves to delve. Call it curiosity if you will. It is, if you like, an unquietness of intellect. I desire to know and to understand. I ask more questions than necessarily support my comfort, but then I learn from the answers. Carl Jung might comment that I poke around sufficiently that conscious and unconscious are nudged into dialogue. A frequency and richness of dreams confirms that much. How I wish that I had understood these things in 2004.

The past is there to be delved into. Call that pointless, like Gollum seeking the roots of the mountains. However he was a warped creature, eaten up by the ill magic of his ring. Unlike Gollum it is light that I seek. But sometimes the path towards the bright clarity of enlightenment takes one first through the gnarled trees and along the rocky paths of a shadowy valley.

Curiosity about the past leads me to wonder about the dead ends of life, the paths that I trod only to meet a blockage. My second wife was one such: but a well intentioned path at the time. For the first time in my life I loved truly and deeply. The mistake was that Kelli was not comfortable living away from her beloved California: given that she was a part-Native American I should not have been surprised. But I knew a lot less back then. Transylvania was just too strange for her, leading to a kicking against the traces. I loved her but could not find a way to get that depth of feeling across to her, at least not sufficiently. I could not find a way to enable her to settle down. We were married for eighteen turbulent months.

Perhaps it was fate that drew our paths together? I gained much from her, both directly (about horses and spirituality in particular) and indirectly through later reflection and learning. From me she gained the opportunity to become a farrier and perhaps life with me broadened her horizons too. Sincerely I hope that she learned that unconditional acceptance can be a reality. After the collapse of my first marriage, which was essentially a mistaken attempt by two incompatible people from sheltered backgrounds to survive together devoid of guidance or help, Kelli helped me to grow up. Some of that was a conscious gift (equestrian and wilderness skills especially) and other development simply happened because it had to. Her fads, tantrums and stubbornness made me grow. After Kelli ran back to California, it occurred to me that men can be the victims of abusive relationships too. At the low points that is precisely where she had dragged what was supposed to be a partnership based upon love and respect.

Now I have learned that Kelli passed away peacefully on 26 January, in Palm Desert CA, at the age of 40.

I am grateful for that one word "peacefully". Despite her abrupt departure from my life (indeed her flight from being loved and asked to settle down) I would not have wished her any ill.

Kelli rescued me from an absolutely awful first marriage. I did end that pretence of a relationship, which was more of a daily battle with a stubborn ignorant Balkan peasant, because a tall blonde exciting mysterious part-Native American horsewoman walked into my life. How deeply and sincerely I hoped for a life of love and joy.

Lasting love and joy have come. However later and with a suitable partner.

I'm still processing this information. To my sorrow Kelli and I did not part on good terms. She believed that I must be making a pile of money running a riding holiday centre but would not share it with her. But there was no wealth: there never is in that line of business. I was not cheating her: despite it all I loved her too deeply to deny her anything that was mine. Nevertheless she ran away bitter.

I wonder whether Kelli fled out of an impatience fostered by unconscious intuition as to her mortality. She had far more life to lead, Romania was dull, and I simply did not grasp what a turgid backwater I lived in. I can see now that my blindness as I lay in that rut must have been frustrating to a restless adventurer.

Briefly she carried our child. However the pregnancy was ectopic. Vividly I remember her agony and a desperate bloody midnight drive fifty miles along atrocious roads to a hospital to save her life. Strangely she seemed to blame me for that episode, which is incomprehensible to my male mind but perhaps not so much to a provocative Anima. The tragedy of sitting with her in a dismal provincial Romanian hospital in a room littered with the paraphernalia of childbirth having lost ours sticks in my mind, and probably always will. The one circumstance that might have made a happy willing parent of me was shattered.

We had made love in a roadside wood in spring, on the way back from an expedition to buy saddles in Medias, Transylvania. It was a beautiful valley where we stopped, rustic and lovely, and we needed a break from driving. Well, one thing led to another, as they do. We were youths for a day, carefree and uninhibited. Those moments seemed like a fairytale. The downward spiral of reality with my fish-out-of-water bride was yet to come.

I had hoped yet to make peace with her. Obviously not the sort of foolhardy attempt to rekindle any feelings, for I am very happily married and settled into a true lifelong relationship. Simply I would have valued the opportunity to offer forgiveness; and be forgiven for surely I was not blameless even if naivety was my sin. I wanted to forgive and freely offer my blessing: for my benefit, I admit, but also for hers out of what natural goodness I have.

Well perhaps Kelli was blessed for her remaining five years on Earth for she remarried and gave birth to a daughter. But how could anyone be blessed who died at 40? Only in that her end was peaceful, whatever it was. (Perhaps even if she had stuck with me I'd be a widower?) I hope that she did find peace with God before she passed away.

As I wrote, I am still working through this information.

My psychotherapist commented that a part of me still loves Kelli. What I feel is that the spiritual core of me appreciates the woman that Kelli had the potential to become, which was the wonderful part that I married in hope and - to be frank - blind optimism. I hope that she did become that woman before passing away.

In my heart I wish that I could have given my blessing, at least that she might have died knowing that I harbour no ill feeling. Not any more. I would give much to spoken with Kelli, or even communicated by email, a year ago if she was ready for that conversation.

Kelli Michele Fremming     15 February 1970 - 26 January 2011     Rest in Peace

It's about...

The last few days have not been about me. They have not concerned my thoughts. Nor have I created anything for myself save for a few words scribbled into my diary. Some of those appeared here.

No, it's been all about the bid that I have been producing at work. That task - a hundred pages, more or less, of text and tables - has crept upon my life enveloping all. Time has been harnessed, and creativity. It has absorbed all energy until I seemed to do little but serve that task.

It used to be like that too. Only then the task concerned keeping a herd of horses fed.

That, too, was a struggle. Just one that left my body tired and mind free.

Now it's the other way around: mind exhausted but body in need of more activity. It's not two dozen horses that take all my energy but the filling of some sheets of paper. Expressing the task that way minimises the culmination of a half year of effort. What I've written is turning out well. It should do: it's the culmination of much thought and toil.

I wrote that back in Transylvania my mind was free whilst my body was tired. In fact now I wonder just what I thought about. Mainly work and how to make it pay enough to eke a living. For all that rusticity and natural beauty, for all the miles on wild trails, no great work emerged. The Edward Thomas or Richard Jeffreys in me simply did not emerge. Too much energy was sapped by mere survival to enjoy that rare freedom: to create. I've created more for me, more personal writings, deeper thoughts too against the backdrop of a busy job.

Life does play some strange tricks on us.

Meanwhile the bid report will be submitted in 1 December. I can hardly wait.

Foundations and signs

Mist wreathes the hills cloaking familiar places with mystery. I appreciate this, of course: the person who I am when I ride. That is the traveller in me, the one who rides from curiosity and joy and the love of a good horse. These rides are the outworking of a passion to discover roots: of the land and my own besides. This is a simple ancient activity on trails deep in history. It is how people travelled for millennia, in places where they travelled. The Archetypes are timeless: the core drivers of who we are. I ride and dream and begin to know myself: from these foundations upward.

I was going to write "my foundations" however the Archetypes are universal. I am discovering what makes me individual from the great mass of human experience formed through the ages. It is a unique combination from common ingredients: a personal colour or flavour. These rides, they are about personality. It's like a one-off building sprung from the rock of a mountain, something all of its own yet defined by foundations, material, altitude, gradient and climate. Like a good architect I depend upon vocation in the pursuit of this quest.

These rides are signposts. I know these chalk hills and have no need for the signposts. But others do need them, and so do I amidst confusing terrain. On this journey of discovery my rides are signposts. Sometimes Brena gives me a sign, reacting to my character that I may see it better. The thoughts that occur are signs, and so are the dreams that these rides stimulate. For the many trips with a horse have begotten dreams from my unconscious: they are a fine catalyst for liberating hints of the mystery within.

I wondered what came first: riding or dreaming. On reflection I don't recall a single dream from exile in Transylvania. But I rode plentifully. So riding came first. But I rode on a journey of self-discovery, even if I did not realise this at the time. The Archetypes came first and I rode in order to discover them within me, which also did not occur to me back then. So: foundations led to riding, and riding to dreaming. These dreams are enlightening so clearly riding has been more deeply therapeutic than I could have imagined. It was intuition well followed when I took my first lesson, bought my first horse, went into exile with horses, and acquired Brena from afar.

Veiled land

Mist hung across the width of the vale, grey and clammy. A stiff breeze drove a thick veil up the Ridgeway scarp to envelop the high ground in a cloak of mystery. Even at mid-day I could see but a couple of hundred yards: or, as ancestors might have termed such a distance, a bow-shot. That was it: more than a stone's throw but not far enough to have been safe from ambush. Fortunately the Dark Ages are banished today - if lurking fearfully close in this world of raw ambition unguided by moral purpose. The mist hides an enclave: my exile for an afternoon.  

The trail melted away into a clinging grey shroud. Few people were abroad on such a day, and that just added to the depth of atmosphere. Mystery filled this ancient landscape, the more so as I drew away from the parking area and road noise dwindled to nothing. The absence of a view into the distance cast attention on senses other than sight. The few noises - a bird taking off with a flapping of wings; the wind whistling through skeletal trees; the heavy patter of Brena's hooves on dank ground - assumed disproportionate significance. I felt how Brena walked: when her footing was good and the occasions when her hooves sought purchase on edges of ruts. There was nearly no smell beyond scant product of gently decaying vegetation. Brena was under no illusion as to how good the grass tasted: any grass whatever the season or weather.

Lines of hedges and thorn bushes slipped away from my little world and into another. For here the world shrank to a couple of acres. All beyond is mystery, everything that appears is a surprise. So I write because of the wonderful fresh feeling engendered by this new perspective on a familiar place. In truth I know this place well. Each rise and fall of the trail, each twist and turn is familiar. Only the experience is different, like a pleasant surprise given by an old friend who possesses a little skill at acting.

There I go again, dreaming of wilderness. Unconsciously that strand of thought creeps out only to be spotted. Smoke from the chimney will be visible. The wider unconscious is centuries in the making. My spiritual ancestors might have been the monks who sought wild places. They may have included the sailors who loved the open sea and the men who farmed and shepherded silent tracts. Perhaps all of these: individuals each and none of them cast in the common mould. That little bit of collective unconscious is mine, and finally I am beginning to grasp how rare, precious and fragile it is. This path of mine, it exists by a favour granted by the mass: yet they know not of a gift unknowingly given. Nor would they understand it should their dull senses begin to perceive. Yet once in a while a slumberer awakens and sees for the first time through newly opened eyes and mind rare beauty and wonder along the solitary way.

Avenue of the mind

Today D and I visited the National Arboretum at Westonbirt, a spectacular sight at this time of year. Perhaps we had left our visit a little late in the season however we were impressed nonetheless.

The arboretum is a part of the park of a former stately home whose last aristocratic owner died in the 1920s. The house became a school however the arboretum was eventually gifted to the nation.

Walking arond the woods I came to a broad grassy avenue through the trees. I was reminded at once of Miklos Banffy's description of the fabulous fictional Denestornya in Transylvania, an image based on the real but destroyed Banffy seat of Bonchida.

It was Banffy's description that came to life. As for the real Bonchida palace - a roofless ruin that I drove past on many occasions - the long avenues of trees and lovingly planted woods have long since been felled for firewood. I remember seeing the light-coloured walls of the remaining buildings stand abrupt against the low hills beyond, stark across a bald valley amidst bare fields. It was too sad a place to linger around. Beautiful things wantonly destroyed breed melancholy.

But here on English soil stands a fabulous avenue, one which took my breath away in the soft low light of late afternoon.

I could imagine carriages driving out carrying the noble landowner and his guests, for he was an enthusiastic gardener and planter of trees with ample resources to indulge his passion. That's the straightforward image, the view from a costume drama. I could do better.

Meanwhile looking into the distance I saw the former stately home, like Banffy's Bonchida in its heyday one of the most lavish in its land, standing pristine.

I imagined myself there on an evening long ago. I'd ridden out from the house in the company of an enthusiastic horticulturalist keen to show me his wild wonderful yet mellow woodland at the height of its beauty. After a slow circuit of the awesome woods we stopped and dismounted. He smoked a pipe as our horses grazed, and we talked about his plans. A flask passed between us, the strong liquor yileding inner warmth against the evening chill.

Then my host looked at his watch and frowned. "We'll be late for dinner! Quck, into the saddle!" I placed a foot in a stitrrup and a hand on the mane then sprang up, for in a dream I am allowed to imagine myself more agile than in reality. Our horses were keen and leapt forward upon request. Tall trees flashed past, colourful leaves a blur as we fled deepening shadows for the warm welcome of a gas-lit dining room.

But my imagination sought more.

I rode out in a foreign land, neither Westonbirt nor exactly Bonchida. The countess rode a bay mare and my mount was skewbald for in dream and reality I allow myself eccentricity. We'd circumnavigated the estate, in turns walking our horses to admire the most impressive trees then trotting and cantering across the springy turf of broad glades. Laughing we cantered, her fair hair bobbing in a plait behind a finely shaped head bearing the high cheekbones of a Magyar. At the far end of that final avenue we stopped, hidden from the great house by a faint mist, dismounting to talk, and that freed speech yet further. A silver flask passed between us, the liquor within made from plums grown on that very estate. Our conversation was lively, for I was the exotic traveller: an Englishman far from home, wandering to escape and live and learn. Back then the world was a simpler place, or so it seemed. Our horses grazed the succulent grass as we planned a ride of many days to visit outlying properties: an adventure for ladies such as my hostess were supposed to travel by carriage. But she was a breaker of images, hence my fellow traveller both metaphorically and physically. In my mind we did travel, of course. And what happened on that journey had better remain in my mind.