White Horse Pilgrim

Happy New Year

A HAPPY NEW YEAR to all my regular readers and all who stop by.

Suddenly year's end is upon me. It's time to reflect a little, and to look forward.

It's been a busy year. Brena and I have come to understand one-another. How complicated mares can be! Having just one rider she's switched on her whole personality. We've had some lovely rides. I've enjoyed looking at the countryside from her back, and she has eaten as much foliage as possible.

It took the mare and I a while to develop this relationship. A fall in February broke a vertebra and damaged a hip joint. It hurt at the time however I only learned the extent of the damage in the summer. Fortunately all seems to be well following surgery in August.

An important promotion at work was confirmed in the Autumn, and this has provided a new level of financial security for which I am grateful. Amongst other things this has enabled me to buy a reliable truck to pull the trailer acquired second-hand early in the year.

I was saddened to learn that my ex-wife had passed away during the year, an event that led to some very meaningful reflection upon joy, sadness, understanding and loss. Finally I have the good moments to remember, and the knowledge that she taught me, all bad things now being forgiven.

I have come to a deeper appreciation of the ancient chalk hills, and look forward to broadening our acquaintance during the year ahead. Now I have a sense of this place - Wessex - as my homeland. 

Writing has proceeded fitfully, in part because work has been very busy, in part also because I haven't felt quite ready. I've sensed that further wisdom must be gathered and more life lived before a deep and mindful work can be forged. Of course my journal has become fatter. Material is being gathered. For now the clouds of my story are swirling in the form of allegory.

This has been a year of exploration and growth. This seems like a peculiar thing to write, however it feels as if a new me has begun to be born: finally.

Dry years before exile, the trials of exile itself and the subsequent process of grounding have begun to bear fruit. Truly this is exciting.

So to the future. Of course I can predict little. (It is a fair assumption that work will be busy!)

I want to start writing again: serious writing with the aim of publishing a work of fiction. That will be hard as it will take time and mental effort: and I am a little concerned that growth is quietening the shadow part within from which creativity springs. Well, if the shadow has been integrated, its elements will be there to tap. It's just a matter of connecting.

I'd like to go away for a week riding with Brena (which is in fact booked) and to spend a few days at the Orthodox monastery in Shropshire (which I have informally agreed).

I've serious reading ahead (starting with Jung's Answer to Job) and more music to discover.

And it is about time that I investigate my origin: the quest that, sooner or later, summons each who was adopted at birth. I've left it late enough: my younger ex-wife is dead already, so what of my natural mother?

The trail leads on, winding around hills, up and down slopes, through woods and into the mist.

I wish you all a rewarding and successful 2012 that brings enlightenment and blessing.

Last ride of the year

Rain streamed down all afternoon. It began when I reached the misty ridge and continued all afternoon.

There are no photographs of today's ride. There was no point in taking any. We all know what rain looks like, the light was appalling, and why soak a good camera?

I rode three hours through the rain, warm and dry thanks to a stockman's coat. All was was quiet, the only sounds the hiss and patter of rain falling onto dank vegetation and sodden turf. No-one else was out. The tranquility of an ancient landscape was all mine to enjoy. The worse the weather, the more space and time one has to enjoy it. And, in the pouring rain, I could imagine one of Thomas Hardy's characters trudging into view. Jude perhaps: he hailed from nearby North Fawley whose fields I crossed.

Once it was my job to ride. Back then, in the high mountains, there were colder, wetter days than this during August. I encountered snow and ice during September. A day's ride back then comprised six hours, not a mere three.

I could ride six hours now. I have the stamina still. But not the destination to ride to. Nor the groups to accompany. Three hours is enough most days, and a warm welcoming home appreciated.

I'm relieved not to have to care for a herd of horses in sub-zero temperatures. Here they were going out in the grey first light to be fed. There was hay piled on the field beyond the ridge.

I'm reflecting on nostalgia. I'm entranced by Gin's descriptions of high mountain life. I feel an analogous pride in having survived a harsh environment. I sense poignancy too at that which is now gone beyond reach. I regret the loss of that which might have been.

Memory cleanses itself. Mountain life was difficult in itself, but made worse by two successive partners who each seemed to have a death-wish for the business. Tourism is a hard way to make money, not made any easier by a corrupt and inefficient country. Riding was a wonderful occupation, but increasingly hindered by a worn and damaged body. So that which is good dominates: self sufficiency, skill, success and happiness come to the fore.

And yet: I have just received surgery in a Western hospital and not in the Balkans. A skilled chiropractor looks after my back, not a village bone-setter. I have a good wife instead of a stubborn narrow-minded peasant. My friends don't regard me as a source of loans and bribes. And so on.

There was a fierce beauty in those horses going out to forage hay on a frozen field. There was a raw pride in surviving another harsh trail in the unforgiving mountains. And there came a point where it would have been stupid to try to continue doing these things.

In fact I reached that point: a final season of riding thirty to forty hours a week supported by opiates to mask lower back pain.

Wind

Cold wind tore across the broad open landscape of low hills, funnelling into the wide valley to flatten heavy winter grass. Vegetation danced and swirled like weeds animated by a rushing stream. To ride was an elemental experience: pushed back in the saddle by the sheer force of the wind, buffeted by gusts whilst having to snatch for breath. Brena and I provided an obstacle to the great flux of wind, like a boulder in fast flowing water. Like that rock we held our ground though the elements protested their right to move us.

Sheltered by a belt of trees a crow perched on a fence that has itself been bent by the prevailing wind.

Sleek and streamlined, the crow remains motionless thanks to a little shelter and the art of presenting a minimum of resistance to the tugging shoving wind.

Black in a grey world, still amidst the flow, the crow is a momentary absolute. And then he ascended with deft beats of those lustrous wings, balancing in a splendid dynamic equilibrium like a small boat deftly paddled.

It seemed as the bird appeared in order to deliver a lesson: either present a small silhouette to the world's troubles; or else soar aloft weathering them through agility.

I had expected the ridge to be windiest of all. However, strangely, the valley seemed to have captured the strongest currents. Perhaps that was because the ridge bears banks of trees whilst the valley is bald and open? This world is full of greater and lesser surprises, not all of them readily explicable.

Someone had left a carpet on the trail just where it crossed a racehorse gallop. Usually one would blame fly-tippers, however this carpet was weighted with logs. It seemed intended to protect a small area of rubber fill where racehorses speed across the hard-packed trail, the gallop itself being closed during such bleak weather. That carpet became a training ground. On the third attempt Brena walked straight across the carpet without stopping either to snort or to sniff at it.

Then back to the parking area where we watched a man and a boy race radio-controlled electric cars. Brena's attention was was, of course, almost wholly taken up with eating. What hazard could there be when a hay net is there tied up in plain sight?

Midwinter sunshine

Again the weather has blessed us with a bright clear day.

It did not seem like that when I set off, coat tied to my saddle in recognition of a band of dark cloud looming to the west. The northwesterly breeze intervened, however, driving rain away to the south where it appeared to be soaking the neighbouring line of hills.

We rode in the sun, then, myself and one who learned to ride in order to join one of my holidays back in 2007. How wonderful that someone was sufficiently inspired to become a rider, buy a nice mare and occasionally travel across England to ride with me again. It is rewarding to experience a part of the legacy from those years in Transylvania.

Recent experiences are like midwinter sunshine, providing welcome clarity and the motivation to move ahead into fresh discovery.

During this past autumn life had reached a level of complexity and activity that navigation seemed best represented by a hurried journey across rough terrain dodging storms. It was hard work against a background of too little clarity, I got muddy and was soaked from time to time.

A few free days, however, gave me time to climb a hill and look about. Meanwhile a friendly wind drove storms away in a happy respite from a gruelling bleak norm.

In these days roughness of terrain has taken on a new meaning. These is challenge, of course: but pertaining to lifetime aims rather than the artificial constraints of work. Carl Jung's late writings about Job are especially thought provoking as they raise questions about my perception of the nature of God. Am I falling prey to the temptation to anthropocentrise God? (My thanks to J Ruth Kelly for flagging the cultural meme towards anthropocentricism of the spiritual.) The challenge, for now anyway, is to grasp the innate complexity of the spiritual and psychological.

I grew up amidst people who peddled spirituality reduced to a simple system geared up to rote learning. The mystery was stripped from it, leaving a basic menu that ultimately failed to banish a deep hunger. Psychology, of course, was pushed into a corner. The human-centred concept of original sin makes everyone evil by nature, so why analyse a dark dirty psyche? My goodness, talk about being sent out blinkered into a fearsomely complex world.

With what monstrous fear of the consequences of intellect I had been sent out into the wide world seeing darkness in every corner. The depth of history escaped me, the breadth of spirituality did not register, whilst only the transitory beauty of the present provided the least respite. Well, those days are over: thoroughly and permanently kicked into the long grass of the past.

I sought enlightenment and found some who offered a little light. However, to make their lamp seem to burn brighter, those people had fashioned a contrasting dark mist around and about. In that gloom sin circulated like a corporeal body, lurking ready to corrupt even the few to escape the imaginary clutches of original sin. Meanwhile human nature badly understood in the absence of a psychological perspective wrought havoc. Their fog not only kept eyes upon their flame which guttered like a candle in a smoky tavern, it kept incipient wanderers like me from seeing the daylight above and beyond. It held us until frustration combined with restlessness to generate a journey: faltering at first until the wider terrain became visible and the sun shone through.

Today, then, is a double metaphor: bright clarity after confusion representing progress towards enlightenment , and a fellow rider to show me how my striving may yield unexpected and welcome legacy.

The land offers timeless beauty: an entrancing backdrop older even than the archetypes that make me who I am. I ride over the hills and journey through the terrain of the psyche: doubly a traveller.

I am looking forward to the coming year.

Surreptitious thoughts

This is a fine glance through a veil of mane from a mare who took advantage of treacherously muddy ground to break away and return to her field. Of course her ploy didn't succeed. I went and fetched her back, and off we went to ride. It was a nice pleasant ride too.

Home in the imagination

For some reason I associate Christmas with making a journey. I think of heading away down roads that become progressively smaller, until finally I reach a remote valley where the people live who are the nearest thing I have to family. That, I think, is a product of being adopted: the search for unknown people in a secret place. One thing is certain: those at the destination are not that pair of strangers with whom I have next to nothing in common, my adoptive parents.

This thought process represents a search for home. The nearest that I discovered to that elusive objective was in exile, perhaps because I did live in a strange place at the end of a long valley. However that was a primitive place and peasants are linked by kinship more than friendship. By bond with neighbours was traditional: I employed them therefore, as in a feudal situation, they and I were subject to obligations. So that valley was a facsimile for home, and maybe that is the best that I can hope to find?

It is a strange thing to go through life feeling no bond to the strangers who would deem themselves my family. Again, as with my peasant neighbours, obligations exist. I've just made two long and tedious return trips by car to collect my mother and return her home. There is a fast hourly train service linking her town and mine, however she demands to be driven. I fed and accommodated her, and endured two days with a woman who has no hobbies or interests, thinks of nothing beyond the banal, and blames every problem on 'foreigners' and whoever is in government. My former peasant neighbours were far more interesting to spend time with.

The long quiet valley will remain a vision. It isn't compatible with the reality of holding down a job, not the sort that I do anyway. Home, then, seems to be a virtual thing. Networks of friends nowadays are virtual, and not dictated by how far one can walk or ride a horse. Home in the sense of a safe, secure and pleasant place to live is what I create. A desire for remoteness represents the introvert's need for space and quiet at least some of the time. As for true family, they will be perceived intuitively: not visited or hugged but rather reached out to via the occasional revelatory thought. They, too, are virtual because our courses diverged. No longer involved, we took separate paths excluding direct influence. Therefore I wonder and I speculate. After years of wandering it is clear that no man is an island. Not entirely. I live surrounded for the most part by the lapping salt sea, or the enveloping hills: but neither is impervious to wandering travellers, nor are the safe ways completely hidden.

Happy Christmas everyone

A HAPPY CHRISTMAS to my regular readers and all who stop by.

This year hasn't brought snow. Last Christmas, however, I was out in the snow giving Brena apples in return for having her photo taken. The exchange rate was a fair number of apples per photo as she stuck close by. For success we humans had to divide our forces.

Christmas Eve is nearly over. The travelling is done. Days of preparation are over. Presents have been distributed.

It is almost time to celebrate Christmas, the Nativity of Christ. There, quietly waiting until the commercial din has moderated, stands meaning.

Morning will bring a trip to the fields to feed Doru and Brena: retired faithful labourer upon the trail and good new trail companion. Gone are the days when Doru took us for a sleigh ride at Christmas, for we are in mountain exile no longer. Then come cooking for my wife and mother, which is my second responsibility at Christmas. I'm looking forward to the meal for which I have been preparing. Nevertheless, I'd better keep in mind the real meaning of Christmas, beyond material things.

I wish you all a happy Christmas.

More photos

Midwinter sunshine has fled, banished by yet another veil of rain drawn in from the encompassing ocean. How the wind blew and the rain lashed as I walked the quarter mile from the parking area to the pastures, trudging through mud that deepens daily.

Anyway, here is the whole view to the south from the delightfully-named Sheepdrove. The area for a few miles around is an organic farm. Regrettably the owners (rich town people needless to say) fell for the latest eco-fad and sought to build a wind farm here. Their wind-folly would make no discernible difference to emissions - simply ruin a lovely historic landscape - so yet again it's a matter of big ego, the lure of subsidy and greenwashing at work. Thankfully these hills are legally designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty which has so far prevented their disfigurement.

The area has long been associated with shepherding, hence the name. Back in Roman times there were fields for arable crops however a drying climate and breakdown of the Empire (which led to development of a purely local economy in the absence of more distant markets) led to a more pastoral existence up here.

The return to arable crops has been recent. Within my lifetime fields have been ploughed for the first time since the Roman era. (We know this since Roman pottery fragments were turned up by the plough. These would have been spread in Roman manure which also contained domestic refuse. On the surface pottery deteriorates quickly.) Many arable fields still contain decaying water troughs and there is quite a network of pipes buried up here.

One thing that won't remain for much longer on the plain behind the hills is the power station, seen here from the ridge looking to the northeast. (Fortunately this cannot be seen from the places where I took the photos above, or from the vast majority of the trails, only from the highest points along the ridge to the north.) It's a relic of 1950s socialist-style central planning. The plant has reached the end of its economic life and cannot efficiently be brought up to the latest emissions standards. Amongst other things closure means an end to trains carrying coal trundling from the west: the liberated capacity will be used to run two extra passenger trains each hour on a route that is crowded at busy times.

There are tales locally about people who called for an ambulance and, when asked where they were, said that they could see the power station. Perhaps that is just a facet of the derision reserved in most rural areas for urban day-trippers who do stupid things?

Past seasonal nadir

At last: a bright midwinter day. Of course I was out like a shot: drive to the barn, hitch the trailer, trudge through a quarter mile of mud with Brena, hose down her feet, load, then away. As quickly as possible. It was a slick operation. I didn't even get too dirty from the mud.

I parked at a high open place on the Ridgeway, a spot busy at the weekend but quiet on a working day. Heading south we enjoyed lovely sunshine at the price of a cool breeze: not an excessive cost. The hills rolled away at our feet into a misty distance, soft and beautiful behind the inevitable thorn bush.

We slipped into the folds of chalk, vanishing from sight amidst a warren of dry valleys, bare copses and secretive thorn hedges. Now we had a little realm to ourselves, Brena and I. Downhill we picked a careful way for wet chalk trails can be slippery. Along the flat waterless bottom and away up the far side we cantered, Brena unimpeded thanks to a loose rein and a forward seat. For short bursts such as bouncing out of a downland coombe, that mare has considerable power on offer.

A rare combination of topography, season and weather created an atmosphere quite different to stereotypical England. The chalk hills are unusual and therefore special. To journey here is to experience places pastoral yet subtly exotic. The wanderer will be surprised by colour and by texture. The artist might love the vast smooth sculptural quality of these hills. as for me, I appreciate all of these things. Plus, to see the hills bare and stony in winter is the next best thing to witnessing them covered in snow: which is unlikely at what promises to be a mild Christmas.

By parts the ground is soft or firm, grassy or studded with flints. Over a little more than a year Brena has progressed from conventionally shod horse to confident comfortable barefoot horse. That's ten or so trims, the most recent earlier this week. A seaweed-based supplement has increased Brena's rate of horn growth, replacing old hoof more quickly and giving the trimmer more material to work with rebalancing the feet. Her front feet are good however her hinds need a little balancing at each trim. Currently she's scoring a respectable 7.5 out of 10 for feet, and that from a trimmer who never awards more than a 9.

We walked on in silence, meeting just one rider: a teenage girl on a little warmblood that clearly had been exercised thoroughly. A solitary cyclist pushed his machine uphill through the mud: at such times one is especially grateful for a horse. Alone, a hiker trudged, with splendid views to enjoy. Each of us was right: on such a day, with such vistas to take in, when a peculiar atmosphere of timeless remoteness envelops the hills, it is best to be alone. Then one can fully take in the magnificence of the place and become absorbed with ones reaction to it.

We stopped, me to take photographs (as usual) and Brena to graze (of course). Something caught her eye and she looked up. Was it our shadow that looked like a centaur upon the flinty slope? Or perhaps something even stranger and more distant? Brena is a great one for taking a good look at horses a mile away or moving vehicles even more distant. Does that stem from having grown up in a land where there really are wolves and bears?

It was a pleasant ride. What a memorable way to enjoy the first day in half a year offering more daylight than its predecessor.

Solstice trail

Mainly dry with some short periods of brightness or even sunshine.

The weather forecaster has been reassuringly accurate. I did enjoy the sense of anticipation engendered by the words even sunshine. For a few minutes at dusk horizontal golden rays slipped through beneath a band of cloud. That was welcome, even momentarily: brief encouragement at the winter solstice.

This is the winter view from the valley trails: fields and woods glimpsed through a skeleton bereft of foliage. Beyond the rickety hedges fields lie dormant. Woodlands patiently await new life. The land lies in suspended animation. Yet awaken it will. Sunshine at dusk refreshed my memory of that.

The valley trail runs through old woodland coppiced by many generations. Within my lifetime shepherds used willow hurdles on the hills all about. But not any more. The skill of hurdling is not quite lost however electric fence is an easier way to contain flocks. The woods, then, are silent.

The wood was silent save for the splashing of hooves in the mud. After days of rain the trail has become wet and slippery. Carefully we walked, easy on fragile ground and gentle upon the memory of those who wrought a living from this place.

Above horse and rider spindly branches met shielding us in their loneliness, enclosing Brena and I within their quiet dank world. Overhead the branches touched fingers and held hands, imploring us to return when new leaves are grown and the sun shines through dappling a dry floor.

We shall return. These wintry woods are an old friend temporarily fallen on bleak times. By his strength and age-old wisdom he shall pull through. We shall meet on a day of warmth and light when birds flit between sunbeams. Then I shall pause Brena and let her eat the new lush grass.

Today especially, in the midst of the dark point of the year, I long for awaited spring. It will come! But now nature counsels me to rest and reflect.