White Horse Pilgrim

Grooming

The land is gaining a grooming, and my horse would look nicer for a groom too.

The frostiness of bare chalk is darkened by rich damp soil drawn by the hard discs to the surface. This is no easy land from which to scratch a living, nor has it even been.

Application of a stiff brush would take dirt from the Brena's coat. Now the mare is not rugged for the weather is warmer. Last weekend she was sweaty beneath her rug, and that was sign enough. Happy mare, her coat a little dirty: owner will be busy.

My manuscript is benefitting from a little grooming too. I'm a hundred pags into two hundred and fifty, sorting out the format and correcting inconsistencies. Now surrounded by the work it's easy to feel overwhelmed: by the sheer volume; by my overly critical mind; and by the odds against me.

I am paying the price for having written the thing in two frenetic bursts a year apart. There are a few mismatches to straighten out.

But I am stubborn, as I have just remarked to Jess. I survived a difficult exile and I'll get through this.

It's strange, though, performing a serious job in an office whilst equestrian nomads ride around my imagination. It is peculiar to carry within me the development of a powerful female character whilst working in a largely male environment. Writing about a tribe dependent upon horses is quite a contrast to my job focused on technology. There are moments when I smile inwardly at the incongruity of it all.

 

Abstraction and speculation

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.

So began T S Eliot in Burnt Norton.

We've looked at nostalgia. Now I think further, I hang onto nostalgic thoughts precisely because, in some corner of my mind, they remain a possibility.

But that is abstract. I cannot turn the clock back, neither to a younger self nor to past political and economic circumstances. A few memorable years were granted me because I chose to travel to a place in flux at just the time when it was viable to offer riding holidays. Prices were affordable, political momentum to sweep away the old ways had not yet gathered momentum and the economy was yet to slump.

The choice was to do those things for a few years, or not to have done them at all.

Well, better to have gained those experiences and grown through them.

I took a chance and, for a few years, fortune granted me a few favours. Brashly I slipped into the land of speculation and, for a little while, a potent combination of optimism, audacity and hard work paid off.

Peaches in the summertime
Apples in the fall
If I can't have you all the time
I won't have none at all.

That's from Gillian Welch's Wayside / Back in time from her haunting The Harrow and the Harvest - a lovely album that I find myself playing often. It's a fine optimistic sentiment in the song, of course, but in my exile "having it all" wasn't an option. It was something or nothing, and accept that the place was in flux. The current cast me into calm water for a while, then snatched me away and into the rapids again.

So, away from the world of speculation! That's a mirage laughing in our faces as it raises false hopes, a Fata Morgana determined to pervert the view, a Wil o'The Wisp conspiring to lead the traveller astray.

To be fair, that album explores the self-destructive downward spiral that careless poeple can get into. I'd have entered that terrain had I clung onto a passing dream out there in Transylvania. A fast-changing place waits for no laggard. Nor was there a safety net in that place. Sad songs are written about folly, and I'd have earned myself a few tragic verses had I persevered beyond the point of no return. More nostalgia than common sense, a little too much dreaming and the wolves would have devoured us.

Ancestors lived here

Silent and mysterious, Segsbury camp lies abandoned on the ridge. A circular chalk rampart nibbled by sheep, it sits incongruous between modern fields. But its organic smoothness, its curves and the very material from which it is made, the camp fits into the rolling hills. Three thousand years old, it might still have been tenuously occupied when the Romans arrived in 43AD. By then its glory days as a centre for tribal agriculture and commerce seem to have passed: so the archaeologists tell us.

Past the camp I rode, another traveller on horseback, a speck upon the long history of this place. But at least I think about that history and wonder. Mostly one can just speculate and wonder. On a quiet day the traveller might stop here, imagining himself or herself a final inhabitant of the place. The group walking, the farmer in his tractor, they might represent the first trudging Roman legion confident in its superiority. Like horses through all antiquity Brena would nibble the grass. Only unlike most of her historical predecessors she's more of a family member than a chattel. And I look at that rampart as a place to take in the view or to sit in the sun rather than a final defence against neighbours. Sic transit gloria mundi. But sometimes the mundane isn''t such a bad thing.

Horizons

It was a warm, soft early spring day. A procession of receding ridges melted into a slight and inobtrusive haze. The first flowers had appeared, snowdrops and crocuses, and buds are swelling. The ground is firm but not hard. Sheep and cattle are out at pasture and the sward shows the first tentative signs of new growth. Silence enveloped the rolling hills.

I used to drive out of the still-snowy mountains to experience a day like this on the lowlands. What joy filled my heart to feel the warmth and see the new growth, neither of which would reach my home for another couple of months.

That early spring euphoria grips me still on a day such as today. Happiness such that I could sing, a broad smile and a deep feeling of well-being, like the morning after the first night with a new lover. But without the yawning and the coffee to stay awake.

Bare as the pockets of spendthrifts the beech trees remind me of winter, unsurprisingly after their flamboyant celebration of autumn.

I guided Brena from the well-used ridge trail onto a perpendicular way, grassy and little-used. In a mile along the ridge one may see twenty people on a Sunday. But branch off and one might see one or two people in five miles. People who can read a map and are willing to walk more than a mile from the car park. Members of a rare breed.

I encountered just one, and met her with chivalry for she was the nearest thing to a damsel in distress that I could hope to find. There was a dead muntjak in the trail, part-eaten by foxes, and her Thoroughbred would not pass. The trail being hedged, there was no way around. so I rode an unconcerned Brena to and fro past the carcass to dispel the aura of peril. After some minutes the wary little mare was sufficiently convinced to convey her charming owner past and homeward.

I am glad to ride a steady, sensible draught-cross. 

Once in a while one does need to dismount and clear an obstruction. That's when a lead rope can come in handy, there being a tree or a fence to tie a horse to safely in most cases. My rescuee didn't have a rope to hand. There again, English horses are used to be tied up to a loop of baler twine "so that they can break free if startled". Some are adept at taking advantage of this feature. My horses coming from the Balkans are trained to be tied to something solid without a breakable link, and are all the safer for it.

This weekend I rode Brena for about six hours in total. With more work she is settling down after an idle winter. Going out riding is becoming "normal" again for both of us. I like to be in that place where riding is as natural as walking. It used to be my home terrain, that fluency flowing from many hours in the saddle. Spring is the time to recapture that special relationship. It was a special pleasure to request a canter and not be treated to a small high-spirited buck. I am sure that it was a pleasure for Brena to be ridden by a more supple and relaxed me. The outcome is trust, and with trust there is much less need for rigid control. I say that because, for me, a deficit of trust can only be replaced by obedience to orders. That means control and, again with me, a tense rider. Tense because I am not quite sure whether I shall be obeyed. But with trust, never mind that a canter becomes a gallop. We're in a big open space of my choosing, there are no hazards ahead, and I know that Brena will tire within a quarter mile. I know that she won't deliberately do anything mean. She is sure-footed. It will all end well.

Downland mystery

On a bright day, quiet and a little hazy, the smooth chalk hills exude mystery. Sculptural in their simplicity, they are beautiful. Beneath the superficial works of man lingers timelessness. Their slopes and curves are those gazed upon by countless generations.

The bare harrowed chalk glows a soft misty milky white, strange and other-worldly in a land that ought to be green. Here is a little of the luminosity that attracted the Pre-Raphaelites to Tuscany.

A thin path across a beet field marks the trail. On the path goes, across a broad rounded hill open and spare, and then dives amidst beech and hawthorn to form a grassy alley.

One spring the slope lies soft and green beneath the first shoots of wheat, huge and unmarked like virgin prairie at the beginning of time.

Another year it is furred by leaf, tactile, textured like a huge homogeneous bank.

Sometimes the path is marked, other times the farmer is tardy. (The law obliges him to define the trail.) The latter is the most exciting, for one sets out alone into a sea of green, intrepid as an explorer. (But I know the trail, down to the way-mark on the horizon to head for.) It feels good to ride that hill.

As for the grassy alley between bush and bole, that too is a playground. It's straight and smooth, simply an invitation to go fast. Of course we "opened the taps" along there. Brena sped along with enthusiasm for the going was perfect, neither hard nor slippery.

Only at the end did we slow to a walk for there were two people with a dog, and surprised to see us as if the countryside was theirs. It was, and mine too, for each sees his or her own vision of the land.  

Each lover of this land has a personal vision. Everyone with imagination will find something here. Different things we discover, and yet related however distantly. The meanings that we find are separated just as the banks of trees divide the slopes into compartments. Yet those windbreaks are permeable to the eye, admitting of a view to the next lovely vista. Thus also with the visions of those who love this place.

Perspective

I began the evening keen to get on and edit that manuscript. But the end of a long week busy with work demanded a glass of wine. And so attention faltered: for whilst a glass might spur the imagination, it does nothing for attention to detail. Besides, at the end of a week poring over detail - at work and at home - I am tired.

Now two days of riding beckon. Looking at an old photo, I realised something else that riding has shown me: that one is small in a very large world. So much of life revolves around seeming big and important, certainly whilst handling the double-edged sword of employment within a large organisation. That pays the bills, of course, and yet there is the pressure to be seen, respected and considered responsible for some success or other. How tempting all that is. Persona strides forth, and moral corruption in his wake.

And then, for the fortunate, there is a horse to carry one off into a great open space that both humbles and inspires. Out there I may be myself. Indeed I need to be, for it is competence rather than facade that gets one through. Horses tend to demolish Potemkin villages. I love the great open spaces, where there is room aplenty to think, and a sense of perspective is nourished.

Rope coiling

Here is a sequence of photos showing how I coil a lead rope to carry it clipped to a saddle - as promised to Laura at Equestrian Ink. This type of coiled rope won't come undone unless botched very badly. It's also quick and easy to undo.

First start by turning over a short length of rope near to the hook. The length of overlap depends upon the overall length and thickness of the rope, and is best determined by a bit of trial and error.

Then coil the tail of the rope around the loop, tightly enough that it won't slip loose, starting by the hook.

Here is the rope completely coiled with just a short tail left over showing that the loop is the right length.

Now pass the tail through the small loop remaining at the end, and pull tight. If necessary pull the coils together down towards the tail.

Now it's ready to go. (Not necessarily with those particular horses which are not mine.) I used ropes coiled like that guiding groups along something like fifteen thousand trail miles without one coming loose. My staff and I coiled all those ropes. We were very good at it after all those years and miles!

On nostalgia

Nostalgia is a process that makes hard times seem better by focusing upon what good there was. Had those times been almost entirely good, one would move on buoyed by favourable memories. Or one would not have moved at all. Nostalgia is a sign of inability to move on. It's a fine technique for undermining present contentment. Therefore I try to avoid nostalgia.

A few winters ago we were breaking ice on the stream several times daily to water our horses. As winter progressed the stream got lower until just a trickle ran beneath thick ice. The well had just a few inches of water at the bottom. It was a struggle to find enough water for the horses. Where we broke the ice, we also dug out the stream bed for water to collect. I'm proud of our fortitude, but I don't want to go back to those days. We got by, but in the face of difficulty - and sometimes desperation. There is little space for nostalgia here.

If I had known thirteen years ago what I know today, I would not have started a riding holiday business. Perhaps I am getting soft? And it's not as if I didn't care about my horses back then. But when I think of the struggle to equip them and shoe them, the wastage along the way, was it worthwhile? Yes, I assembled good tack and - after considerable effort and a certain amount of wading through misinformation - managed to keep their feet in good order. But two horses shot due to broken limbs, one drowned, two euthanased because we couldn't resolve problem feet and another shot because of damaged lungs (worsened through a botched examination by an equine charity), and a pair retired with (probably) cracked pedal bones: that is a lot of wastage. There is no room for nostalgia.

Four of the horses that I had sold before leaving were stolen within months and most probably slaughtered for food. They were good horses all of them. I wish that I could have brought them with me, however limited finances precluded that. I had acquired them sincerely believing that I'd spend the rest of my days in that land.

I maintained around fifteen to eighteen riding horses several of which were used for draught work too. Maybe it wasn't a huge wastage rate. Perhaps some of those horses would have not made it even as lightly used hacks in the West? I don't know. All I do know is that I did the best possible for them all in a harsh environment with primitive veterinary facilities where practically medieval farriery was the norm.

Of course I had romanticised Transylvania before I moved there - picturesque countryside, rustic lifestyle and all that. Fertile grounds for subsequent nostalgia, one might think. Well I resist that temptation.

 

Fellow travellers

One nice thing about writing is that I can get to ride with whom I wish - in my imagination. It's good that way - as much adventure as I like, a desirable outcome and a safe return. For my horse and I anyway. After some perseverance of course.

As for real group rides I have to dig back in my archive to find photos of me with anyone else. As usual I have the hairiest horse with the most mud in her mane. That seems like our fate. At least on our own there are no smart horses to be compared against.

Accompanied or not, after a day crouched over a computer preparing reports and briefing papers I shall be glad to get out. After a day when I didn't even step outside in the light.....not even at lunchtime. Call it indiscipline, maybe, however there was that much to do.

Creating

A simple fact occurred to me last night. I have written around one hundred and twenty thousand words. That is enough. For a first book anyway. A whole sweep of story has been created and set down, albeit roughly and in need of polish. I had thought that was two-thirds of the tale. No! It's the first part of a trilogy. Well, that realisation has brought a bit of clarity.

I did a little sketching of the remainder. Just the rough ideas and a beginning of a shape for the thing. Enough to be able to include my former haunts in Transylvania. Indeed the very trail that led due north from my home, crossing a medieval trade route and a Habsburg military road both now grassy tracks. Only there will be something at the end darker than I encountered in real life. Darker, but in keeping with tradition.

How wonderful to be able to make use of my old life in this way. Well, I would say that. But, seriously, I used to ride that land feeling as if we were upon the tableau a huge film set or within the pages of a historical novel. The place had a fictional quality, hard to describe and yet easy to perceive - a function of its strangeness, of long history and of the raw simplicity of life. Contrasts were strong, the light bright and the dark vile. There were conspiracies too deep to fathom, and suspicion lurked the valleys. Beauty and joy stood hand in hand to welcome the traveller somewhere between setback and reverse. And up above on the mountains most often I found freedom.

Yes, my exile was like the meeting point between Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka and Dylan Thomas. All rolled into one. No wonder it has inspired an urge to create. Now let's see what.