White Horse Pilgrim

Looking out

We travelled clandestinely, hidden within a long belt of trees. An overgrown drove road a century abandoned, it sweeps across hill and dale. Occasionally we darted into the open where woodland failed, crossing some silent meadow before entering fresh cover. And we had the trail to ourselves, save for one cyclist who passed and was gone in moments. This is my dream-trail where imagination burgeons like the thriving vegetation. Here's where I clear my mind, empty out the negative thoughts to evaporate, allow my imagination to refresh, and begin to create a new narrative. Where I start to see the real world from a fresh perspective. It's a good and helpful place. Or benign and helpful in a world of temptations? Whatever, it's a place to reconnect with nature, which is a forgotten corner of the collective unconscious of the people of this land. 

We stopped to look out. There's a bright world beyond, spacious and inviting. What is over the next hill? It isn't just the overgrown lane that sponsors the imagination. Even Brena lifted her head from gazing the cow parsley, curious about the colourful space beyond. 

Such is the power of this place that I returned to truck and trailer only to be surprised by the time. It was a couple of hours later than I expected. (I hadn't been wearing a watch.) Down there time flies past. Time is measured by the sun in the sky - and by the seasons. It's not so much timeless as governed by a different paradigm to the chronological modern world. The 'old' time. The time of that veiled collective unconscious, and of my stories too. 

Ride on a warm day

At last: sun and warmth. I set myself the target of a longer ride, four or five hours just like in the old days. And so the day played out. It looked like a day that would offer sunburn and dehydration, breezy enough to feel cool though in reality hot an dry. So I put the summer gear on Brena: chiefly a cantle pack with two large water bottles. Then I applied sun block to the parts of my skin that I planned to expose. Face and forearms - let's go for a farmer's tan. 

Before we departed the car park a group of Japanese tourists came across to have their photo taken with Brena. 

Now the land is alive! Vegetation spreads and encroaches, rises and blossoms. Trails have become narrow strips of earth between banks of grass and cow parsley, hawthorn and bright beech. We walked through knee-deep grass, cantered with white flowers brushing my feet. 

Cow parsley, despite its name, is wonderfully attractive to horses. I don't know whether this delicate plant grows either in Brena's native Slovenia or her second home of Italy, however she has discovered a taste for it here in Britain. Anyway, we made a deal: a little grazing for a steady photographic platform. 

I don't like to ride aimlessly. I guess that comes from having worked as an outfitter, where every ride has some objective or other. So I set out to explore a couple of miles of new trail and ride another two miles where Brena had not been before. It's good to expand her horizons and mine. That keeps Brena on her toes, ready for new experiences, and me too.

On the first section, which I'd ridden once before years ago, the woods enveloped us. There in the shadows we brushed the edge of a large herd of deer, scattering them in front, to left and right. Off they ran as Brena stared. This may be a populous land, however it has wild stretches teeming with life even just a few miles from busy towns.

Then we rode a grassy track along the margin of a park that once enclosed a stately home, a wood-pasture formerly set up for grazing, riding and hunting. Here we stopped for a quick lunch break in the most wonderfully English landscape, green and rolling. It was peaceful there, so quiet and deliciously cool in the shade. I tied up Brena, loosened her girth, and lay in the long grass. And then the big mare tried to get down and roll. Well she did see me down there.....

The ride back was hot, and I drank most of the two pints of water in my bottles. The beginning of a headache went away. On we went, all by ourselves. That's the strange thing: with all these wonderful trails, still I can ride two hours or more and see no-one. The main ridge trail, of course, carries a thin but steady traffic of hikers and cyclists. But these lovely side trails are barely trodden. 

The riding was varied and most pleasurable. Brena walked down the hill then, with the slightest prompting, cantered up a quarter mile of turf. Save for pounding hooves all was quiet in the road-less valley. Then we headed down an overgrown grassy lane, speeding up to a second canter. From there we walked beneath a delightful beech canopy. And we met not a soul and saw no hoof prints though this is a waymarked public trail. 

Back at the trailer I washed Brena down then grazed her on a long line for a while. By now I was feeling that pleasant buzz from well used muscles. I'd drank sufficient fluid out on the ride. But still a little more re-hydration would be needed. What a good thing that a jug of fresh organic cider sits in the refrigerator.

Favourite trail

Friday was bright and warm. Indeed hot. The cats lay and cooked in the conservatory until, overheated at last, they crept into a shady room to lie on the concrete floor and cool. Horses stood and dozed, fragrant with sweat and dust. I was grateful for air-con in the car, though it worked hard, the roar of cold air competing with the Indigo Girls and then Joan Baez. Then I just wound down the window, turned off the air-con, and put my foot down. Enjoy a bit of romance, hair blowing, chords escaping. 

I swept up Brena into the trailer and headed for the hills. There it was breezy, the sort of day where sunburn creeps upon the unwary. So, long sleeves and a hat with a brim were in order, and some protection for my neck. And plenty of water to drink. I know all the gates, posts, mounds and fallen trees to mount from if I have to get down to pee. Sometimes, needs must, practical trumps romantic. 

Sun after rain brings forth burgeoning vegetation. Canola is bright. Cow parsley spreads a white froth on the margins of trails. Incongruous in late spring, Hawthorn is white as frost. At last the world is alive, flourishing and - as Brena reminded me - very tasty to a greedy horse. 

My favourite trail led up a quiet valley. For a mile I can imagine myself far away, in some Transylvanian valley perhaps, for this place has little in common with modern Britain. It is as if a fragment of the past has been preserved, mysteriously and wonderfully. 

Riding on, the valley becomes lovelier: deeper, remoter and more mysterious. This is a splendid place for a picnic. I've stopped there to eat on a number of occasions, tethering my horse to graze. One warm summer day, when Doru was tethered and I'd eaten, I lay in the long grass to doze. A hiker stopped to enquire whether I'd fallen off. 

I love this place. We'll trot along the level valley bottom, then canter up the hill beyond, stopping in the middle distance for Brena to graze and me to collect my thoughts. For this is a place of rest and inspiration, a glade in which to dream, imagine and weave tales. This is the valley that has given birth to many of my stories. Here dreams wander waiting to grow upon the fertile soil of a ready mind. 

Farm ride

Rather than trailer Brena out to the hills, I rode around the farm where she lives for forty minutes or so. I haven't ridden around the fields for a year mainly because Brena could be a handful. Back then I wondered whether it was too much like schooling, which she dislikes. 

Today she had a lot of energy - for a draught-cross anyway - and clearly wanted to do some faster work. However the farm, whilst not small at four hundred acres, hasn't anything more than two hundred yards in a straight line. In fact it's laid out geometrically with right-angle bands at the end of each straight. Knowing Brena, the first canter once she has warmed up will be longer than a couple of hundred yards. I don't want to ask her to canter only then to ask her almost immediately to slow right down again. That wouldn't be fair. She is a trail horse, mentally adapted to open spaces, not an arena horse familiar with short canters and collection. 

So our ride was more tense than I would have liked, asking Brena to hold a walk when actually both of us wanted to go faster. Only I could see what would happen if she did canter. 

When I first rode Brena around the farm, I ascribed that tension to nervousness. But we passed a tractor ploughing, other horses jumping, a lesson in the school, a lorry, big plastic-wrapped silage bales, etc without the least difficulty. She isn't afraid. Just bored and keen to enjoy a more interesting ride. That is what we get when we go out and ride. So I won't be riding around the farm again for a while, convenient as it can be. 

Work is very busy so posts have been infrequent. Riding has been prioritised above writing. Anyway, tomorrow I lead a team explaining to our executives how a $200m bid is to be pitched. It's not absolutely straightforward and I expect some probing questions. Riding is a wonderful antidote to whatever stress that kind of work throws up, though in truth I do find the job really quite interesting. Certainly it beats running a riding holiday centre turning over $300k annually in a market that beat profit margins down to nearly nothing. 

This evening, after the ride, I put Brena to graze. After untacking and brushing her, I lay in the long grass, dozed a little then drank a mug of coffee. It was all so peaceful in the welcome sun. Other owners came and went. One lady looked a little incongruous in a thin summer dress and big wellington boots. But I guess that she was cooler than me after I had been riding in leather full chaps and lumberjack boots. Yes, it was a warm evening. I was hot and sticky, but relaxed and happy too. 

 

Exploring lanes

We took a fresh trail today. A new way across familiar hills, deep amidst the parallel world that mirrors and avoids the motor roads. It's always fun to do this, exploring the chalk hills from a different perspective. Today I committed a section of map to memory and set off. It's easy to do if one has a feel for topography. 

It was a pleasure to canter up short rises, Brena responding as if to my thoughts. What a splendid partnership! I felt really out there in the moment, living life by the second. We were travelling, covering ground, responding to surface and terrain. I watched the passage of meadow, crop and wood, saw the broad changing sky, and noticed hovering hawk and soaring kite. For an hour or two we were almost at one with the land through which we travelled. Almost. But, if not exactly a part of the landscape - for neither am I a farmer nor Brena a plough-horse - we are benign. I understand. She does no harm. I love and care. We are both descendants of those who worked the land. This land and other hills perhaps a little like them. 

As I rode, I thought of how familiar riding has again become. More rides, more hours in the saddle and it's as familiar as walking down the road or across the office. Riding is comfortable, straightforward, and nothing about it causes alarm. I feel as if Brena and I can face nearly every circumstance. We are a partnership. Together we could go on for very many miles. No, Brena is not perfect. She snatches at vegetation, that is her principal weakness. As faults go it's safe. Nor am I perfect as a rider, not absolutely balanced thanks to my back and hip joints. At least I think about this as I am riding, trying to inconvenience her as little as possible. However, imperfections notwithstanding, she and I do look after one-another. 

Blue

After a ride through vibrant canola, a different ride today accompanied by the relaxed hue of bluebells. Each copse and belt of woodland is floored with a hazy blue. Rain or not, irrespective of the mud, truly spring is here.

Usually we canter along the shady path threading the long wood growing on a long-abandoned drove road. On this stretch we're homeward bound and energy is plentiful. But today it was better to linger, savouring the delicate colour and fragrance.

As ever it surprised me how few people were to be seen out here. So much beauty, so few people. Is it that I am surrounded by young souls, newbies, people seduced by goods and technology, too busy rushing around to notice mere nature? It is as if these woods have been bypassed not just by roads but by thought and memory too.

Yellow

A rolling yellow blanket extends across the hills, a flood of canola sweeping across the green. The canola is tall now hemming in the trail to a thin line across the land. It's tasty too, Brena tells me, grabbing at the yellow flowers with her eager lips.

Beneath the bright crop the land possesses a sculptural quality. There is detail close up, of course. But, standing back, the canola is a uniform yellow stretching over hill and dale. The occasional trees, regular tractor lines, rare copses and the thin line of the trail, these alone provide scale and perspective. So little content stands between micro and macro.

This is my green upland prairie under a yellow filter. Here is my familiar downland wearing a bright new dress. Under grass or canola, beneath a blanket of snow or ploughed bare after harvest, I know this place. What I don't know are the Romans and Saxons who farmed here, the people who worked these fields during the Middle Ages and afterwards. I grasp and appreciate the form of this land. However I don't know the generations who scratched the surface of these fields. There again perhaps they changed it but little. The timelessness of these hills transcends us all. In that case what difference do I make? Writing, photographing, recording - noting down the here and now. Changing nothing but observing much.

The way

Escape into another world. That's my evenings for you. Off with a horse to imagine.

Here's the old trail across the hill. A Roman road, no less. A place to dream, with an ancient trail underfoot and a far horizon to gaze at.

Now I'm back at home exploring another realm. The music that I missed through being born just a few years too late. That I failed to encounter as a result of being brought up in a stultifyingly dull ultra-conservative home. Such an upbringing not only shuts out the creativity outside but stunts the ability to discover. I started to read after leaving home, having found secondhand bookshops. Now I'm listening, delving into the 1960s and '70s. Wasn't that when so much beauty was created? When some wonderfully creative artists began working, a few of whom are still with us? I've just acquired a recording on which Joan Baez asks the audience "shall we sing We shall overcome?" The audience comes to life with palpable enthusiasm. (Oh, how I wish that I had been there.) How many such moments does one have in a lifetime?

Rides spring into life too. Or is it just that I come to life through riding? I guess that it's easy to try and find meaning from this or that influence, whether a guru or a performer - whose works, if more than a little ethical or spiritual in content, will exude a powerful draw. But growth is about not viscerally needing that leader, or at least being able to choose which leader. And then it's about becoming a leader. Brena challenges me to be her leader. On a larger scale work throws up this challenge too.

And then the figureheads become mere inspiration - which is in fact a moral elevation -  to be taken or left at will. I can sing along to a CD in my truck because it's fun to do so. And then I'm no longer jealous of the performer's skill, just absorbed by the beauty and creativity of their work. I have my own creative work, I've made something of my own that I love. My writing, a book published, thoughts expressed, guidance given. We're each of us good at what we do according to our own measure.

Back to my reality. Out with a good horse on the hill. Reality in the form of a big coloured mare meets me the person. The way that her feet tread and mine too. How I react to her and everything else that happens.

Now to take it all sufficiently seriously - but not (my usual fault) too seriously.

Between showers

The day brightened enough to suggest a trip out to ride. My slick machine swept into action. Just over an hour later I was aboard Brena in a quiet valley several miles away. Another half-hour saw us on the ridge looking down across the Thames Valley. This is Dean's Bottom, where King Alfred and his men chased the defeated Danes (i.e. Vikings) after the Battle of Ashdown - just one thousand one hundred and forty one years ago. In the hills memories are long.

The power station in the valley threw up a huge cloud. See the sheep grazing in the shady foreground, on the old turf covering the remains of a Roman temple. Today's edifice throws up a spectacle to stand above the relics of a long-dead empire. And I traversed the Roman road imagining a legion marching towards me: the tramp of the boots, the clink of armour and weapons, their raucous voices and the greeting of their officer to an august traveller. (Well, I'm not going to imagine myself a tramp!)

The sun was low. It was time to turn back towards the trailer. At one point we cast a shadow across a meadow yellow with cowslips. It's not a lofty exciting hill, but it's still attractive in green and yellow. Years ago I used to ride up a hill like that leading trail rides - usually the first day of a week out - stopping to picnic at the top. One of these days I'll pause atop this little local hill with victuals to consume.

We rode into a pretty sunset. Just in time because we would be arriving back at the trailer at twilight and would get to the field with just the faintest glimmer still in the westerly sky. Slithering through the mud in darkness is such fun. A little bit of light just makes the difference. But I did not dwell on logistics. I enjoyed the view across to the golden-fringed pink clouds above pastel fields.

After the rain

In the bright sun after rain the land felt clean and refreshed. Light and silence bathed the hidden valley that I love so much, and there Brena and I were left alone. No-one came, no aeroplane flew, and of course there were no vehicles. Shadow spread like a riding tide, dark and cool.

And there in the background distant thunderclouds cried out: "Don't forget us!"

The sward is thick and springy, the grass rich and appetising to beasts. The rain has done her work. The storm may smile from beyond the far hills knowing that, even as I dodged her clutches, Brena and I depend upon her gift of nourishing rain. Besides is the rain such a problem to the traveller with a raincoat as good as mine?

Up on the ridge a copse stood dark and mysterious as an island upon the sea at the approach of dusk. What could be up there? What a fine land for the nurturing of imagination. The valley might be a secret thoroughfare, and a messenger or guide waiting in the trees. Waiting to ride out and direct me upon the next stage of my journey. Ready to invite me to a safe lodging with space for man and beast. For in the imagination this little valley is the beginning of a vast wild country where adventures are to be had. Make the most of the kindly welcome! The next character might be a watch-keeping ogre ready to test courage, skill and memory of the password.

Here's the way for tomorrow. Over the trees (ignoring the fence which is really an unfortunate illusion), between the trees and away. Into the valley then up and over the next hill. Then another valley and the hill beyond. Off on a quest. Off amidst the far blue hills. For this ridge upon which I stand is the border where the parallel world begins. A place in the mind where the traveller wanders limited only by himself.

Down there the fetters are all home-made. Invisible, they are too, sometimes. And all the time ones own Shadow runs ahead to dig ruts into the trail, throw down boulders, confuse the way and finally run back with exaggerated fearful tales of ogres real and imagined. So one struggles, aided by a helping hand from the Wise Old Man and a whisper of intuition from Anima. And in dreams the hurts are eased.

A pretty trail need not be easy. A worthwhile trail may not be picturesque. The surprise is that memory renders places idyllic that seemed imperfect upon the scales of direct experience. I've struggled through a curtain of tragedy, a storm of bitterness months long, only to walk away years later seeing the fragments of good. Indeed forgiving. Well, mostly forgiving. There is still some growing to do. There is some travelling ahead and some dreaming too.

Beyond the storm there is a spring of clear sweet water, refreshing for man and beast. Below the spring is a waterfall and a pool, and these are good for bathing. There is a rock on which to sit on a warm day, resting, looking over the cool limpid water and off down a quiet valley to far wooded hills. It's the end of one great journey, and a refuge to venture from too. In moments of meditation I've seen that place. Now to find it.

And in the background distant thunderclouds cried out: "Don't forget us! You need the nourishment dispensed by the storm. Even the spring-water once fell in a wind-driven curtain of cold rain. You need the storm as much as the calm."