Oasis

The wood beyond the dry upland stubble beckons green and inviting as a desert oasis. Each tree is different, varid sinuous trunks catching the low evening sun and the inquisitive eye. The time will come to explore its mysterious interior, feasting upon details of bough and branch. But not tonight as someone was shooting in there.

I rode for an hour, easily though with a couple of short trots. It was fairly comfortable, with just a little muscular tightness. The greatest restriction occurs in moving the recuperating leg back behind centre, a position that is needed walking but not riding. This is encouraging. I'm supposed to lead a couple of short rides at the weekend. Now it looks as if I shall be able to. They won't be fast rides. I shall need to be careful. But there is hope, and I shall feel good getting out on the hills again...so soon too.

This is the stubbornness that carried me through hard times in Transylvania. I rode many miles with a damaged back, including three interminable days when I could not straighten up at all. Every jarring step and stumble hurt. My mare decided to jump over the tracks at the railway crossing, which was unwelcome with a trapped nerve in my back. We crossed snowfields and traversed tracks thick in ice, for we journeyed into the high inner mountains too early in spring. After the third day it was too much. That evening I drank a prodigious quantity of brandy and, all of a sudden, the trapped nerve freed itself.

Lytha asked whether my former wilderness isn't a place that I long to return to. It's a good point. Nowadays I seem to focus mainly on the way forward, whatever that is. In part that is expeditious: I cannot go back to riding as a trail guide, nor can I return to make a living in a country with a broken economy. In another part that forward looking stems from mixed ambition and curiosity. But mine is an ambition to gain wisdom, not to acquire more goods. In a sense I've outgrown my place of exile. Little more growth was possible there.

I don't think that the next wilderness will be geographical. Something tells me that I am becoming readier for a wilderness of the mind, out of which will spring new creativity. The motes dancing as if randomly in a sunbeam illuminating a dusty room will begin to form shapes, and from them will emerge meaning. Yes, meaning, and a story. My story and the stories of those who crossed my path. Those and the tales from my imagination which are like a bubbling pan on the hob requiring just a little more heat to boil over. Just a little more time growing, sifting, sorting and preparing.....

 

Comments

[funder]

Glad to hear you're riding again!