I made the journey west along Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western Railway, the historic route sweeping across the intimate green plain with its fields, hedgerows and tiny stone-built villages hiding between copses. The great chalk ridge marched a couple of miles to the south, an old thoroughfare gazing down upon the new. The railway may have been opened in 1840, one hundred and seventy-two years ago, however it feels like a relative newcomer. And it is. It's right that the train should rush across the plan, not stopping to pour out town people into this magical old realm.
I looked across at the ridge rising and falling like a wave upon the ocean. The high point, White Horse Hill, stood like a sentinel, its northern coombe embracing deep shadow. High upon the hill lay the eponymous chalk figure that has survived three millennia or more, there too stood the chalk ramparts of Uffington Castle. Both of there were old already when the Romans came here. And yet both are still here.
It is as if White Horse Hill represents the beginning of a veiled realm of mystery. There I was on the speeding train, safe in a world of business and certainty, off to a meeting. And all the way across that vale the familiar undulating ridge smiled down upon me, sharp in the clear air.
On another day a traveller might have gazed southward and, were he or she sharp-eyed, spotted the speck of a horseman upon that hill. That traveller would have been my horse and I. Then the train passenger would have taken my role in the modern world, welcome substitute, whilst I advanced into the old. The train would have represented their frontier, and the ridge mine. They would have beaten their bounds at 125mph, and I mine at a fortieth of their speed.
Another duality: what I am constrained to be at work, and what I become in my free time. Two personas. Two quests, exploring things technical versus matters spiritual, psychological and historic. Machines and horses. Offices and open spaces. Groups versus solitude. In a group longing for space, or on my own dreaming of that homely cottage where I may sit by the fire supping ale and swapping tales.
There again, much of reality is dualistic. If I don't see a duality, most likely I am missing something. Opposites conspire to create balance. One pole illuminates the qualities of the other. There are choices. The path forks. The ridge stands above the valley where one may walk dry-shod in winter. But the drinking water is there below, and the villages where shelter is to be found. There are good and evil, of course, and choices therein. Wisdom versus ignorance. Benign selections and those that are life-changing. Two ways that lead to alternate good outcomes, and a plain choice between progress and perdition. Pairs and opposites.
The slow pace of a horse does at least give one time to think.
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