In the southern hemisphere, we are making our way towards the year’s brightness. The globe is shifting and turning, and alongside her, we are shifting also. Stroking my horses, I’m left with a handful of hair, the sign of spring incoming.
I often think of this often when I am outside in the field with my ponies; how they stand all night under a moon I may have missed, a wind I have not felt whilst ensconced in the comfort of my bed.
That, on occasion, I wake up without being exactly sure why, only to look outside and see someone has taken a milky paintbrush and raised it with a single streak across the sky. To consider we are under, above, between and within galaxies splits time like torn paper and I stand in the space between the two sides waiting for them to join back together. For the minutes to continue on.
Incoming spring, with all her zest, has made a wildness of my insides. I wonder, know, my horses feel the same.
When I thought of writing this to you today, I wanted to begin with lightness and brightness. I wanted to speak to you in words that galloped across the page, that would please the social media fairies with their easy readability, rather than with the density of poetic musings which it seems these days I can’t extricate from my work. If posts are to be lost to the algorithm, I think to myself, let them at least be the posts I wish to write.
So here we are.
Let us pick up from this place by speaking of stomping (stomping, I have just realised, is a very satisfying word. It sounds exactly like it feels). This week there’s been a lot of stomping.
Stomping thoughts of the gremlin kind who barge their way in, who do their best to convince of the things you are busy trying to un-convince yourself about. Like you will manage to do all the things you know you need to do. Like you aren’t letting people down by perhaps NOT managing to do all those things in the time frame you expected. Little stomping trotters marching their way through the time you hoped would be for daydreaming, for art making, for rest.
Stomp, stomp, stomp.
There’s only one thing to do when it comes to stomping and that’s to stomp your way outside. To explain out loud to the earth your situation and to let it catch you. The ground, the earth is beyond benevolent, incredibly understanding when it comes to stomping feet.
‘We understand,’ she says, ‘you can let it all go here.’
Movement as a muscle to work thoughts through.
I stomped my way out to the paddock with the intention of only sitting, but Saffy in her chestnut brightness (see, I am managing to include the brightness) was looking at me over the gate. She must have heard the stomp and came to see.
In the moments that followed, we had an invisible conversation. I grabbed a halter, placed it on her lovely head and led her out.
‘Let’s go,’ I said to her, the stomp already lightening.
‘Let’s,’ she replied enthusiastically, and I could have sworn out loud.
My stomping, it appeared, made for a certain brashness that my usual self would have been less inclined for.
‘I think,’ I told Saffy, ‘we should go on an adventure.’ I pointed to the back paddock, the steep forest of Macrocarpa that scuttled up the long hill to the side.
‘Let’s go there.’
Walking down the track, Saffy arched forward like a swan, her nose and whiskers leading. I spoke to her of the rounds of wood stacked satisfyingly on the edges of the stones, her nostrils opening and closing as if she were gently blowing bubbles.
‘Those are just trees,’ I told her, ‘albeit in a different stage of life. They came down in the winds we had last month.’
She nodded, delighted, understanding, continued on.
We took turns for who was leading, her looking with wide eyed curiosity, but feet that never hesitated, that always kept along.
When it came time for us to go through the dark wood, the track narrowed to single file. I considered how we should do the order, and decided to let Saffy go ahead.
‘You go,’ I encouraged her, ‘I’ll lead from behind.’
At this point, her moving trotters faltered. Unsure of the track, or perhaps the darkness of the forest, she stopped. To get in front, I had to clamber round. At one point, I realised my entire weight was resting on her as I made my way from the back end to the front. If she had moved, I would have fallen, but she didn’t. She understood the assignment and let me climb round by her side.
By the top of the hill, I noticed: no more stomping. No more stomping of the feet or of the thought based kind.
I write this because:
There are days where our aspirations are otherwise but all we’re left with is the stomp. Where the gremlins mess with the thoughts and tie knots of our insides. And so there are things I always seek to remind myself…
The earth can hold a stomp, and will gladly do so if for other days you hold her gently in return.
That there is little that is more enjoyable than shared movement with a horse. That they are not there to cure you but they will gladly accompany you.
That the outside is always a remedy for what the insides are finding hard to hold.
In solidarity for those who find this week in mostly stomp.
