White Horse

Kung Hei Fat Choi. It's the year of the Horse, an animal of speed, strength, nobility, loyalty and beauty.  the Horse is an auspicious sign in Chinese Astrology. The only caution I read is that horses have a tendency to bolt, so one should guard against impulsivity during the Year of the Horse.  But, what do I know from Chinese Astrology? Or, from horses for that matter.

When I was about 10 or 11, a girl on my street kept two ponies in her suburban back yard. There wasn't enough room for one, let alone two, but she had them anyway. She occasionally  let me ride the gentler of the two. Shen made the mistake of letting me ride the feistier one once, but it threw me off ass over tea kettle within five minutes.  No of course we weren't wearing helmets. That was the only time I ever spent with a live horse. But, I once had a deep, mystical experience with a mythic horse.

Sequoia and I went to England in 1991? 92? I can't quite remember. We flew to London and stayed there a few days, then rented a car and headed to Glastonbury for a big festival. This was well before the days of Travel Advisor and we hadn't planned the trip very carefully. We somehow managed to drive a car out of London, which ranks among the most absolutely terrifying experiences of my life, got to Oxford by mid-day and spent the afternoon wandering through town. We headed south in the late afternoon.  As we were tooling along on the wrong side of the goddammed road, we spotted a sign for the White Horse of Uffington. Dating to something like 1,000 BC, this stylized image of a horse was cut from the turf, revealing the chalk white hillside underneath. No-one knows why it's there or what it signified, but it may have been created to honor the Celtic horse goddess Epona.

It was quite late in the day when we got up to the parking area and the place was deserted. The White Horse is a few miles from the main road, on the same site as the bald hill top where St. George reputedly killed a dragon and near an iron age hill fort surrounded by an ancient ditch. All are surrounded by acres and acres of pastureland and flocks of sheep grazed among the monuments. Long green swaths of new-mown grass lay in rows. The midsummer light lingered warm and windless, and we had no place in particular to be, so we piled a bed of grass in the field, pulled out our sleeping bags and slept under the stars, like my Celtic ancestors.

I'm a notoriously bad sleeper, especially when I'm camping, but I drifted off immediately and effortlessly into a deep and dreamless sleep and woke at first light, warm, happy, burrowed deep into my bed of grass. That's what The Horse signifies for me. Bring it on.