Chapter 172
It’s one of those frosty mornings. One of those mornings when it feels like the world has been freshly peeled, unearthed, rediscovered. A morning where each and every thing upon which the eye rests is seen for the first time. Underfoot the earth slides away between slick ice crystals and smooth surfaces, or grinds reluctanctly from a touch where frost burrows its teeth into a facet that holds a grain.
I slicked leather with balsam this morning, bringing luscious scent into my day. The balsam is honey-based, sensuously smoothing into leather, enticing taste buds with sweetness while conjuring memories of youth: Newspapers spread over floor, tack dismantled, swabbed with various unguents for flexibility and prolongued life. No ignoring leather equipment in the barn for months on end, in a humid environment they are green and fetid within a week.
During my training days in England, learning to teach, and care for horses and their people, our Mondays were maintenance days. Horses all got the day off, the stabled ones were turned out in the great indoor arenas to run and play. Sometimes us ‘unfortunate’ working folk would leap aboard bareback and career around with little to no control, laughing uncontrollably at our antics. In the afternoons, once stables were cleaned, horses relieved and eventually, some sustanance entered our bellies, we were tasked with cleaning all the tack for the entire stables – 47 sets as I recall.
We had our favourites, saddles most comfortable or uncomfortable to ride in – the famed orgasmatron of narrow waist and high pommel, bridles and stirrup leathers buttery-soft between the fingers. In the barely warmed tack room buckets frothed with soapy-greying water as we progressed through seemingly endless reams of leather, steel and brass.
On weekend rides when rich folk came from the city to gallop madly across the English countryside, it was a blessing to be the leader. All others returned to the stables coated head to toe in mud. Hosing a dozen horses and drying them off/walking them out before returning to their boxes was a tiring task in the winter months, fingers and toes frequently losing sensation during the cold process of caring for our equine friends.
Looking back from this great distance to moments of high drama, laughter and fun… mingled with the onerousness of the daily grind and the owners’ frequent memory lapses whose duty to provide food for us skivvies appeared low on their list of priorities. Days when we put in 12 hours of work only to realize at the end that supper had once again been forgotten and only after some metaphorical stamping of feet did a tray of lasagne turn up in our cottage to be reheated under a grill before we collapsed into bed.
The night and day of the great hurricane (the one the BBC told viewers was not happening), I remember awaking during the night to stumble across the bedroom and fasten the rattling window closed before falling back into sleep. Since all we did was work, eat (with luck) and sleep, we were utterly unaware that the world was turning itself upside-down outside said window. When we arose and opened the back door of the cottage to trek across the fields to the yard, we were met with the collapsed trunk of an enormous tree not five feet from the doorway. Staggering against the still-strong wind, we made our way up the hill, keeping heads low as things flew past.
I remember skirting the edges of the yards to avoid flying roof tiles and when the wind finally subsided, taking out horses on well- trodden paths only to discover impassable pile-ups of trees and debris. All that took place in 1987, taking over 15 million trees with it. Memorable times.
May the winds be kind and the sun continue to shine and the breathless beauty of this morning in November remain a beacon in my memory of days.
Happy end of year and moving through the darkest days into the time of light! May all your days be bright.
Kat Dancer
bodymudra@gmail.com 1 415 525 2630 (c)
