Stellar Walk With The Herd

Went for a walk this afternoon. For the first time since spring, I invited the herd along. I can take them onto the neighbours’ wooded section through the gate at the top end of my hayfield. They can run free through there without having access to the road or getting into any trouble. I’d finally got this year’s crop of burdock cut and moved so they can’t get full of burrs either. I haltered Blue(pictured above) as bait for the rest of them to follow. I led him away, up the field calling out to the others, “HORSES, Come On!” They didn’t come.

I carried on up the field, adding those clicking noises inherent to all horse people. It’s amazing how loud I can make them with a lifetime of practice behind me.

I heard a loon calling and thought, that’s strange, the loons should be gone by now. Then I remembered. Years ago there was a stellars jay that tricked me into bushbashing through the alder tangle thinking it was a loon in need of intervention. Eventually, I saw the stellar jay making the loon call and realized I’d been duped. I have heard it in the years since, but not seen it.
Suddenly, two beautiful stellars flew over me and landed in the tree above me. I sang out, “Hello, loony-bird, you trickster, nice to see you again, and look you have a mate!” Bubbles of joy rose through my body, a huge smile burst onto my face and I felt the thrill that comes with this kind of magic when I let myself get carried away by it. To top it off, three more family members alighted. I thought, how lovely, a family of five – just like I grew up in. I was telling them how gorgeous they were and thanking them for coming to join me, adding some of my own really crappy loon songs in the mix, taking loony to a whole new level to see if I could get an encore performance. No loon sounds were forthcoming,  but the drumming sound of hooves arose as the rest of the herd came to join me. “That’s it!”, I thought, “the attraction of joy, through allowing myself to be filled with thrill, I’ve motivated them to come with me”. Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling talks a lot about this in his book, “The Horse Seeks Me”. I heard the loon doing an eagle imitation, as Blue and I walked on, to keep the established momentum moving in a forward direction and ourselves safe, amongst the cavorting tonnage.
The other 4 horses bounced and bucked, the length of the hayfield, Freya throwing in some pretty spectacular airs above the ground and a very picturesque rear at the top of the hill. So joyful and exuberant! Once through the gate to the neighbour’s, I released Blue and the race was on. Snow flew and off they went, I followed at my mundane human walk with an extraordinarily full heart. They didn’t blast far, they were all milling about a short distance ahead, waiting for someone to take the lead. So when I caught up to them, I wandered through them and walked out in front. Down the hill we went, they broke ahead of me when I got to the clearing, to stop at the cross fence where they all gawked at the neighbour’s new white horse in her pen across the open fields. Freya started picking rose hips and Blue was making cropping circles in the snow so I chilled out too and looked out over the lake and the open water in the narrows, listening to the squawking of the swans.
When they started to wander aimlessly, I hooked up Blue to provide them with some direction and went back the way we came. No go. Nobody followed and Blue was dragging at the end of my rope like a crappy, old vacuum cleaner. So I tried the other way, we turned around and went by the wandering sillies, down and across the hillside. We were half way across when the first horse came tearing by. By the time the last horse had passed us I had Blue’s leadrope unhooked and he took off bucking after them. They ran all the way home, back up the fenceline, through the gate into the hayfield and down the length of the hayfield to stand at the gate by the house.
I was walking towards them and calling about how much fun that had been. It surprised me when someone whinnied back. Then the sweethearts greeted me one at a time, a few approaching me to touch my arm or share breath and walking with me for a bit, before dropping back to allow someone else a turn, all within the flow. I was deeply touched.