| Featured Article - August
2006
In The Shadow of Equus Catching a Breath –
Eco-Equine Style |
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| August. The peak of summer. Show season.
Prep time. Cleaning tack, grooming, polishing, farrier appointment,
truck repair, saddle repair, vet checks, insurance renewal, haying,
trailer wash, groceries, barn supplies, work schedule, event schedule,
getting away, getting back. Getting a breath. To get that breather, sometimes a simple, quiet trail ride away from everything is just the antidote to the military organization of summer on the run... or perhaps at the gallop. Beyond the barn door, there’s a civilization of life layered in the subtle, jumbled interconnectedness of rhythms and seasons that most of the time we barely have time to notice. Grabbing an hour one evening to ride Fari, my Anglo-Arab, I escaped for a quiet walk along a woodland trail. I was reminded of how in touch each hoofbeat is with a dynamic biological world, and how consistently the human race can be so out of touch with the simple survival techniques etched along the trail of life. By the path, stands of cedar, fir, hemlock, alder, paper birch, and big-leaf maple stretched away, their interlocking crowns creating a cool canopy while their root systems beneath Fari’s feet spider-webbed through the red soil. Thick, gnarled bark chewed by beetles, drilled by woodpeckers, and host to fungus had weathered for decades. A hemlock stump with its 50 rings had seeded half a century ago. When it took root, I was 12 years old, living half a world away and dreaming of ponies. How ironic that I ride by it now. Lower branches were draped in mosses, clinging moisture. The winged seeds of the maples were food for chattering squirrels, grosbeaks, and mice, which in turn were food for coyotes trotting silently across the forest carpet of pine needles. Fari’s shoes chinked against the gravel path. The stones, crushed and rolled over millennia, had crumbled from the edges of granite and shale substrate that were the building blocks of mountains heaved up, weathered down, moulded and tumbled by earthquakes, washed by rains, painted by forest hues, and lived in by everything from bees to bears. |
In a meadow clearing, a
black-tailed doe nipped at grasses. We passed her quietly, barely five
metres away. She looked up, shook off some flies, and continued
grazing. A red-tailed hawk lifted silently off the bough of a birch
where sapsuckers have drilled their tiny parallel holes. High overhead
turkey vultures circled. A rabbit darted beneath the arched frond of a
huge sword fern. The trail led past an area where, before, I had seen a bobcat crouch in summer pasture, where a black bear had padded by salmonberry bushes and scraped at the bark of a young fir to chew on the sap layer, where ruffed grouse drummed the air with their wings in springtime ritual, and where fat garter snakes coiled in the hot rays of the afternoon sun. A domed ants’ nest a metre high and still in progress beneath a hemlock tree housed the colony of millions of industrious, highly socialized and specialized insects, working harmoniously with an astonishing communications network. From the rich organic soil in the dense undergrowth to the high canopy above, life in all its harmonized layers moved through days and seasons. Each species lived in its own place in the woods, yet that place was dependent upon, and gave to, other places and species interlocked in an ecological web, giving strength and vibrance to the whole landscape. Returning to the barn, dusk began to settle. A barred owl on the hill hooted its melodic language and, across the valley, a couple of coyotes yipped in chorus. Soon the great bowl of a night sky would be splattered with star clusters, constellations, and a rising moon. It was peaceful, therapeutic, yet invigorating to have ridden the woodland trails. For just a few moments, Fari and I were able to witness a quiet biological world that lived and breathed the ebb and flow of forest life. It was the breather both of us needed. Read Margaret Evans' column "In The Shadow Of Equus" each month in Pacific & Prairie Horse Journal
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