The road to Bethlehem followed the ancient trading route through the rocky highlands where wild cats and wilder bandits were a constant threat. The ride was challenging enough but for Mary in her last few weeks of pregnancy it must have been gruelling. Leaving the mountains of Galilee, they crossed the Plain of Esdraedon, the Jazreel Valley of today. It was a region challenged as much by Canaanite conflict as by climate, a place where the ghosts of Gideon's armies lingered in the shadows. They circuited Mediggo where, centuries before, Solomon had built limestone-pillared stables. Megiddo, Taanach and Eglon were centres where Solomon kept 12,000 horses, 1,400 chariots and countless thousand grooms.

In the hills of Samaria, Mary and Joseph likely rested among the olive trees and grapevines in the shadows of Shiloh, letting their donkey graze for a while. In its day, there had been no place like it. As the religious and cultural centre of the Israelites, Shiloh had been the home of the Ark of the Covenant. But, in a monumentally bad move, the Israelites took the Ark into battle at Eben-Ezer against the Philistines, who defeated them, seized the Ark, and destroyed Shiloh. It would be a long trail through history before the Ark found its way to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem only to disappear again in the mists of time.

The last few kilometres on the road to Bethlehem led the couple past the grave site of Rachel and into the little town that had been the setting for Ruth's story and the home of King David. Here among the simple stone houses they would find the shelter they desperately needed.

It was a just a spot in the earth, a grotto that sheltered the animals and Mary's moments of labour. But it was a birth that lit the world. Three hundred years later, that spot would be venerated when St. Helena (mother of Constantine 1, the first Christian Roman Emperor) had a church built over it. Today, the crypt still lies beneath the nave of the Church of the Nativity, one of the oldest existing Christian churches in the world. Stone steps lead beneath the main altar to the tiny grotto, its ceiling blackened with centuries of soot from candles and incense.

The road to Bethlehem. After thousands of years, it is still a road to conflict and turmoil. Earlier this year, the besieged city saw the Church of the Nativity become an ominous sanctuary for Palestinian militants. With travel so heavily restricted because of Israeli roadblocks, soldiers, guard towers and checkpoints, equine travel took on new meaning. Donkeys that once dodged bandits now dodged bullets. The road to Bethlehem: a place in time, space, history and faith. But just as importantly, perhaps it is a road each of us rides in our heart and mind, seeking that special place within that has been touched by a simple journey and a special birth two thousand years ago.

Read Margaret Evans' column "In The Shadow Of Equus" each month in The Pacific & Prairie Horse Journal