This past couple of weeks, together with my horse Nadia, I’ve spent much of my time off road and off grid on a large sheep station on the South Island of New Zealand. The following are a collection of small stories I wrote in the early hours as little reminders, snapshots of our adventures.

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Mountains

If I painted her, with her steely shards in one layer, bleeding into watercolor shades, people would assume them an abstraction, an artistic interpretation. Such landscapes, we think to ourselves, can’t exist with such perfection if they haven’t themselves been imagined into life.

I admire her beauty and her bleakness. Her hills fold like the side of a seal, her outlines sharp and clear.

What is it energetically I find about these landscapes?

What is it about the tone of certain lands that calls out to us to stay, and some that seem to actively push us away?

We speak of wild, yearn to return to it, to become it, to rediscover it. But wild is exactly that; wild. It is not always the place we find calm and ease.

Sometimes, the magnitude of the landscape, its literal vastness, magnifies the spaces within me and I feel so alone. I reflexively seek comfort, want to temper the experience with a blanket and warm tea.

True wildness can be an uncomfortable juxtaposition. A mocking of our state of domesticity, despite our protestations to be free.

These are the landscapes that call to us. The mountains here are truth tellers. They occupy a space that does not let you turn away.

If it’s truly wild you seek, they tell us, then you must look at the carcass on the road with the same gaze you see the wildflower.

You must accept the caustic sunburn as easily as shade under the tree.

Perhaps the wildness you seek exists in the same place you fear.

The mountain spoke to me, and she said, I am immoveable and yet everything is moved by me.

****

Arrival

We rammed the last standard into the hard earth, undid our horse’s halters.

“Apparently the last rain they had here was October”.

The grass was tinder dry, wispy as hair and the colour of straw. We managed to find a corner, an oasis. A river separated the paddock north from south, a strip of willows adding a welcome splash of green to the collage of yellow and brown.

Nadia, my horse, zeroed in on a fallen branch, a detached and dry bundle of curled up leaves.

Salix Alba, I tell Liz who’s with me. It’s a natural anti-inflammatory, the same plant they make aspirin from.

Of all my horses, Nadia is a homing beacon for the herbal and the healing. A couple of years back, she almost felled a Tī Kōuka, a Cabbage Tree in our front paddock, chewing a circle almost completely through the trunk.

I follow Nadia’s lead to learn and to know. The Cabbage Tree, it turns out, is the world’s largest tree lily, able to be consumed from root to leaf. An elixir for soothing bellies and easing digestive upset.

Nadia delights in it with the same intensity as cold watermelon on a hot and humid summer’s day.

 

****

First Ride Out

On the homeward leg, we loop back around on a different track to the one that we rode in on. The path itself was a car width across, divided into four deep grooves, evidence of tyres forcing their impressions through the land before the weather baked it hard.

I give Nadia the reins, allow her to pick the track. She narrows her stride to fit the grooves, winds her way up and down as though following the lines of a model railway.

We rounded the far side of the mountain and were met with a sea of green. The willows told us we were close to home. Us humans always orient round the green.

To my right, a little brown mare weaving in serpentines, trotting up and down the steep banks, her rider circling and turning, guiding her across the land in an attempt to calm the anxious energy moving through.

Behind me, another person leading their horse on foot.

We are a group, formed of individual riders, a collective looking out for all the links in the chain.

I look down at my hands. My right index finger looped around the buckle, my left hand resting on my thigh. My horse steady the whole way.

I glance at the expanse of view that sits over to my right.

Is that man made, I wonder? The lake gives way to rock and schist, a deep plait of braided rivers, mixed in with grassy plains leading to mountain’s base.

For a moment, I am lost. In my own mind, within the view. I am riding a horse who for today looked an old hand. My thoughts flashed to a few years earlier, our first ride around the farm at home.

My husband walked with me on foot carrying the camera. We didn’t get very far.

If you’re going to take a photo, I had joked, then do it quickly, my horse an ever-inflating bubble, her feet jogging, tap dancing over stones.

To imagine this moment then would have been unthinkable.

I looked over at Ben riding an Appaloosa horse to my far left.

She’s been good, he remarked to me.

The best, I told him back, stroking her neck.

The best, I repeated to my strong and agile chestnut mare, carrying me through the windy mountains on her back.

****

Shearer’s Hut

There’s a chair I’m drawn to that sits as part of an odd bod pair of two. On the right, I see a box of toys, a handheld vacuum cleaner.

The room is long, designed to fit the bodies of many. Enough to shear the fleece of 12,000 merino sheep, the heartbeat of the station.

At the end, there is a kitchen, the old tap fitting in the sink dividing hot from cold, both requiring an extra nudge of turning to get the water into flow.

The big rooms flanked at either end with bunks.

Directly off the kitchen are the toilets, with plastic seats that make a racket when you sit, a dividing wall open from ¾ up to towards the ceiling ensuring efforts must be made to pee discreetly.

I wander in the living room, sit down within the innards of a chair that attempts to eat me whole. There’s a certain smell that is specific, but one I can’t quite place. If threadbare, patchy carpet, dust on the windows that look questionable to open and a space designed to hold the bodies of many had a smell, that would be it.

The term ‘Shearer’s Quarters” is now used for many things. It can be in the literal sense, as it is here, the housing of a seasonal worker population on a land witnessing many thousand sheep.

Or it can be a bourgeois headquarters, a deluxe style BnB, for the dweller wanting a rustic place to stay, just not in practice but in name.

Liz emerges from the toilet, her hands gently cupped together. A baby sparrow sits between.

I heard chirping, she says, and there he was.

She carries him outside carefully in the hope he’s old enough to fly away.

****

River

There’s something intrinsically satisfying about having your horse drink from a natural source. At the end of our ride, we made our way over to the edge of a fast-flowing stream, and Nadia put her head down to drink.

I remembered back to many years previous, sitting in a fluorescent lit square room with my herbal medicine teacher. At the time I was studying health science, our conversation in that moment about water.

Wherever possible, she said, add something alive to your water. A squeeze of lemon, a leaf of some sort. Water, as we’re designed to drink it, is never static, never a singular product. Water is alive, a storyboard of the nature it’s a part of, that it flows under, round and through.

I looked at Nadia drinking, lifted my gaze further upstream.

I loved that my horse was drinking in the mountains, the footprints of the animals that live here. I love that the grasses and the leaves had all added their essence to the mix.

A pinch of flax.

A tablespoon of mountains.

Half a cup of smooth river pebble and a scattering of moss.

A continuation of giving and receiving in the cycle of aliveness.

****

Sheep

It begins with a series of three gates. One has to open for the other to come back for the one that you need to go through to swing wide and somehow there’s a single chain, the connecting thread between all three.

From here, the road snakes round in the shadow of the river, the dome of the hill scattered with boulder rocks, stretching up and over to the left.

At first the sheep appear as sprinkles; the odd merino missile appearing from the reeds, evolving to a game of wooly Tetris.

And then, opening. The ground widens, the vastness of the landscape so much to take in, both in length and width. I can hear Mother Nature laughing, the surprise party behind the rock she’s been waiting years to show me.

The sheep start to cluster, move ahead. There are hundreds, maybe thousands. Nadia’s ear prick but her rhythm doesn’t change. I feel delight creeping through my cells, starting way down in my toes.

I want to call out, I feel like we’ve done this, like we’re supposed to always be doing this, but I keep my words to myself. I don’t know what I mean.

What I mean is this is heaven, to be with my horse, treading on this land.

What I mean is some part of my body has remembered, even though I’ve never had this experience before in real time.

What is this remembering I am feeling, I do not know.

The stories of many that have come before me who’ve worked of and with the land. In this moment, I am neither working on nor with, and yet I feel it. The connection of my horse, the steady moving feet. The sea of animals flanking right and left.

Whatever it is I feel, I see you, I feel you and I salute you. We can stray a long way from this feeling, us humans. But it only takes a taste to remember it right back.

You were made and set here, Annie Dillard wrote, to give voice to this, to your own astonishment.

I will practice this more, I think. The practice of being continually astonished, and of giving it my voice.

****

The Steep

You soon find out what’s working and what’s not. A constant feeding through of information. A flipping back and forth of who makes the decision to go this way or go that.

On the lower slopes, it’s my voice that leads the way.

That short grass there, I tell my horse, makes the golden patch look like the easiest route but it’s slippery, like polished glass. Better to weave amongst the tussock to get grip.

Beware the Matagouri there, it will attack you from all sides.

A thorny, spiky plant that’s best avoided.

About mid-way up, it starts to get quite steep. One horse makes a slip, ends up on their knees. A recovery is made just shortly after.

I lean forward slightly, give my reins further up her neck. I let Nadia lead the way. We weave back and forth, a gentle serpentine that ends in a final, half trot push, and then, the ridge.

Mountains on all sides. I look over at my friend. We smile but do not speak. Some experiences are meant for eyes and not for words.

I stroke my horse along her neck, her ears flicker with each stride. I feel there are few luckier than me, right now, in this moment, with this horse, in this place.

****

Cows

You move in slowly, as if your intention is disinterested. A parent moving in the room trying not to wake the sleeping child.

You look for the angle of the heads. Should we take this to the left or right?

I adjust my seat, apply a little feeling down the reins. We back up, move our shoulders, turn around and take them to the right.

We begin to stir the pot, moving round them in a circle. The energy is slow, the strides rhythmic and deliberate.

We move around, encourage the outside cows to take the same direction. A spiral, a directed flowing wave, an orchestrated dance between horse and cow.

You watch in your periphery, start to ease your way slightly closer to the centre.

A little more sideways, a little more forward. A little more sideways again.

The cow on the very outside, who was all at once still moving is now blocked.

You wait, your big chestnut mare and the glossy Angus cow in conversation.

You sidle over to her, gently cut her out, over to the side.

A single chess piece now separated from the board.

****

The Rains

Today, it rained. There’s been no rain since October, but today it rained.

We waited ‘til 12:30, saddled up our horses and rode the short route to the cows. Over the hay paddock, through the first gate to the field of lucerne. A second field of lucerne after that. On the other side, the rocky skirt edge of the mountain, hooves treading her undersides as we move to the northwest.

Every now and then, a merino, camouflaged against the gold and slate tones that framed the hill.

At first, the rain was light. A steady beat of the cumulative drenching sort that grew to more and more.

Nadia’s head dropped lower, heading into the drum sound of falling drops. Soon, we both reach saturation.

At the Shearers Quarters, we’d debated our clothing choices.

Should we take a jacket? It’s not that cold. Do you think just my jumper will be enough?

Boots filling with water. A steady stream down my coat and underneath my seat.

I look over momentarily to catch the view but bring my eyes quickly back to face the front. The rain lashing my face prevents it turning left or right.

Once at the cows, Nadia backs up to the fence line of trees and parks quite still. She’s hoping we can stay here. She’s cold, her fine skin not used to prolonged exposure without a covering on her flanks.

We debate about the cows, decide to shift them without practicing our cow work first. The standing round in rain would be too much.

We move steadily across the field, Nadia in a u-bend left, an attempt to keep away the driving flow. Once we reach the cows, she’s attentive and on task. We help take them down the paddock, over the crest of the hill and to the left to their new digs.

We wait, let them arrange themselves through the gate.

As we head back, the rain begins to ease and for some moments, there’s relief. The silence of the rain allows the squelching sound of boots and jacket to fill the air.

I pat my lovely horse, her coat drying. Despite her discomfort, she’s stayed with me the whole time. We lead the walk home, my saddle dripping moisture as we go.

The polish of rain on land has been a cleansing. The view seems crisp and clear, the light, a softening. We see the mountains down the barrel of the valley, the outline rim rising up to frame the sky.

As we walk towards the lucerne, I look back. In these parts, you can see the weather coming in. The rain is clearly on our tail.

I hold out hope that my newly dried horse and my now not sodden saddle might make it home that way, but it’s no longer meant to be. At the second field of lucerne, with the sheep sheds now in sight, it unloads.

I get off at the gate, walk the rest of the way on foot. Nadia arcs both left and right, a fast walk and a half pass across the field.

We hit the gravel driveway and it’s a speed untacking race. Throw the stirrups under the car, the saddle in the back to tend to shortly.

A walk around the shed, across the field to the far side of the paddock. A swift rub down, a rug flung on, a new pile of fluffy hay.

A movement back home to peel off the sticky layers of clothing now damply fused to skin.

The kettle on, a ceremony of gratitude to the dry.

****

Wind

At the end of the ride, we stopped at Manuka Hut. We positioned ourselves on the bracken for a seat, swapped the bridles out for halters and let the horse’s graze.

For a time, we jostled over who the sandwich actually belonged to. Nadia was convinced it was hers; I kept telling her it was mine. We met somewhere in the middle.

Mounting up, we headed back into wind. The nor ’wester was so strong, you had to slice your way through rapid current in an attempt to move ahead. Heads tilted; bodies buffeted.

For a brief while, we were sheltered by the base of the mountain at her curve, just enough to hear the sound of falling hooves, a few seconds of reprieve that would be all for the remainder of the ride.

At some point, I wondered if it could get much stronger, the horses continuing to work in a headwind so rugged that if unmounted, I thought I’d have to concentrate to stand up.

I marvelled at our little band of eight. The odd break of stride to trot. At one point, Nadia flinched when another came up behind. The only sound available was wind.

I felt my own concern rising at certain stages. It couldn’t get stronger than this, surely? But what if it actually did?

But each time, I checked in with my horse, her expression and steady rhythm staying unchanged.

Have you ridden in winds like that before? Ben asked me after.

That was certainly the strongest, I replied.

It’s good for them, he said, to have a lot going on and to learn to be able to stay with you.

I agreed but thought it perhaps the other way.

My brave and gentle chestnut horse and the plains she so gracefully carried me across today.