Wild Horses of the Summer Sun

by Tory Bilski

  His wife, Gita, presents herself as a serious woman: confident, soft-spoken, reserved. I fear we offend her sensibilities, raucous American women that we are. Especially after we’ve had a few beers at the end of the day, Sylvie’s voice goes into higher, louder decibels and her laugh turns into a parrot’s screech. And we join in because her laughter makes us laugh. Gita arches her eyebrows, looks at Oli with concern, and scoots out of the kitchen. She and Oli stay upstairs in the scary part of the house. But they are Icelanders and are used to living with ghosts.

  And then there is the other male, seventeen-year-old Gudni, from the neighboring farm. The tradition in Iceland is to send the kids who grow up in towns and cities to their grandparents’ farm for the summer where they help out with the farm chores, learn the old ways of self-sufficiency, and kinship. (And I spent all that money sending my son to a Quaker farm camp, where he learned how to whittle wood, forage for mushrooms, and behead a chicken.)

  On the first day, Gudni brought over a couple of horses for us—some basic trekking and sheepherding horses that are good for novice riders. He took an immediate interest in Britt when he saw her, and since then goes out riding with us every day, ostensibly in case we need help with his horses. If Brittany has noticed this, she doesn’t let on. Coy Britt. But the rest of us have noticed.

  “Brittany is so lovely,” Eve says, “who wouldn’t be attracted to her? And he is one cutie of a boy.”

  “Not just cute, but Brad Pitt in the making cute.”

  “Is Britt really oblivious to his attention?”

  “Boy, if I were that age . . .” Sylvie says.

  “You never pass up an opportunity like that.”

  Out on the trail on our way back from the long trek to the Greenland Sea, Gudni rides beside Britt, attempting conversation. It looks like she’s not interested, almost as if she isn’t answering. It’s driving us crazy.

  “Why doesn’t she get on with him?”

  “Maybe his English isn’t that good,” Viv says.

  “It doesn’t have to be. These things don’t require a lot of conversation,” Sylvie says.

  “How could she turn him down?”

  Eve says, “Maybe it’s because she has a boyfriend at home.”

  “So?” Sylvie says.

  “It doesn’t have to be more than a summer fling,” I add. “A week fling. A four-day fling. We’re already on our third day.” I am invested in this romance as well and worry about the calendar running out on her.

  “Life doesn’t always give you these opportunities. Did I tell you I was married at nineteen?” Sylvie says.

  “A few times,” I tell her.

  I ride near Lisa for a while and she says, “I don’t get these horses. I don’t understand them. I’ve tried for three days to see what you all see in these horses, and I have to tell you, I love big horses. I don’t get Icelandics. It’s a bumpy ride.” She is posting to a piggy trot—a half trot, half tölt.

  When people don’t like Icelandic horses, I take it personally, as if they’ve insulted my kids. I dismiss them for life, they are forever to remain unforgiven. I don’t want to be in the position of having to defend what I love. And a lot of “big horse” people dismiss Icelandics as cute little ponies. Or they confuse them with Shetlands. Or worse, they say things like, “Why don’t you get yourself a real horse.” In my more generous moments, I can see how they are misunderstood: Icelandics aren’t shaved, trimmed, or blanketed. Since they are left out in the elements, their winter coat can be shaggy from October until June. The breed has a double coat that evolved for extra insulation: the outer layer is long, coarse, and thick to keep out the rain, wind, and snow; the inner layer is short and soft for warmth. Then there is the hair that grows on their chins, quite abundantly, and sometimes three to four inches long. So it is possible that if you happened upon a herd of Icelandics in the field during these months, you might think you’ve found a primitive breed, almost like the Przewalski horse, the wild and original horse of the central Asian steppes. If they stand next to a Frisian, or a horse like Lisa’s Thoroughbred Cross that stands at seventeen hands, they look diminutive. Like an entirely different species.

  But appearances are deceiving in humans and in horses. Once you take this small, shaggy, friendly horse out on the trail, it transforms into a high spirited, swift and indefatigable horse.

  Lisa complains to me: “It’s almost like there’s not enough horse here. When I’m in the saddle of my Cross, I have all this real estate. I can sense what my horse is going to do before he does it. But here . . .” She lifts up her reins helplessly. “I can’t read this horse. It just wants to go. I have no say in its movements.”

  “You should talk to Viv or Helga about how to sit so that you can get the horse into a tölt,” I say, and I ride in front of her.

  My horse has muscled his way up to the front so that I’m near Brittany. Gudni asks her if she’d like to canter and she demurs. That not’s like her, she always wants to canter. I feel compelled, I can’t hold back, I get closer to her and do that kind of shout whisper, “Go, Britt, get on with him, go canter!”

  I am sure Britt has overheard us before talking about her and Gudni in the house and on the trail; we have, in our manner, not been subtle. Now, with my direct assault, she can’t stand the pressure, and takes off in a canter probably more to get away from me than to canter with Gudni. But she goes swiftly, without warning, as if her horse had heeded my advice rather than her, and Gudni follows and he’s trying to catch up and the two of them race back to the farm, their horses’ hooves making clouds of dust, and it’s a boy on a horse chasing after a girl on a horse.

  Eve is pleased. “Look at that girl go!”

  The Kingdom of Horse

  The kids beat us back to the barn and Britt has already unsaddled her horse and is leading it into the pasture. Gudni is by her side with his horse.

  Sylvie asks, “What do you think of our little Romeo?”

  “That was so romantic,” Eve says. “The two of them, galloping off into the sunset.”

  Only there’s no real sunset in June and I’m watching them from the barn door and Britt is shaking her head no and waving him off. She is in the making of a missed opportunity. “Looks like he’s taking his horse and going home.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “She has a boyfriend at home, a ‘boyfriend,’” Sylvie says with air quotes. “You know, a ‘football player.’ That’s her life at home.”

  “But we’re here, and she could have a young Icelandic hottie, no?”

  “You don’t have to tell me, being married at nineteen. I wouldn’t pass this up at her age, knowing what I know now.”

  Poor Britt, she is with a group of forty-, fifty-, sixty-year-old women who can’t help think about their own missed chances, and think they can persuade Britt to seize her own opportunity by seizing Gudni. But she stands firm against our pressure.

  “Britt’s not like that,” Eve says. “Some people are, and some people aren’t.” The topic seems to make her sad. She is not talking about Britt and Gudni anymore, but something that happened between her and Jack. There was an argument before they left. I can only guess what it was about. A look passes between Sylvie and Eve.

  “You know what, Sylvie? It’s fine. I have to let it go. He apologized, said he got swept up in the moment, which is what we’re all supposed to be practicing—being mindful and in the present. And I’m over it. I’m really over it. I have to let it go.”

  “Buddha says it’s all about letting go,” Sylvie says.

  “Yep, I’m throwing it out to the universe. It’s out there. It was a brief moment in time and it’s gone. I can’t hold shit like that in my heart. Being mad, angry, resentful, it kills your soul.”

  I admire Eve for this, she forgives people she loves, and she works hard to keep her soul healthy. A lot of us don’t even try. We pollute it with impunity. We get stuck in our reactive ruts and replay our hurt over and over again. Eve has a big he
art and a generous soul and her love of Jack overrides whatever has ignited her resentment.

  “Pema Chödrön says anger only lasts a minute and a half, just ninety seconds,” Sylvie says. “The rest is what we do with it.”

  “I’m done with it. I don’t want to dwell on it anymore. Not here. Especially not here. I’m in Iceland.”

  Not only are we in Iceland, but we’re in the barn, which is like entering a sanctuary. And grooming a horse is a ritual of love and devotion. We can be a loud group when we’re going full blast—we can scare the birds out of their nests. But in the barn, once we start the grooming process, we are unusually quiet. It’s meditative.

  We move leisurely, pensively. We give the horses treats as we groom them, so they’ll stand for the pampering we need to indulge them in. If we see a nick in their skin, we put salve on it. We pick their hooves, then sweep up the pickings. We use a curry brush first to get the mud off; then we use a regular stiff brush to get off dirt and dust; then a soft brush on the face; then we use a comb to get out the knots in their manes and tails. Eve brought a hair product this year (for the horses, not us) called Cowboy Magic, and it makes their manes shiny and smooth. We spray and comb, spray and comb. Helga calls our fussing “the horse spa.”

  I don’t want to leave my horse even after being on her all day—she took me to the other side of the lake. All of us stay in the barn and spend an inordinate amount of time making them tidy. There may be cultural differences between how Americans and Icelanders groom their horses. We’re aware that we are overdoing it. I have seen Icelanders just swipe their hand over their horse’s back to dust off the dirt and throw on a saddle. They don’t even pick the hooves. In fact, we’ve brought most of these brushes with us, new from the States. Icelanders rarely bother with this much grooming, unless they’re in a competition. They are, of course, no less devoted.

  After the horses are groomed to sparkle and gleam, we let them out. The minute we lead them out to the paddock they drop and roll in the dirt and mud. A soft, steady rain has driven us back into the shelter of the doorway. Even without the horses in the barn, we keep our voices low, almost whispering to each other. There is a quiet stillness to an empty barn that is like the quiet stillness of an empty church; you just naturally lower your voice when you enter. Rows of empty stalls are like rows of empty pews, patiently waiting for the horses, waiting for the parishioners. The barn is orderly like a church, too. Everything in its proper place: halters and bridles hung up on brackets, saddles on their wall-mounted racks, floors swept, stalls shoveled out and raked. Like boat owners, horse owners can’t be messy or there are consequences.

  Helga built a new barn this year, complete with an indoor arena. She built a kitchen in the barn, too, which is a luxury. The coffee pot is heavily used. Packages of candy, chocolate covered cookies, and kleinur are on the counter for the taking. A bottle of brandy is near the sink, in case you want to spike your coffee after a long, cold day on the trail. On the walls are pictures of riders and horses, one of Helga when she is about twelve, in traditional Icelandic clothing, standing proudly with her first horse.

  Above the kitchen table, there is a poster of a two-day-old colt. The face of a colt can look like so many different animals. This one looks like a llama, soft white face, black nose. Above its face in script is a quote in Icelandic: “ƥvi ađ ƥitt er rikiđ, mátturinn og dyrđin ađ eilífu. Amen.” I once asked Helga what the words meant. She had a hard time explaining it at first. She said it was a prayer, “You know, the last line of that prayer.” Then she finally came up with the English term: The Lord’s prayer.

  “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

  The Day Lisa Found Her Tölt

  It’s the opposite once we’re back in the house: we are loud, ear-screeching loud. We hang out in the kitchen, putting our feet up on chairs, drinking beer before dinner. This is our favorite time for retelling the derring-do tales of the day.

  Oli has dropped off a large plate of wood-smoked salmon, which makes a nice accompaniment to the darker, stronger beer we have this year, Kaldi. I eat and drink in short, repetitive motions—salmon crudo, beer, salmon crudo, beer, salmon crudo, beer—like a polar bear who has made it to college.

  Helga comes in and says, “Okay, guys, I have an announcement to make.” After riding horses all day and drinking beer upon return, we act like disorderly medieval knights back in the castle keep. I clap my hand on the beer bottle, wedding band clinking on the glass, to bring silence to the room.

  When she finally has our attention, Helga starts off faux formal. “I feel bound to inform you, that the Queen’s horse, Stulka, is pregnant. I’m sorry to have to break the news to you, Sylvie.”

  “She got knocked up?” Sylvie squeals.

  “Yes, she was a seventeen-year-old virgin, quite old for a mare, but she was never meant to be a broodmare. We think she knocked down the fence and got into our neighbor’s pasture. We’re pretty sure we know who the father is.”

  “Well that horny little hussy,” Sylvie says. “Knocking down the fence to get some sex. What kind of a horse did you put me on?”

  We clap our beer bottles and Eve stomps her feet. “She’s a geriatric hussy.”

  Helga laughs, too. She has such fondness for Sylvie’s silliness. After she composes herself, she says, “Even though it wasn’t planned, we are going to let her keep it. And you can still ride Stulka this week, Queenie.”

  Stulka has been Sylvie’s horse ever since she cantered across Lake Hóp on her. She feels safe with Stulka. And we want her to feel safe. No one rides Stulka except Sylvie.

  “I can’t ride a pregnant mare!”

  “You can, but if you don’t want to, you can always go back to Thoka.”

  Sylvie mulls this over. “Thoka, the harridan. She pushes me around.”

  Lisa walks in, still in her riding clothes. After our ride, she walked down the road to find reception to call home. Her face is now red and wet. “Can I just tell everyone something?”

  “You’re pregnant!” Sylvie shouts out, which brings on the stomping of the feet, the clapping on the beer bottles. Not in on the joke, Lisa waits for everyone to calm down.

  “No. I’m fifty-four years old and that was the best day of my life.”

  We stop laughing; she’s serious.

  “I cannot believe that I rode to the Greenland Sea. I can’t believe how great the tölt is once you find the gait. I can’t believe I’m here. I just want to thank you all for inviting me this year.” She tears up and starts to cry.

  Eve is overjoyed. Mission accomplished. One person admitting she was saved by horses in Iceland. “Oh, Lisa, that’s so wonderful. That’s what you’re here for. That’s what we’re all here for. See, the universe opened up for you. It’s Iceland. It’s magic.”

  The rest of us stand around and offer meek congratulations. In movies, this is where we’re supposed to have a group hug. But that’s not us. We’re happy for her—she gets Iceland and she gets Icelandic horses now—so many people don’t. We’re happy to have a convert. But we’re more in the mood for that other movie, the one with the knights in the mead hall. We’ve got beer in us—why not slam down some tankards and raise a rowdy cheer? We’ve got a new tale to tell—the day Lisa found her tölt.

  The Saga of the Bulls

  It’s our last trek of the trip. And like skiing—where saying out loud that you’re going to take just one more run is sure to result in a nasty fall and a broken something—I feel anxious about taking the last trek of the trip. You want to try to fool the gods of fate. You don’t want them to know you’ve had a good, safe week, or maybe, just for fun, they’ll knock you off your skis, or off your horse. It’s not that, as in Eve-speak, bringing negative thoughts attracts negativity. It’s that you’ve gotten cocky because you’ve made it this far, and fate doesn’t like cocky.

  We spend the morning riding over to Hunastaddir, a farm about ten kilometers away. The trek itself isn’t
difficult, but there are a few small tributaries leading to larger rivers that we need to cross, and my horse resists going over them.

  “You need to look forward, think forward, and he will follow you forward,” Disa tells me cheerfully, as if sheer mental telepathy will work with horses.

  I try it: I look forward, think forward, do not give my horse a choice. I even plant a Disa-like smile on my face. But he’s not feeling it. He starts turning around as if heading back to the barn. He bucks out a little, just a little, but enough to make me ask for help again. Disa sees he is recalcitrant and though she is ponying two horses on her side, she gets off and rearranges the halters and ropes so that she is ponying a third horse, my horse. I feel like a kid at a birthday party being led across a few muddy puddles.

  I no longer have a problem with water after that first crossing, but my horse seems antsy; in fact, all the horses seem highly sensitive.

  Eve’s horse shies from a boulder, rapidly cross-stepping into a field to avoid it. Eve takes it lightly. “Aren’t boulders supposed to be trolls? Maybe he thought it was a troll. Maybe it is a troll.”

  Soon after, Brittany’s horse breaks from the group and canters up an embankment. Britt finally gets control of her horse, but she’s scared and starts to tear up. “Why’d he do that?”