by Tory Bilski
And that’s that. It is settled. By the time we reach the end of the dirt road and swing onto the Ring Road, our plans for next year have been put in motion.
Shortly after we hit the pavement of the Ring Road, we pass the dry dirt mounds formed by a landslide during the last Ice Age. And a few miles down from that, we pass one of the roadside pull-offs with the green signs, which means that some significant historical event happened there. Allie slows down to read the sign: “Þrístapar.”
She reaches into her bag and brings out a bag of pretzels. “Next year, we should stop there and see what it’s all about.”
BOOK IV
THE CANTER (STÖKKI)
A three-beat diagonal gait. Because the four hooves lift from and touch the ground in an odd-numbered sequence, two legs must simultaneously bear the weight of the horse.
2011
Ask for Canter
I could never get Charlie to canter. Every class I took, I would try it. I would trot and post and three quarters of the way through the class, the instructor would tell me to “ask for canter.” You always ask when you are going around the corner of the arena, because the horse is already bending his head and neck and body. You shorten the inside rein, shorten and bend your inside leg while applying pressure, lean a tad forward, and, presto, the horse is supposed to canter. Only, Charlie wouldn’t. Sometimes after the instructor got after him, he’d take a few steps in canter and the movement would throw me—I would bounce around in the saddle, and he’d stop or go back to a trot. I was frustrated with the whole gait. And canter was all I really wanted to do. In my fantasy of myself horseback riding—the same fantasy I’ve had since I was seven—I am never trotting and posting around an arena. I am cantering outside on a trail, or in a meadow, or, after I had been to Iceland, down sheep paths through the Arctic tundra.
One day when I was on Charlie, the instructor came close to me and said, “When he goes into a canter, you have to sit to it and encourage it from your seat.” Then she hesitated slightly before saying, “You have to make the same movement as having sex, you know what I mean? It’s like the same motion.”
Then she added, “I’m sorry if that offends you.”
I don’t know what she took me for—did I look like an old time matron who would faint at the mention of sex? I tried to see myself from her point of view. She was ten years younger than me but did not look it. She was hard-bitten and scrawny, with premature lines around her tight mouth. She lived in a trailer on the farm property and drove an old truck. I was the married woman with a well-fed face, two kids, a Yale job, and a brand-new Camry. Wealth, status, it’s all relative and often not what it appears.
I assured her I wasn’t offended, and nodded knowingly like “I got this,” and went off to prove I could “make the movement of sex” in the saddle. I trotted up to the corner of the arena, preparing for canter on the curve, and when Charlie did take a few steps in canter, I thrust my hips unnaturally and out of sync. The horse was noncompliant and slipped lazily into a slow walk, as if to emphasize my complete, almost arthritic lack of skill, and my inability to conjure up the sex movement in the saddle. The instructor looked disappointed.
It has never been that way for me with Icelandic horses. It seems so easy: I lean forward, give a little leg, give ’em rein, and they go. And it’s easy to sit to. I don’t have to make the movement of sex. The movement on an Icelandic comes to me naturally. Maybe it is the size of the horse, the smallness, the quickness, but the seat finds me, it fits me. For years I have had a Benjamin Disraeli quote taped to my computer: “A canter is the cure for all evil.” When I sit at my desk at work and see that quote, I imagine myself cantering, not as a cure for evil, but as a cure for complacency.
I know lots of men make pervy jokes about why women like horses so much. But being in the saddle, and especially being good in the saddle, is not a substitute for sex or a sublimation, or god knows, a stimulation or simulation. It’s just a movement, like sex is a movement, like dance is movement, but your partner happens to be a semi-wild, semi-domesticated beast, and you’re trying to control it but you’re also never completely in control. But it’s not about sex. Not really. It’s about freedom and speed. It’s about losing yourself in something else. At its best, it’s an I-Thou relationship. And maybe a little about sex.
All That Is Missing
This year we are only four. This year we are miserable. As forewarned, Allie had to, wanted to, attend her son’s high school graduation. But unexpectedly, Eve backed out at the last minute. She called me to tell me the bad news only a week before we were to leave. I begged her to come with us. She said it cost too much. I countered and said we would all chip in and pay her way. She said, “I can’t, I can’t, I’m starting a new job,” though Sylvie later confirmed she wasn’t starting her new job for another month.
In year’s past, Sylvie claimed there was a waiting list to go with us; that she had to turn down lots of people. She made a big deal of the A-list and the B-list, as if each year it was a carefully culled admissions process. This year, however, she can scare up no one else. It’s not her fault: there are many other ways to travel here and many people going on their own. Even the novelty of being introduced at home as “the woman who rides horses in Iceland,” has worn off. I will now often get this response: “I know people who do that.” So, the “Sylvie group” as it was known in the Berkshires, isn’t the only group or the only option. People are discovering Iceland. Though no one, at least no one I know of, has discovered Thingeyrar.
Viv and I fly in together from JFK; Sylvie and Pippa from Logan. There are no hellos when we see each other at the baggage area at Keflavík airport. Sylvie waves her hand at us and says, “We’ll be out front.”
Sylvie sticks close to Pippa, who busies herself with car rental business, a task Eve used to do.
Pippa gets in the driver’s seat. “I can drive if you get tired,” I tell Pippa. Viv says the same. Pippa says, “I’m quite fine driving.”
Viv and I get in the back seat and we start in on what we think is a most amusing anecdote: about how I was moved to first class, while Viv asked to join me up there and they refused. We’re talking over each other, finishing sentences for each other, as we usually do, but we realize we are talking to ourselves. Pippa ignores us completely. Sylvie says, “Huh,” and looks at Pippa, the disapproving school principal who is about to tell us to keep quiet back there . . . or else.
As planned, we head straight to Hotel Ranga in the south. No stopping in Reykjavík. Pippa drives fast, and when I mention what the speed limit is, she tsks and says she knows. The tires squeal as she takes a curve too fast. She tsks again because I have been proved right.
This is normally the period when we catch up with each other and fill in the blanks of the past year, but Pippa does her best to discourage us from talking in the car. She doesn’t want to know about our past year. Her frosty attitude has even shut up Sylvie, who is usually the one who facilitates the conversation. Viv pushes on anyway with harmless chatter. She points out the window and says, “Have you been noticed people are building these cairns all over the place now? Look at them all over the side of the road. It must be tourists building them. Because I imagine real cairns were put there for a reason. Maybe for travelers to know how deep the snow was? Or were they put there to mark trails?” This is Viv on a roll, asking questions and answering them herself. She does this when she’s nervous in social situations.
On the flight over, under less social strain, Viv and I had a normal conversation with the usual give and take. She told me that her son Jonathan was coming home from Iraq in a month. And her other son, Eric, was having a hard time finding work. I told her about my son in Brooklyn, that he moved on from his first job out of college already, and except to ask for money, he rarely contacts us. We hashed out the pros and cons of supporting kids after college. “The truth is, I’m afraid he’ll just give up looking for a job and move back home with us.” Viv understood this.
“We’re enablers and we’d rather pay their rent than have them living with us,” she said. “How did we get here?”
In the car, Viv is beginning to pick up the awkward silence in the front seat. She says to Pippa and Sylvie, by way of an excuse, “My son Jonathan is coming home from Iraq soon and I’m on pins and needles. So if I’m quacking more than usual, that’s where I’m coming from.”
In the rearview mirror, I catch Pippa rolling her eyes at Viv’s confession. Sylvie simply says, softly, “Okay.”
“I feel like holding my breath for a month,” she says, quietly to me.
While she’s holding her breath, I have to hold my tongue. Because I can’t tell her what happened to my neighbor’s son during the past year, who only had two weeks left in Afghanistan when he was blown up by an IED. I can’t tell her about how we heard his mother scream from down the street with the army messenger at her door; how my husband went over and hugged her while she pummeled his back with her fists. I can’t tell Viv about the funeral; how the town lined the streets as the procession passed; how the high school he had graduated from draped black bunting over the school name, and the students stood outside as the hearse passed; or how the Vietnam vets on motorcycles led the slow procession on the highway. This would give her no comfort. And I definitely cannot tell her how a horse stood at the gravesite with a pair of boots facing backward in the stirrups as a bugle played taps followed by a twenty-one-gun salute. I can’t tell her that he was gone in one blast, one step in the wrong place before he was to return home.
This is what I am thinking as we speed along the highway in Reykjanes at one in the morning: Viv’s son Jonathan making it out alive; my neighbor’s son not. And sadly, but not in any way comparable, how my son’s emotional distance feels like a loss that I cannot grasp.
Less importantly, and almost in relief, I wonder why Pippa is pissed and Sylvie is mute. The trip is off to a rocky start.
In our room that we share at Hotel Ranga, Viv tells me that she is missing Eve.
“I agree. We are missing something without her here,” I say.
“There’s more laughter with her. She has a lightheartedness that lifts us all up. It’s not there without her.”
“You weren’t with us last year. She was only half here. She did brighten up the last day however.”
“And Sylvie is not herself when Eve’s not here. It’s not the same without her.”
Whatever is missing, whether it’s Eve or not, we are falling back to our lesser selves and our churlish instincts. Sylvie is overrun with anxiety, giving short, curt responses. I am feeling neglected and ignored, and, yes, my worst trait, sulky. Viv is nervous about her social anxiety, thinking she is always doing and saying the wrong thing. And Pippa is schoolmarmish and manipulative.
But I’m in Iceland, I tell myself. I’m here again for another year. This is our continuing saga. I’m with my girl pack. Though we don’t feel exactly like a pack. And it does not feel friend-ish. It feels end-ish.
I think of Sibba and Ljotur as Eve’s friends, but they don’t cancel their date with us, even though Eve isn’t with us, even though we must be looking glum. If they miss Eve and her usual good tidings, they don’t show it. Ljotur is his usual jolly self and Sibba his laughing companion, and they bring levity to what is turning into a tense trip.
They get to our hotel after dinner and take us to the volcano area, Eyjafjallajökull. Wisps of ash still rise and settle on the street, a year after the eruption, and for a long time we’re on a road that cuts through miles of mudflats. Ljotur points to a black sandy beach, wide with columns of basalt cliffs. “People have died there. Just standing on the beach. A wave comes in and sweeps them out,” he says, sweeping his hand through the air.
I think this is apocryphal, or I’m not hearing him right. But Sibba confirms this, “Yes, a model was on a shoot there last year, standing on the beach, and she was swept away.”
Icelandic women say their affirmative, “Yeow,” on the inhale, much like French women say their “Oui.” So Sibba says her “yes” in English with the same intake. There are a couple of ways Sibba reminds me of a French woman. It is rare for an Icelandic woman to be petite, yet Sibba is only five-two, thin yet curvy, so even though she has a smiley elfin face that says Iceland, her body and the way she dresses says Paris. In town and around the Reykjavík area, she wears silk cropped pants, ballet flats, Hermes scarves, and cashmere sweaters. Having worked for Icelandair, she can fly to any city on the route for free, affording her the opportunity to take shopping trips to Paris and New York. Even when she is hiking with us, she wears the highly stylized, brightly colored, high-tech outdoor wear, Cintamani.
“People think Iceland is safe, and it is in the cities. But you can easily take a wrong step hiking, or get swept away by a wave. Our nature is dangerous,” Ljotur says.
It is midnight when we reach a waterfall. It is not the first time this has happened to me in Iceland. I am a passive passenger being driven somewhere; I’m not expecting anything. I don’t know exactly where I am, nor do I care. At midnight, the dusky twilight is cracked with sunlight that funnels like a spotlight on lush green hills and fields where sheep and horses graze. When we park the car and get out, we spread out, each on our own path. There are maybe thirty people, gentle-looking humans, milling about, talking quietly. The bird sounds are louder than the human voices—the cackling of fulmars and the drumming of snipes’ tail feathers—their mating calls that sound like ghostly sheep bleating in the grasses. But louder still is the waterfall, deafening when I get close to it. Because of the low angle of the midnight sun, the mist is fanned out in a rainbow, as if it’s no big deal—that’s what summer midnight mists in Iceland do. I walk down a path that cuts behind the waterfall. I lose sight of everyone and everything else. I’m peacefully alone and temporarily lost here. I have no sense of self, or that nagging urge to nail myself down, describe myself—that is gone. I have only the enormity of a sense of place, the aching beauty of the universe, which is all consuming and fulfilling.
Gift Horse
Helga observes people the same way she observes horses. She does it instinctively. She stands back, watches who moves first in the herd, what the action is, aggressive or shy. She quickly summarizes the details, taking in any off-kilter physicality—a stiff hip from the car ride, a slight limp from a hip replacement, or a shuffle from a torn meniscus. She even tilts her head as we talk, taking in the tone of voice and volume.
She must be picking up all sorts of cues from us when we get out of the car. If we were a herd of mares, we would all have our ears back. We would all be standing with our heads turned from each other, ready to flick out our back hooves at the slightest attempt to crowd into our space.
Helga says, cautiously, in order not to rile up any emotion, “So, Eve couldn’t make it.” Even though Sylvie is her closest friend, she knows the value of Eve’s good cheer in this herd. I can sense her disappointment with only the four of us and no Eve. She has no idea how disappointing this is to me. But if I can ride every day, it will make the trip worthwhile. I am here for the horses. All the other social and group dynamics are secondary. Or tertiary. I’m here for the horses, the sense of place, and, lastly, the company. Helga asks about Eve out of concern and we each say something different.
“She’s starting a new job,” I tell her, relaying the information, false or true, that Eve told me.
Viv says, “I think it was difficult financially for her this year.”
“Maybe she’ll join us next year,” Pippa says, all smiles and kindness about Eve, though she has stayed mute and disinterested about her so far this trip.
Hearing Pippa use that phrase “next year” doesn’t give me the same hope as it does when Eve and Sylvie say it. In fact, the “us” in that sentence gives me a slow-burning dread. Pippa is planning next year with us. I can barely make it through two days with her.
Sylvie finally puts the matter of Eve to rest: “I got an email from her and sh
e’s already regretting that she didn’t come. But I’m telling you, what she can’t say is that she doesn’t want to leave Jack.”
“Why is that?” Helga asks.
“He needs her. Especially now that they sold their farm. They lean on each other.”
Pippa wants to change the subject. She is bristling with the anticipation of bringing forth all the gifts she bought for Helga. One of her suitcases is stuffed with Helga’s gifts. Sylvie has brought horse supplies that are expensive to get in Iceland but cheap in the States. Viv and I have chipped in on some of these gifts, but they are relatively minor: halters and ropes, brushes and hoof picks—basic stuff. We hand them over in bags and Helga peeks in and says, “Thank you, my friends.”
But Pippa has gift wrapped all of her presents and makes it ceremonial, so Helga has to untie the ribbons and bows and carefully remove the wrapping paper. And Pippa has a story about each gift that she bought for Helga, where and why she bought each scarf, sweater, bottle of bath oil for her. Pippa has bought horse supply presents, too, but fancy ones—braided reins and what looks like a horse headdress for Helga’s prize-winning mare. Helga is surprised and grateful at first, but with each new gift, her thankfulness wears thin. “Oh, this is too much, you shouldn’t have.” And she means it.
When Pippa takes out the grand finale gift—a midnight-blue riding cloak made of cashmere and alpaca wool, Helga says, “Oh, this is really too much.” But Pippa wants her to put on the cloak. “It’s for those cold winter nights when you ride to your neighbor’s house, and look, there’s a hood, in case it snows.” Helga puts it on reluctantly, touching it gently, recognizing its worth. Pippa tells her to pull up the hood, so for Pippa’s sake, she covers her head with the hood. The color and the flow of the cloth gives it a royal look, like a queen’s robe. Sylvie says, “You’re like a goddess in that.” Pippa is pleased, but Helga takes the cloak off quickly, thanking her for it, and putting it back in the box.