Wild Horses of the Summer Sun

by Tory Bilski

  “My daughter graduated college and has moved to Manhattan with a bunch of friends. And my son came home in May. He’s one of those ‘boomerang kids,’ as they are called.”

  That’s how my husband and I have decided to put it. He’s another boomerang; one of many in our neighborhood that is rapidly refilling with returning children. He came home a month ago after losing his apartment, girlfriend, and temp job. We don’t understand it all or why he’s starting his adult life with such a bumpy ride, but we are grateful that when down, he at least comes back to us. After years of being a guy of few words, he now talks all the time to me. He paces the kitchen, telling me all the stuff that he has held in. For so many years his relationship with me was mute and recalcitrant. Now he’s filling in the blanks on who he is and where he’s been. Until I hold up my hand and tell him, “I don’t need to know everything. I want to sleep at night.” And I do. It’s no different than it was seven years ago—when I smell his cigarette smoke wafting up from the patio to my bedroom window, I tell myself he has time to tackle the smoking. As for now, he’s home, he’s safe—and I can sleep.

  Allie tells us she was in China earlier this year, her usual business trip.

  Sylvie, who used to travel all the time, doesn’t travel anymore, except to Iceland. “I have three horses now. It’s hard to find someone to take care of them when I go to Iceland. I can’t go to Asia anymore.”

  There are health worries: Allie is driving this year, because Eve has sight problems, a hereditary type of glaucoma that limits her vision. She says it should be temporary. “We’ve found a specialist in New York. I’m having laser surgery when I get back.” And while she has some loss of peripheral vision, she assures us she should be fine riding. “I’m not worried,” she says, “It’s only a little blurry in the corners.”

  Margot says, “Horses have good peripheral vision because they have such wide set eyes, so they’ll take care of you when you ride. And their range of vision is four times greater than ours. Of course, their short distance vision is not so good. They can’t see right behind their ears.”

  “My friend had macular degeneration starting at forty-five,” Viv says, “and she rode her horse till she was almost completely blind. Her horse was a saint.”

  “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind,” Eve says, sounding less optimistic and not completely comforted by the inspirational goal of riding blind.

  There are dreams of a new Monterey farm: Sylvie and Margot are planning on making their adjoining property a horse farm. They have received the town permits needed to build the barn. Margot has started clearing the land, but one of her neighbors has disputed the zoning approval. He is trying to stop their barn from being built. “I can’t take conflict; it makes me sick. These nasty letters this neighbor writes me, you wouldn’t believe it. It’s really hard on me. But that’s why, guys, I’m so happy to be here. The whole neighbor thing was getting to me. But I’m not going to think about that. I’m in Iceland, it’s so great to be back.”

  “I second that.” I am with my friends, my girl pack, my band of merry travelers. I’m in my element, in Iceland. Allie bought a mug in the airport that read “Happiness is here and now,” and Eve declared, “That should be our motto!”

  By the time we get to the turn off to Thingeyrar, we are so wrapped up in each other’s lives, we miss the turnoff from the Ring Road to the dirt road for the first time ever. We turn into a farm down the road and back up in the driveway to turn around. “Remember when we used to stop here?” Eve says.

  The farm used to belong to a friend of Helga’s. And in the early years, we would use the old-style cavernous barn as a pit stop before we crossed the Vatnsdalsá River. We would put our horses in the paddock and the farm couple would bring out coffee and donuts for us and talk to Helga for a while.

  None of the horses we rode on the first trip are still at Thingeyrar. They have either been retired, have died, or have been sold. Even old Thoka is gone. She aged out of usefulness and was put down. Everything changes. Even in Iceland, especially in Iceland. A decade ago it was a more traditional country and less traveled; it never made the news cycle and wasn’t the go-to locale for filming TV shows or movies. You could tell people you were going to Iceland and they’d think you were wildly adventurous. Even the REI sales clerks.

  But our guesthouse on the farm remains the same, and one of the reasons I love returning is for the sameness, even if in the beginning what so entranced me was the newness. Part of the pleasure of being on a farm, even one with modern amenities, is the way it builds on and opens a door to the past. The agricultural life represents the not-so-distant lives of our farming ancestors. It’s something I can hold on to—it is matter. The opposite of our digital world is this: dirt, mud, grass, horseflesh, all the things that ruffle your senses.

  My aunt Ruthie used to say that when you get older, you’re you, still the same you, but you become more you. I used to think that meant that the older you got the freer you were to stop capitulating to others’ demands, and you got to a distilled sense of self, the more likely you. But lately I think it’s less insular, and more expansive. The “more you-ness” comes from our recollections and connectedness. Our minds and hearts become fat and swollen with experiences and memories of places and people, and this makes us “more.”

  How long can our trips go on? I used to think there was a time limit. That every trip could be our last one. But we don’t talk like that anymore. We forge ahead with next year’s plans before we even leave the farm on the last day. Thingeyrar is here for us. I remember that first year with Sylvie, sitting in the bar on the wharves, when she said, “This is what I’ll do for now.”

  This is what I’ll do for now. This is where I’ll be.

  Of course, each trip marks the click of another year passing: memory is time, time is loss, loss is life. But these trips are the antidote to loss, and a reprieve from aging. As we drive past the gates of Thingeyrar, we squeal at the first sight of Helga’s horses in the fields. “Look at the foals! So many mares pregnant! Is that the stallion?” We pull up to the farm, tumble out of the car, rush to the fence, and gush over the horses. We’re like a pack of unrestrained girls, full of nerviness and excitement, blissfully unaware of anything but the horses. It never gets old. And, in the moment, neither do we.

  Wild River

  We call it “the wild river ride” because we trek along the banks of Vatnsdalsá and it always gets hairy. This is due mostly to the herd of about twenty young horses from another farm that graze there and rush us. They like to play, these young’uns, and see us as an irresistible curiosity. Helga forewarns the farmer who owns them that we will be on his property and asks if he would put his young horses in another field, but either the farmer forgets, or he doesn’t care. So each time we ride on the path they come running down the hill to greet us. They see our steeds as playmates and friskily gallop beside us.

  We are used to this, expect it, and try to prepare for it. But still.

  Helga rides up front on a tall, gray dappled horse, a horse that looks like the gray charger Cate Blanchett rode as Queen Elizabeth when she urged on her soldiers into battle. Unlike the Queen of England, though, Helga gives us all several chances to turn back without threatening to have us shot as deserters.

  From almost the moment we head out of the farm’s gate, Helga starts with, “Anyone want to turn back?” No one takes her up on it. Then, when we get to the end of the road where we cross the bridge, Helga gives us another opportunity. “Last chance. Anyone want to go home? Speak now or forever hold your peace.” But, no, we all voice our eagerness to continue.

  And all goes as planned and unplanned. We stop after we cross the bridge, and Allie wants us to dismount and line up for pictures. We oblige her. On one hand, I hate doing this because it magnifies whatever jitters I have. On the other, when she emails these pictures to us months later, I open them up at my desk at work and am transported back to my friends, my horse, and that river, jitter-fre
e.

  As we stand for pictures, I wonder whether the farmer has put the young herd in another pasture. While there is always a hope that we won’t run into them, if we didn’t, I might be slightly disappointed. It would be just another river ride at fast speeds for a deliriously long time, and then a splash into the river and a scurry up to the island in the river, a fast tölt to the end of the island, and then a splash down and across the river again. That would be challenging on its own, but without the frisson of any real danger we can’t control.

  As we start out, Gauper is barking at the birds in the grass, and generally being a beloved nuisance. We spot the herd of young horses on the hill, but trot on, trying to stay the course. If we can spot them, they can spot us, and, more importantly, our horses know they are there. Their nostrils are flaring as they pick up the chemical messages of the other herd. Even before we are anywhere near them, the pace picks up.

  As we get closer to the young herd, our horses start to race against each other. And it is only a minute before the young ones come at us full force: they invade our line, darting in and out of our formation, riling up our saddled, bridled horses.

  “Don’t let your horses gallop,” Helga warns us. “Hold them back.”

  Helga attempts to divert the young horses, riding on the outside of the line to ward off the infiltration. She snaps her fingers at Gauper, who understands the cue to bark and nip at the young horses’ heels. Frieda shouts, “Hup, hup,” when the wild horses get in our way, and tries to drive them off.

  I take this up with great enthusiasm: “Hup, hup!” I love yelling this, it makes me feel like a cowgirl, and it’s the closest I’ll get to a sheep or horse roundup. “Hup, hup!”

  I am on an older, sturdy mare who is on autopilot. But she’s not part of Helga’s herd, she’s from the Steinnes farm, and as an outsider she’s making every effort to prove herself, and out race the other horses.

  The pace quickens, and Frieda, who was the sweep, our safety check at the back of the line, becomes the leader. Then a horse’s shoe is thrown up in front of me, making a quick arc in the air.

  “Someone threw a shoe,” I shout.

  The news travels up and down the frantic line of riders, and everyone has an opinion:

  “Sylvie’s horse lost a shoe.”

  “Queenie, your horse lost a shoe.”

  “What?”

  “No, nevermind, it was Allie’s horse.”

  “Whose?”

  “Allie’s.”

  “No, I think it was Viv’s, it was Viv’s horse.”

  “Mine?”

  “Yes. Or maybe it was Eve’s.”

  Margot shouts out, “Forget about the shoe, guys, there’s a stampede going on!”

  Gauper, Helga, and Frieda are driving the young horses off our path and making every effort to herd them back up the hill. Which leaves the rest of us on the loose, unsupervised, and on the run. Allie is in front and I am right behind her. Though she is the least experienced rider, she is the most confident, and confidence counts a lot with horses.

  During the stampede, she finally put her camera away and now she lets her horse go into a canter, and I let mine follow. Then her horse kicks it up another notch to a gallop, and my horse tries to catch up. Allie’s flying and I’m right behind her and Margot is right on my horse’s tail. The path is snaking along the river, so my horse shifts her weight frequently and I have to as well, in order to stay in balance. The feel of a gallop is different from a canter; it’s not simply faster. A canter is a three-beat gait with one hoof always in contact with the ground, and you can convince yourself you are in control. But with the gallop, there is no such illusion of control. It is a four-beat gait with a moment of suspension combined with the feeling that the horse’s engine has exploded. It is those moments of galloping and losing control while trying to keep my seat and doing everything to stay balanced, when I feel most utterly free.

  Eventually Allie slows her horse down to a trot, then a walk, which slows my horse down to a trot and a walk.

  “That was fun,” I tell Allie.

  “I couldn’t hold her back anymore, I just had to let her go.”

  “That was really fun, guys! There was no way my horse was gonna get left behind,” Margot says.

  We are a half a mile ahead of the rest and we wait for them to catch up. Everyone has survived, and Helga returns to the front and we tölt swiftly, peacefully along the soft trail edging the fast-moving river.

  When it comes time to cross the river, Helga leads us in. Allie follows, then Margot, then me. Sylvie is supposed to be following me, but she and Stulka hesitate. The river is deep from all the rain during the year, and the river’s banks are soft and crumbly, giving way quickly as we enter. If it isn’t done fast, if the horse doesn’t have momentum, it’ll get stuck in the deep mud. A large gap is forming between me and Sylvie as I hear her try to convince Stulka to get in.

  There’s a commotion behind me, then a splash, followed by an Sylvie shout, “Argh.”

  “Sylvie fell,” someone yells. “Sylvie’s down!” The news travels from the shore to me, to Margot to Allie to Helga. Sylvie has popped back up, but she went completely underwater. She empties her helmet of water.

  Helga, though midway out in the river with us, turns around to rescue her. “Keep your horses here, don’t cross alone, there may be eddies and sinkholes in the river.”

  The horses aren’t going to stand still in the river, so we turn them in tight little circles.

  “Guys, I have to be honest, I have a fear of water,” Margot says, “I’m not a good swimmer.” Margot wasn’t with us all the times we crossed Lake Hóp. “I’m just putting that out there,” she says.

  “This river has never been this deep before,” I say. “It must be all the rain they’ve had. I didn’t tape my Wellies and my boots are filling up with water. I’m afraid that if I fall off, the weight of my boots would drag me down.”

  “That was not helpful,” Margot says, “to tell me that. My boots are filling with water, too.”

  Allie says, “Everything will be fine. Let’s just keep turning the horse in circles.”

  We turn the horses in circles in the middle of the river, but they are pushing us to go on and cross. Turning them in circles is making them nervous.

  On shore, we can see that everyone else is gathered around Sylvie and asking her if she’s alright. “Sylvie seems to be fine,” Margot says. “Thank God she fell really close to the shoreline. She could stand when she got up. And Eve’s got hold of Stulka.”

  We keep making circles in the middle of the river, but the circles are getting larger and we are separating a little more from each other. I fear we are drifting down the river a little. And I’m trying not to stare too long at the water, which might cause me to lose my balance, but I have to watch out for eddies.

  I hear Helga ask Sylvie if she’s alright.

  “Yes, but I’m annoyed,” Sylvie says. “I was feeling so good about my riding today, so proud of myself. You know what my mother used to say, ‘pride cometh before the fall.’”

  Everyone who’s left on shore is laughing and yukking it up, discussing the fall that cometh after Sylvie’s pride—while we are continuing our circles in the middle of the river. The water is getting deeper, but I keep that to myself, not wanting to alarm Margot.

  “They do know we’re still out here, don’t they? They haven’t forgot about us, have they?” Margot asks.

  “I was wondering the same thing.”

  Finally, we can hear Helga ask Sylvie, “So, Queenie, are you ready to get back on?”

  Margot says to herself, “C’mon Sylvie, get back on.”

  “I suppose,” Sylvie says, not in any hurry to curtail our agony. But it takes a while, an eternity to us in the middle of the river, as Sylvie finds something near the riverbank to stand on, a sturdy rock, to give herself a boost to remount.

  When she gets back on the horse, everyone lets out a cheer. It’s like they are ha
ving a celebration on shore while we are close to drowning in the river. Then there is even more discussion and laughing among them with very little forward movement.

  Allie says, “Do you think we can continue across now that Sylvie’s back on? These guys are getting awfully fidgety.”

  Margot yells across the water to Helga, “Can we go across now?”

  Helga yells to us to wait for her. “There’s a tricky part up ahead. Don’t do it alone.”

  “Guys, I’m getting vertigo,” Margot says. “I’m feeling dizzy and light-headed.”

  “I am, too,” I say. “I can’t help looking down. I have to look where I’m going. How do you not look down?”

  Allie says, “She’s almost here, hang on.”

  Helga finally reaches us with everyone else behind her, and we continue on. But instead of going straight to the shoreline of the island as we would have, Helga first leads us down the middle of the river before turning in toward the shore. She knows the river well, but her horse knows the river better. She trusts her horse to pick the route. She gives him full rein, tactilely listening to the horse, as he cautiously, intuitively finds the best footing, and we follow behind them single file, avoiding the sinkhole that would have taken us down if we had gone on without her and pushed the horses to take the quickest route to the shore.

  About Those Ghosts

  No one has heard from the ghosts for a while. The kitchen window in Thingeyrar looks out on the circle of old gravestones, but they are just part of the scenery. Normally inquisitive types, we have sat at the kitchen table and looked out on that mini skyline of gravestones for the last few years without questioning it too much. In fact, we have become rather ho-hum about the sight, like, Oh, there is the church, the laundry line, the gravestones. “Pass the skyr, please.”

  Sometimes an Icelander, like a Holar intern who has spent the winter here, will remind us that our guesthouse is indeed haunted. “Right there is where there are ghosts,” one said, pointing to where we hang our coats up in the hallway. And we feel obliged to bring up the times we’ve seen them (Allie), felt them (Eve), and heard them (me).