In the middle of the summer

Tuesday 27 July 2010

Haven't written anything the last week. We are right in the middle of the summer. Being on an island like Skyros makes you lazy. The rythm slows down. Great shiny moons come and go and it even rained yesterday. It was one of these slow summer showers which give you a break from the burning sun. Great skies with big passing clouds. I like it when the weather blesses you with natural shade.

My body strength has built up a lot and I'm not stuggling with work as much as I used to. While working I enjoy cuddles with all of them and still learn about each individual horse. I think I know most of the names now! It's been almost two months that I went away from Athens. I am calmer now, my perspective of thinking has changed. When I look at the plane that surrounds us and the vast sky abive us, life suddenly becomes wider although I encounter much less people everyday than I would in the city.

Last night, at around 4 in the morning, a hedgehog woke me up! How did he get inside my room? he has been around the farm for quite a while now and has been eating the cat's food. Now we are roomates...

And my hands... they are getting harder to touch. It is a feeling I never had before in my life. No more soft hands. I own the hands of an educated farm girl.

Let me talk to you about Ira, one of the two big - not skyrian - horses of this farm. She is gentle but she can be a bit overwhelming when she gets frustrated. The other one is Pyrros, but I'll tallk about him another time. Sometimes I get to run around the arena with them making them walk, trot, canter and run without any ropes. They seem to listen to me and like me and do what I tell them to do.

One day, I was on the ground running around with a whip in my hands and Ira was walking. Fine. Then I told her to trot, again and again and she trotted. I kept asking her to trot. Then she started running in a way that she could not be handled. She was just running around the arena like crazy. She was too far away from me to hurt me, but I got a bit scared. 'Why is she going mental on me?' Amanda told me why. A horse needs more time than humans do, to understand what you are asking. Once it understands, the human needs to shut up. In my case, Ira was doing exactly the thing I asked her to do - to trot- but I kept asking her to do it. She probably thought 'why is she asking me to do it when I'm doing it already?' And she went mad! I wound have probably done the same if someone asked me again and again to do what I was already doing!

Horses do not respond to a human being mentaly, but emotionaly. I have to thank Amanda for this amazing piece of information. You see, even if I haven't been on a horse yet, the amount of information I get is precious and It is probably very useful to know a number of things before you get ON a horse.

PS All the photographs in the blog are mine. This time I am using two photographs that my friend Yannis took. The one with me and Sylvia and the one of Ira are his. Yiannis is a professional photHOGrapher. www.iamhog.com