Horse Girl Dreams
We first see ponies grazing on the cliffs of the Dale Peninsula. There is a white one and a brown one, another white further towards the cliff edge. They see us, with little interest. Their heads rarely rise from the low grass they're nipping.
I don't think they're wild, but they look like they could be. They're short, fur thicker around the ankles, manes and tails blowing in the wind.
Cousins have joined us for the last couple of weeks of walking. Alison and Michelle are a syncopated generation with me and Eileen: Michelle Eileen's niece, making Alison my first cousin once removed — boomer, gen x, millennial, gen z, all spaced about 13 years apart.
They used to live in Seattle, but moved to Arizona in what must have been my junior high times — I can picture the bangs I still had in the photograph: me giving Alison her first-ever birthday present, a giant purple bunny I knit.
She must have vague too-young memories of me the way I have of Michelle: me showing Ali how to weave grass blades in a park; a much-younger Shelly making Santa Lucia buns in our kitchen. It's a product of big family: a jumble of mismatched ages, so many we take family for granted.
But Eileen and Michelle have made this happen. Alison is home from college for the summer, Michelle's teaching has finished up, I'm between jobs. So we're out here walking together in a fantastical place that's new to all of us.
We see the coast ponies again on their first day of walking. Eileen and I are used to the endless beauty of cliffs above the ocean, strange geologies that leave calved-off shards poking up from the seabed, striated natural murals, wave-worn arches. But it's fresh again through their eyes: the aqua-blue water, the omnipresent variety of wildflowers. And then horses, casual above vertiginous sheer drops, and inured to passersby like us as well.
It's a readjustment, walking in new company. My stride is too long for the group. I'm not in a hurry, but neither do I have a habit of pausing, so I keep finding myself well ahead while others stop for views, snacks, photography. I don't mind waiting, but it's conscious work to slow.
We settle into group rhythm, and it's lovely to walk, sometimes together and sometimes apart. In days on the trail, there is time to learn that my younger cousin writes fiction, jokes readily, hikes fast when she has a mind to. My older cousin is always smiling, a deep listener who needs little excuse to go swimming in the sea.
The sheep and cows were novel to us in Ireland, and are novel to them now: we stop to watch lambs bleat back and forth with their mothers. At a gate, cows press close to lick Alison's hands. Our path leads us over stiles and through kissing gates, both passive designs to let people through but keep animals contained — so sometimes we are beside animal enclosures, but sometimes we are in them. Sheep skitter away, while cows' curiosity draws them near.
Ancient monuments abound, their differences in age too great to fully grasp: here, Coetan Arthur and Carreg Samson, Neolithic standing stones continue to balance mere steps from the path. Iron Age towers stand guard in a harbor. Above Porthgain rise the ruins of an Industrial Age factory. The house we rent in Trefin is older than the United States, but fitted now with an insta-hot water heater for a retrofit shower.
On our walk from Strumble Head to Fishguard, we catch a lucky break, the stuff of horse girl dreaming. These aren't wild horses, nor are they Welsh ponies, but here they are in a pasture with us: past a wooden gate, over a footbridge, in a wildflower meadow above sea cliffs. And they're coming to say hi.
Alison used to work on a horse ranch, so she knows how to approach: slowly, hand flat. She offers her fingers for a sniff, and the brown horse lets her pet it’s cheek. The black follows, curious. For a long, still moment, the horses stand, shift, allow themselves to be touched.
When she withdraws, the horses follow, cat-like cautious in their desire for attention. They visit each one of us, sniffing with velvet-soft noses at our hands.
I'm not into horses much, but it's enchanting to have a creature so large behave so gently. Warm, damp air blows over my skin, and between two horses, I'm surrounded.
We’ve been here a while already. Our little group’s silent rapport is telling me we’re ready to continue. I touch the horses' cheeks, step carefully, murmuring, where they will see me, and leave them behind. We walk on.
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