Airs Above The Ground

In an earlier post, I wrote of visualizing my mind as a series of corridors with doors opening off to each side, each filled with a memory, experience, data, visual. This fabulous picture, courtesy of Weekend Theme by Sideview has everything I like. Arches, sand, footprints, open doors, sunlight, and more than a touch of the sacred about it. The more you gaze at it, the more it draws you in. What’s happening with the ceiling? It looks as though there might be footprints on the ceiling as well. At the far end is a windowed door leading … where?

A memory surfaces. A magical memory of the Lipizzaner Stallions out of Vienna and a book by Mary Stewart, Airs Above the Ground, (1965) concerning a kidnapped Lipizzaner stallion finally returned home. I pulled the book off the shelf, it still has the price of .75 cents, the cover and pages held together with old tape. But the memory of the old disguised horse, dyed a piebald to keep the kidnapping a secret and the heroine, a Veterinarian on vacation, who is asked to help heal the old piebald injured in a fire… it was like coming home to an old friend. So, of course, I had to read the book again… That is why this post is over two weeks past the challenge. Not because I’m a slow reader, mind you, but because life took off and I was reading only a couple of pages before bed. I thought to quote the book and knew the two scenes I wanted; knew exactly where they were without rereading, but once I started flipping the pages, it all came back fresh and clear and I surrendered to the pleasure of finding an old friend again. Two weeks later, I look at the picture at the beginning of this and I hear the hooves softly beating the sand, and the timelessness comfort of the smell of hay, horse, and wooden stalls. Tradition passed down through thousands of years, of battle cries and destriers trained as intensely as the knights of old to fight and protect… This gave me a chance to do some research on General Patton’s rescue of the Lipizzaners in 1945, as well as Operation Cowboy, where 1,200 horses, including 375 Lipizzaners, were rescued, which set me off for an hour’s viewing of various Lipizzaner videos.