PHOTO: ATLE RONNINGEN/STOCKSKYAlong for the Ride
74
july 2019yogajournal.com.auFive days across Iceland via horseback forced me to slow
down and focus on what was in front of me all along.
By Rachel Slade
I WAS A BURNT END, a frayed electrical
cord, a tea kettle whistling on the stove
just about boiled dry. I’d been working
two jobs for a decade, and I found
myself in the paradoxical position of
having a little extra money and zero joy.
Snippets of free time that occasionally
landed at my feet only provoked my
anxiety. I was too bound up in every
little thing.
How could I heal myself? I’d always
chafed at the idea that travel alone can
mend a person. It seems at once too
literal and too extravagant—that a
physical escape is the only fix, and,
ironically, that such a cure requires so
much money (stress), time (stress!), andplanning (ditto!). But that spring, I
began to worry about the damage this
anxiety might be doing to my body. I
Googled two things I love: “horses and
Iceland.” Then, in mid-July, I found
myself in a van with a dozen other
women watching Iceland’s lunar-like
landscape pass us by through a blur of
arctic rain. We were heading to the
horses.
Vague memories of a trip to Iceland
decades ago had guided me here. Little
did I know that the meditative power of
a five-day camping trip in the saddle
was beyond powerful.
As soon as I hit the trail, the
incessant rhythm of the swift andunrelenting tolt—a four-beat trot
unique to Icelandic horses—
dominated everything, focusing my
mind and body into a kind of magical
clock whose hands only counted
seconds instead of minutes or hours.
In the saddle, riding in the tolt, I found
myself gently rocked into the moment.
There was no future and no past. Only
now.
This deep moving meditation was
also shaped by the barren land itself.
Without the scale of trees, distances
were impossible to judge. We travelled
over an endless expanse of rock and
grass. In July at that latitude, the sun
never sets. Instead, the sky became an