Eliza Henry-jones: A Day in the Country Each month we hear from a new country-based writer.
GETTING BACK IN THE SADDLE AFTER HAVING A BABY MAKES ELIZA HENRY-JONES FEEL RIGHT AT HOME.
MY MARE, GEM, watches me from her favourite paddock. She does that sometimes, peering in through the windows of the house. I slip on my elastic–sided boots and join her in the milky winter sunshine. I let her snuffle at my baby’s pink–cheeked face. For a moment, we are still. Gem smells of everything wild and lovely. She smells of wind and rain; of dirt and green. Horses are like that. They get into your blood. You feel the ridden world in the same way that you feel the drag of waves after a day in the ocean, long after you’ve stepped back onto land. The breath and footfalls of a well–loved horse are as familiar as a pulse. When Gem was barely broken in and I was a teenager, we’d wander through thickets of lemon–scented gum and towering forests of mountain ash. Beautiful places that were not home but felt like it, viewed through the eyes of a horse. Today, on our farm, my husband takes the baby and he watches from his father’s arms, wide–eyed, as I dust off my saddle and bridle. Gem waits for me to stop fiddling with the keepers of her bridle and the buckles of her girth. She tilts an ear back towards me as I inch my foot into the stirrup and pull myself up onto her back. After having my baby, Gem’s body feels more familiar to me than my own. The shape and rhythm of her is as I remember, from before. She snorts. I make myself breathe. I am not worried about Gem hurting me. I am not worried about her bucking or shying (although she is partial to both). Rather, I am worried about my own body letting me down — my muscles feel weak. I do not feel at home in my skin. We walk, my mare and I, leaving my husband and son behind in the stables. We move past the vegetable beds and apricot trees. Past the raspberry canes and the blueberry plants that are losing their blush–coloured leaves. Past the citrus orchards with their swelling fruit and the green fingers of shooting garlic, planted carefully in long rows. We stop on the hilltop, near the olive trees and beehives. From here, we can see the paddocks and orchards. We can see the place where the blue-tongued lizard likes to sun herself and the track the wombat has worn under the fence line. We can see the place where my old horse’s bones rest in volcanic soil and the house with its cosy thread of blue wood smoke. We have lived here for four years. Before I lived here, I had never seen my house framed by the pointed ears of my horse. These two homes were disparate — existing adjacent to one another but never together. This place has already claimed the bones of my animals. It has already nourished us in bountiful seasons, and cradled us during storms and heat. More than what it has been, our home, viewed from my mare’s back, is a blueprint of everything that is to come. Gem turns to nuzzle my boot in the way that she nuzzles at my baby’s busy little hands and face. We breathe together, air salty with mist. Riding her, feeling the thrum of her heart and lungs and hooves, my body belongs to me once more. Together. We are home. Eliza Henry-jones is a novelist who lives on a small farm in Victoria’s Yarra Valley, elizahenryjones.com Each month, A Day in the Country is featuring a new writer.