Where the horse is the last

Someone once quietly remarked that the last thing he paid attention to on a horseback ride was the riding. I didn’t say anything back then – I just looked at him and let the sentence settle between us, like the mist settling on a forest clearing at dawn. But now, years, memories and a lot of silence later, I know what he meant.

Because the horse is there, carrying me, rocking me, breathing beneath me, but somewhere it ceases to be a horse. It's like a silence that you don't hear, you just feel. Like an old path that your feet don't recognize, but your soul does. And then everything else becomes more important. The sound of the wind on the branch, the shadow that lies on the grass, the bird that doesn't fly away, just watches.

The next morning, a mist settled over the valley, and the trees breathed in almost imperceptibly. The world had not yet awakened, and we set off as if we were emerging from a dream into another.

We stop to rest at a spring. The crystal-clear water gurgles softly, as if whispering something to the pebbles in an old, forgotten language — a language that perhaps only tiny creatures hiding in the grass or children walking in their dreams understand… and I just stand above it, trying to figure out what they are telling me.

I lie down in the soft, emerald green grass, my gaze fixed on the fluffy clouds floating slowly above me.

For a moment I feel as if the heartbeat of the earth itself is speaking to me – in a quiet, steady, pulsating rhythm, like some secret force, not a noise, but a pleasant vibration. As if I were not standing on it, but it were embracing me, and as this silent pulsation flows towards me from the depths beneath the blades of grass, it charges me like a wireless charger to a muted device – only now I am the device, and life itself is the energy that the earth’s inner vibration sends towards me.

After a short but meaningful rest, we strap on and continue.

As we wander among the hidden groves of the White Field, I feel the sun caressing the landscape with its golden rays, and despite the warmth vibrating in the air, a strange, cold breath runs through me. Endless, swaying meadows stretch around us, silky blades of grass bend delicately, as if caressed by invisible hands. I cannot see what it is, but I feel its presence, as something unknown and mysterious touches me, silently, yet penetrating deep into my soul, more alive than any visible reality.

At my question, the tour guide's words quietly come to life, like shadows flying in the wind, and I see the forgotten past unfolding before me. There stands the landscape, just as beautiful, dressed in sunlight, but yet completely different. Once upon a time, war raged here; trenches tore up the earth, deep ravines hid animal carcasses, and perhaps even people rest secretly below, anonymous, whose bones slowly crumble into dust in the darkness of time. The roots are not only in water – but in bone, blood, suffering.

We gallop through a world of gently swaying fields, fragrant juniper bushes and happily singing birds on the surface, and we hardly suspect that another world lies beneath us: a dense, heavy pain of the past, a mass of forgotten cries and prayers whispered in hopelessness. These bones, like so many mossy stones, hold together the roots of the grass tufts, making the path soft and walkable for us, who can barely recognize the past that lies dormant deep below.

What is a path for us is another's final destination. What is the scent of flowers for us is another's last breath.

One no longer feels pain, one no longer sees those over whom one treads carelessly. One no longer only symbolically treads over their heads, but one actually treads on their names and memories, long forgotten even by one's great-grandchildren. How much sweat, sacrifice, missed hugs and tears it took for an idea or a proud title to come to life, and now all of it has faded into nothingness, swallowed up by the mist of oblivion, and only the quiet wisdom of nature remains.

The horse strides peacefully on, unaware of the dramas beneath it, quietly grazing the tender herbs. The mossy spear sticking out of the ground is not a rank or title for it, but a comfortable rubbing stick, a resting place at the end of the day. Nature works slowly, wisely, purifies itself, is reborn, and forgets the pains caused by man again.

We move on, silently, leaving behind the past, which no one mourns anymore. We arrive at a sheepfold, whose simplicity evokes the atmosphere of old, idyllic times. In the past, until late autumn, the flock was up there with the shepherds, who pulsed with the landscape in freedom, with infinite naturalness.

Our guide dismounts, opens the gate in a friendly manner, and shakes hands with the shepherd, who offers him a glass of pálinka with a smiling face. He leads us into his simple but welcoming shack and offers us everything he has. He breaks the bread with his hands, the knife is only needed for the bacon; he doesn't need a fork.

As I watch him raise the bacon he has stabbed with a knife to his mouth, I notice that his fingers and palms are disproportionately large and strong, like the roots of an oak tree that cling deeply to the ground. I ask him how old he was when he started working. He replies with a quiet smile that he was probably six when he was first left alone with the flock. The bag always contained the same things: his mother's sourdough bread, homemade bacon, cottage cheese and onions. This is what he is currently eating, although sometimes he also makes balmos.

“This is real organic food,” he says with a laugh, the peace of the mountains shining on his face. He has just learned this word.

Before it was just food. Life-giving. Blessed because the Lord gave it.

“We are closer to God here,” he says.

This is true happiness – when I stand silently and watch the cattle graze deliciously, as if every blade of grass contained a feast. I hear the sound of their teeth grinding the morning dew, and the grass squeaking as it breaks from the ground. And all the while I feel their eyes on me – watching. If I move, they follow because they are mine. They belong to me. They know my voice.

And as I watch him look at his flock, I believe him. Because there is something sublime about a man living without being cut off from the earth. He follows the rhythm of nature, he does not command, but adapts.