I Wanna Be a Moor Pony

I was fortunate to travel to England this year - to see Clapton, touch Stonehenge, watch Shakes in the Globe, stand on the cliffs at Tintagel, walk in the steps of Tolkien and to visit Dartmoor. Until 6 or 7 years ago Dartmoor did not register on the list of places I wanted to someday visit. But, Dartmoor is the Mecca of my strange hobby. The very first letterbox was placed in a bottle in Cranmere Pool in 1854 and things have escalated from there. There are boxes at Cranmere Pool still 150 years later. I did entertain thoughts of nabbing the Cranmere Pool box, but it is quite a haul over the sometimes soggy moor. And since we had torrential rains the day before, I was pretty sure that hike was not one I wanted to make since I had no Wellies (boots). So I contented myself with pubhopping, sampling English brews and collecting pub boxes from the cluebook provided to me by my friend Sno' who had been in Dartmoor 6 months earlier. She and I will go back and get that Cranmere pool box. Just not sure which of us will brave the driving part of that trip.

So that's how I came to be in the forsaken wilderness of Dartmoor. What I never expected was to fall in love with the land there. Barren. Rocky. Empty rolling bordered hills that do a graceful and stark dance across Cornwall and Devon spun out like a bellydancer's veils. But love it I did. Immediate and absolute. I wanted to roll down the windows and just breathe in the rarified air. To launch myself out of the car and just run for the joy of running and no other reason. To stand with my face to the ever present moor wind and laugh as it spilled its secrets upon me. Mostly I wanted to frolic with the small Moor pony foals from that spring. To cavort about in my shaggy coat feeding and then flop over in the equally shaggy grass when I got tired and give over to sleep and moor dreams.

There is an inexplicable pull toward this piece of Earth. I will go back, using the Cranmere Pool hike as an excuse. But really, I wanna immerse myself out on the moor again and see what happens.