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May 15 2019

We get used to the pattern of things, and we do so for a reason. When there is a break in the pattern we need to be aware of it, because it could be significant. My horse knows all about that, taking a good hard look at displaced wheely-bins, bin-liners dumped by the roadside overnight, trapped and billowing plastic bags in the hedge.

A break in the pattern could bring danger, could bring reward: and that’s why we – humans and horses and all – tune in to such things. Often we are aware of a break without knowing why: we just find ourselves, for no apparent reason, switched-on, eager, anxious, convinced that something is up. But what?

The green corn was getting higher. From a rolling canter I could see that it was beginning to acquire the sway and roll it will have in far bigger form as the year advances and when the wind gets up. The pattern of the shifting corn: and then the break in that pattern.

The corn, a monoculture, all the same shade of green, a moving carpet: but within it two unmoving objects apparently dropped at random, one beside the other. As we slowed to a walk I could see what they were: ears, two in number as is conventional, long, black-tipped, emerging from the stalks. Here hare here.

Perhaps he thought I couldn’t see those ears, unaware I was watching from an eminence that placed my eyes nine feet from the ground. But I suspect he didn’t care. Below the level of the growing seedheads he was aware that a horse had broken the pattern. He couldn’t keep an eye on us, but by raising those ears he would know at once if we made a threatening move. He trusted in his ears: trusted still more in his speed.

So we walked on and had those ears in view for fully five minutes, following us round, tracking us, hare and horse and human in a perfect stand-off of mutual awareness. The day and the hare quite still. Back down the valley a cuckoo called.