Who has drawn the wind?

here's my crack at drawing the invisible...

[Icelandic near-death experience continued…]

Waterfalls, volcanoes, and shaggy sheep are legit Icelandic-y, but it’s the horses that really make the place special. I wasn’t quite sure how to capture these short-in-stature but huge-in-heart (and powerful) horses that roam across the country in herds ranging from a handful to a hundred (or more). When I sat down to work on this, I vaguely remembered a photo I had taken of one of the horses at a farm where we stayed during the shoot, but this was all so long ago the image was taken with a film camera!! (This may have been my last trip before starting the big switch to digital).

Somewhere between then (2005) and now I must have saved a copy on a computer and that image must have been automatically backed up to the cloud because when I searched in my Google photos backup files, voila, there it was - all pixelated and primitive.

BUT, there’s enough of a sense of the wind through that glorious mane that I decided to chance using it as a reference while drawing a subject that, though close to my heart, I’ve never had much luck with. [Restrain yourself with the snarky remarks about my limited luck with any subject… You can tell it’s a horse, right?]

The original horse (heaven forbid you call an Icelandic horse a ‘pony’) was a handsome subject and that photo (poor quality though that digital find may be) captures something of the wild, solid nature of these animals who spend their lives bracing against the wind.

Of course, Who Has Seen the Wind? came to mind as I drew the wild tangle of mane being blown this way and that and I was taken back all those years ago to standing, bracing myself against the chill wind, marveling at the sheer pleasure of being in a foreign land surrounded by horses, sheep, sheepdogs - the roaring ocean close by, mountains, the threat of snow in the heavily-laden low clouds.

It was exhilarating to be there - and sad and guilt-ridden. I was discovering this new ability to travel, to seize the day, and take off to pursue my creative and equine passions because my mother was safely ensconced in long-term care, confined to a hospital bed, dying of an early onset frontal-temporal lobe dementia.

I thought of her between locations and film shoots - or, the old version of her. The one that would have prompted me to take my time, frame my shots better, check the exposure, get down low, try another angle… the mother who would have encouraged me to plunge off into this new adventure and fully embrace whatever destinations might follow.

It was a trip she would have loved to have done - for the photography, the people, the landscape… But not the horses - she was terrified of them, the result of an unfortunate bite that removed a chunk of her shoulder when she, as a child, got too close to a cranky, half-blind workhorse tasked with hauling her, her mother and three siblings (and a few salvaged bits of silverware) from the eastern part of Germany to the west just ahead of advancing Russian soldiers… “Moritz,” Mom would say with a shudder and an eye roll. “I won’t ever forget that beast’s name. I didn’t know a horse could be so vicious.”

She did forget the horse’s name (and pretty much everything else she had ever known) as the course of the disease ate her brain and saw her regress from a bright, articulate, ambitious woman to a silent, sullen, empty husk of a person who spent too many months at the end staring at the ceiling in the hospital, waiting.

It was from this awful place (thoughts of that hospital and her slow demise still give me nightmares) that I had burst free and into the wild open windiness of Iceland. It was glorious and it was dreadful, knowing I wouldn’t be able to share the experience with Mom, that she was beyond understanding ideas of travel and TV shows, and had reached a point where someone had to coach her through chewing and swallowing even a simple meal.

So, yes - deciding to go hadn’t been quite as simple as my last post probably made it sound - these decisions rarely are. Going to Iceland marked a turning point—in more ways than one…

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That’s where I’ll leave this for the moment - if you want to read a bit more about the first book my mother inspired, it’s called Choosing to Live, Choosing to Die: The Complexities of Assisted Dying.

BTW, if you haven’t yet started exploring Notes here in Substack, it’s a terrific way to see what other writers are doing. The new function has already kicked off some great sharing, suggestions for new reads, conversations, and discussions… I’ll send you a quick message by email to introduce you to the concept and after that, the discussions that will continue via Notes will not automatically show up in your in-box.