Senses regaled with the majesty of a new land: 

·  A Kookaburra greets me in my first walk to cope with jet lag,

Kookaburra in old gum tree

merrily singing away in the top of an old gum tree, just as the song tells us of the "king of the bush" laughing away. A 12-inch-wide footprint is discovered in the soft ground, some ten feet between each print provoking imaginings of the size of the kangaroo that preceded us recently down the path.

·  The fragrance of eucalyptus wafts on breezes that support the flight of a multitude of brightly colored creatures of the air:  black and white magpies, large white flocks of cockatoos (subject of many raucus jokes), the delightful Willy Wagtail, red and green small parrots, and many more.

·  A thunderstorm rolls in as we watch it travel in black fury from miles away. The threat of over-abundant rain fills lakes, rivers and dams for the first time in 25 years: resulting in anticipated plagues of locusts, their harbingers occasionally pinging my hat and head as we walk in wide grassy fields where sheep and horses graze in green grandeur.

Discovering a new family of friends and colleagues, who enthusiastically explore the potential of the horse/human connection:

Cheryl & Trish

·  Finding an extraordinary teaching colleague in Cheryl Cruttenden who brilliantly hosts me and assists in teaching Journey Horse

·  Meeting with delight Kim Page whose email about her friend Dave's dream first connected me consciously to Australia

·  Synchronicities abounding with random and frequent in-depth conversations with a wide variety of people who felt like old friends - at Banyandah Naturally, the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Network), the Dandenongs, Equitana Melbourne, and Woodend. 

·  Long and frequent laughter sparked by the Aussie sense of humor.

Manifesting an evolving New Story for our world, deep partnership with all that surrounds us, offering the promise of powerful new solutions for our world:

·  Horses who eagerly join us in Journey Horse as we explore with them at liberty new directions for our lives together. People in professions such as coaches, leadership trainers, psychologists, those practicing equine assisted learning and psychotherapy, and other horse professionals. 

·  A new foal born to Bella a few days after our explorations,

Baby Journey

named Mythic Journey, in honor of our time together.

·  Engaging conversations with those already working in equine assisted professions about how we can work together internationally to support the development of this emerging profession.

·  Dreamtime becoming manifest in a land and with people who have an innate spiritual connection with one another and their land. The invisible connections unfold that began with a dream by an Aussie who was given my name by a horse. The sense that my main job is to stay astride a powerful dark horse that carries us forward into the future.

And about that future:

I will soon be posting dates for next year's workshops and events.  In the plans are:

·  Springtime ongoing workshops called HorseSpeak, with Linda Barnes, poet and poetry therapist

·  Journey Horse Ashland in summertime July and August, two versions, one for professionals working in the field of equine facilitated learning and another for those seeking mythic adventures into their own horse/human connections

·  Enthusiasm on both sides of the pond for an extended Journey Horse Australia around Equitana Sydney in November 2011 

·  Possibilities percolating for Journey Horse Ireland on horseback in Connemara or thereabouts in early fall. 

In the meantime, I'm enjoying reading as we approach the winter solstice, words that warm and provide their own light in the long dark nights.  I particularly recommend the brilliant book by David Abram: Becoming Animal, An Earthly Cosmology.   His previous book The Spell of the Sensuous has become a classic of environmental literature.  Now he returns with a startling exploration of our human entanglement with the rest of nature. The Overview says: "As the climate veers toward catastrophe, the innumerable losses cascading through the biosphere make vividly evident the need for a metamorphosis in our relation to the living land. For too long we've inured ourselves to the wild intelligence of our muscled flesh, taking our primary truths from technologies that hold the living world at a distance. This book subverts that distance, drawing readers ever deeper into their animal senses in order to explore, from within, the elemental kinship between the body and the breathing Earth."  You can see why I like this book!  Abram's writing is evocative and rich, a treat for the mind. My own mind delights in this poetry that precedes Abram's own writing:

Voice: the breath's tooth.

Thought: the brain's bone.

Birdsong: an extension

of the beak.  Speech:

the antler of the mind.

-Robert Bringhurst