We were walking through forests and fields in the British countryside of the Cotswolds along a footpath called Warren’s Way. A river poked in and out of the wood, and we passed through gates and across small, stone bridges.
It was beautiful.
Then we came upon a wooden fence. Immediately behind it were three horses, eating the long, dry grass of the field. I heard the sound of the horses biting, pulling, and chewing on the grass, and in a way that has never happened so immediately and overwhelmingly before, I was hit with a bolt of nostalgia.
That sound — horses eating grass from a field — was the background music of the first seven or so years of my life.
It’s a sound buried deep in my bones, branded in my DNA, yet I had no idea.
It was as if a strong, long, vibrant thread had always been there, lying slack, connecting the version of me today to my early childhood, and when I heard those horses chewing, that thread was pulled taut for the first time in a long time.
I had forgotten all about that sound and the multitude of feelings attached to it, but instantaneously, along a footpath in Britain in the town of West Slough, it was back.
Until my parents got divorced when I was seven or eight, I lived on a horse farm, and the sound and smells of horses dominated my life.
That sound in particular, of horses pulling on grass and chewing, transported me like an honest-to-goodness time machine to a time when I was little, my parents were still in love, and I sat atop horses without a saddle, trotting around the ring beside a barn in our backyard.
Beautiful, idyllic days now long gone, but for a moment, here again.
The definition of nostalgia is one of the most apt in all of the English language:
“A bittersweet emotional state, blending a warm, happy fondness for the past with a slight, gentle sadness because those times are gone.”
Yes.
Yes, a million times over.
I felt that feeling — warm, happy fondness alongside slight, gentle sadness — precisely.
I had to travel across an ocean and take a train about 100 miles north of London to the Cotswolds, where, on a footpath called Warren’s Way in the village of West Slough, I stood alongside a field of horses and grass and re-discovered my childhood.
