Oh how I've been enjoying the free days at home with absolute no timetables at all. First I spent a day reading "Life Lessons from a Ranch Horse" by Mark Rashid. I found the book so inspiring and touching that many times I was moved to tears while reading. It wasn't that much about planting seeds of new ideas into the soil of my mind, but more like watering and nurturing some precious insights already growing. The way Mark tells his tales feels to me like an old friend softly chatting about ancient wisdom... And, his book made me think that how often it is so that domestic horses are handled and trained from early on in such a way that they aren't allowed that much opportunities to show their intelligence nor their true emotions - they lend us their speed and strength, and we treat them bit like machines made of muscles. Well, of course I'm exaggetaring a bit to make my point clear - if and when we allow the horses to act according to their inner soul, we might also begin to see them showing their depths to us. (And, most often when I write about horses I'm at the same time thinking not only of horses as animals, but also as a metaphor to the animal side in us humans, too. Our instincts, our intuition and our non-verbal wisdom).

In the morning of Christmas eve I filled up the bath-tub in my garden. I lit a fire under the tub, and went with the horses for a peaceful walk along a small forest path. When we returned I briefly took the horses back to their pen. I quickly fenced part of the yard - so that the bathtub was left inside the new fenced area. I took a cd-player outdoors, and placed an old cheap video camera on a garden table. Listening to the last album of Mariska & Pahat Sudet I went to open the gate to let the horses out to the yard. I took a bottle of mulled wine - a swedish style glögg - and enjoyed the warm bath. The horses are naturally bit afraid of smoke and fire, so at first they didn't dare to come so close to me. I had pieces of dry bread to encourage them. Velmu was curious but chose to stay farther away, eating dry hay. I simply held my hand out with a piece of a bread, sipped the glögg and enjoyed the relaxed feeling. Slowly Raiku made it closer and closer, until she finally picked the piece of bread.

From a horsetraining point of view my idea was to offer her an experience that it is nice and OK to come to me when I call her, even if there are fearsome elements like smoke and fire - and in such a way that I'm putting no pressure on her, she is free to choose to either stay away or to come enjoy the bread I offer. And, from a purely personal point of view, my idea was just to enjoy the moment and spend good time with my horses, feeling like Pippi Longstocking - living my own life the way I love it, instead of just blindly following the supposed standards of a lower middle class. I remember when I was a kid living in a small village there was a rather strong sense of social control - everybody was supposed to behave according to his / her social class. And, as our father was a production manager in a local big company, there was an extra pressure for us. No matter what we did, we were always "sons of Mr. Lehmus". Oh well, I guess that was one of the reasons why I so liked characters like Pippi Longstocking or The Moomins. It was only that I believed they are just fictional tales for kids - but luckily enough in my adult life I have found out that nothing prevents me from making those tales come true in my daily life.

With these thoughts I spent a good while in the bath. Feeling the water getting warmer and warmer as there still was a fire burning under the tub. Sipping the glögg, and slowly getting more and more relaxed, listening to the music and watching the horses hanging around. I was already out of dry bread, but Raiku decided to come to greet me. She walked next to the tub, I let my head hang over the rim of the tub, and felt her softly breathing into my nostrils. For a moment we shared breath, she softly touched my mouth with her lips and went on minding her own business. And in the background the cd-player was playing one of my favourite tracks, "Kukkurukuu", which is an empowering piece about recovering from childhood traumas. Oh dear! Later on, when the water was almost too hot for me to stay, Raiku came casually next to me, poked her head near my armpit and enjoyed drinking the hot water with long, unhurried sips. I sipped some more of the glögg, again with some tears of pure joy in my eyes.

Today, so it seems, it has been a year since I published the first entry of my blog. I remember that before I started I was thinking about the idea for nearly two years. I had already found out that when I openly write about my life in facebook, it tends to spark a lot of good discussion in the comments, and occasionally people asking me to write a book. Similarly, every now and then someone in the Unreal World Forums would ask us to write some real-life stories about handicrafts or traditional skills. And myself I was interested in combining some philosophical ponderings with a diary like entries of my daily life. Somehow the idea just didn't feel sharp enough in my mind, and I was going through all kind of techical stuff in my mind. I'd like to thank Sami, who greatly encouraged me just to start writing. After all, it is digital content, so it will always be possible to re-organize the material as needed... So, here I am, still feeling that I'd like to improve the menu system, organizing different blog entries under some indexes and so on, maybe having a fb-style like-button. My ideas are slowly getting clearer, and I guess I can do the programming required. Or, I'm trying to say: Great thanks for all of you who have been following and writing feedback even though the whole site is pretty much still under construction and there is a general feeling of unfinishedness.

Well, I have always been interested in writing, and as a teenager I dreamed that I'd like to write something like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which would be widely read, a touching and inspiring story about finding Love and Light inside ones soul... Well, later on I have developed some healthy modesty, and nowadays I'm not interested in getting a huge number of readers. For me it feels more convenient to have a handfull of people reading and possibly getting some inspiration from my writings. With a smaller audience it is possible to maintain a more family-like atmosphere, getting personal feedback and becoming friends with some of the regular readers. I'm looking forward to getting some of you visiting here, be welcome!