Happy Chinese New Year!

Peace and Health in the Year of the horse!

2014 is the year of the wooden-horse, as the Chinese say it's a year of sudden victories, unexpected adventures and unforeseen romance (article on the "Year of the Horse in the Epoch Times)

My dearest personal associations with Horses:

It's one of my Dad's memories he often told us when we were kids:
When he was a young man he worked on a farm and he was responsible for driving the horses from the farm to the grazing lands.
Like a cowboy he would ride himself on a horse chasing the herd over the fields.
As children he encouraged us to draw and would sit together with us drawing the most amazing galopping horses on huge tapestry paper-sheets that we would then fill with dinosaurs, whales, anything that we could think of.

I later received Rien Poortvliet's book on horses for Christmas which is still one of my all time favourite books and which inspired me to take riding lessons myself (my efforts were stopped though by the time the heaviest horse in the stable would land her hoof on my foot...).

My favourite musical piece related to horses is James Horner's "Ride of the Firemares" and in the days before Howard Shore's Soundtrack for "The Lord of the Rings" it would be our substitute for a musical theme for the riders of Rohan that we put on mix-tapes with an imaginated "Lord of the Rings" Soundtrack.

A most inspiring year of the horse for all of you!