Last Sunday John and I walked the path around Rithets Bog in Victoria. When I was a girl in Royal Oak, in the late 1960s, early 1970s, I’d ride my horse above the bog on the fields of Broadmead Farm. I had permission, though I can’t recall who granted it. The only requirement was to lock the gate after entering the fields. I remember how it felt to gallop my horse up the long golden slopes, sometimes rousing pheasants, sometimes surprising a slumbering cow. I remember walking our family dog at night on the ridge of hill between what was Royal Oak Drive and the Pat Bay Highway, the scent of the bog heady in starlight. If I walked him at night, I could let him off his leash — he was a crazy animal who came to us from some desperate situation and although he liked us well enough, he wasn’t reliable around others: he’d bite, he’d chase cars, he’d disappear. But somehow the walk at night gave him freedom and after half an hour or so he’d return to where I sat on rocks, watching the cars on the highway, smelling the turned earth of the potato fields below. Once I saw a snowy owl settle in a Garry Oak with something in its talons. Last Sunday I remembered these things, saw the fields as though the corner of a curtain was pulled aside, though everything is so changed, big houses everywhere, businesses where the rocks once were. And that dog has been dead for decades. My black horse too. But now, listening to Van Morrison, I am there again, riding through oak meadows, waiting for the dog to return.
Have to slip away in the evening when the sun goes down
Over the hill, with a sense of wonder
Everything’s gonna be right on a Friday evening
All the cars go by all along down the ancient highway
And I’ll be praying, I’ll be praying to my higher self
Don’t let me down, keep my feet, keep my feet on the ground
Note: the photograph is from the Saanich archives (I think?), dated 1966. The lines are Van Morrison’s, from his sublime “Ancient Highways”.
...Theresa Kishkan 
You’ve reminded me of my horse-riding months in northwestern New Brunswick, always accompanied by a long-haired German shepherd who stayed with the horse at all times but could not be approached by a human. I haven’t been on a horse for more than 40 years! But that pony took me places I’d never have gone alone. -Kate
I feel the same. I rode my horse all over Saanich peninsula, swimming him at Island View beach on summer mornings, on what were then rural lanes but are now busy roads. A very different world, seen from a horse.