Old friends are like favourite books. You can read them over and over again and never get bored with the plot or the characters. When you move around a lot, as I do, those friends take on even deeper meaning. They’re not only entertainment during the good times and a shoulder during the bad, they ground you somehow in a way your unfamiliar location can’t. They remain a constant in your ever-changing time-space continuum.

I just got back from a nostalgic trip to England with two friends I first met in 1978, while training with horses on Exmoor. We’ve remained firm friends, though live thousands of miles apart. They are both from the United States and one hasn’t been back to England in thirty-nine years. We visited our old haunts, reacquainted ourselves with the local cuisine—that would be cream teas—and brushed off the cobwebs of vague memories. Was that hill so steep back then? Oh, what was her name? Are you sure this was the place? Remember when …?

We attempted to relive our glory days on horses. We used to be able to ride fancy dressage moves and fly over fences. Let’s just say those days are gone. Despite the aching muscles and weary bones, it was still great fun. On our last day in England, we met up with another student from the old days; one who’d gone on to great success in the equestrian field. We were jealous as we wondered around his beautiful stables and stroked the noses of majestic horses.

What if? What if the three of us had stayed with horses? What if we’d stayed in England and stayed young and stayed …? Just stayed. Doesn’t matter. We didn’t, and we all gained new lives and interests and homes and families and friends. It all turned out as it should. But, boy, do we miss the old us at times.

Our worlds collided on Exmoor, then we splintered off into space. We got one delightful chance to reconnect almost forty years later in a place that will remain in our souls for life.

Exmoor and us. Changed, but the same.

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