artbeco
The hills are turning green
The woman made her crazy plans.
In 1928 D.H. Lawrence published a short story called ‘The Woman Who Rode Away.’ It was written at a time when he was ill with the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him. Like so much of his work, it’s about somebody—a woman—who wasn’t willing to live a complacent life. Somebody who needed a larger life in a larger world.
Of late, to break the monotony of her life, she had harassed her husband into letting her go riding with him, occasionally, on horseback. She was never allowed to go out alone.
Never allowed to go out alone into those timeless, mysterious, marvelous mountains. Never allowed to be alone, in fact. She was never allowed to be anything but a wife, anything but a mother. Never allowed to be herself.
But she had her own horse, and she dreamed of being free as she had been as a girl, among the hills of California.
Free among the hills of California. And so she packed a bit of food, filled a canteen, saddled her roan horse and set out with no destination in mind, according to her crazy plans. Any place she wasn’t allowed to go, that’s where she was headed. Any place that extinguished monotony. After a day and a night and another day of wandering she encountered some natives, who were shocked to see this woman in the mountains on her own. “Where are you going?” they asked.
“On ahead,” she replied.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
