Two Hours On Dartmoor is a short film of a ride from Widecombe-in-the-Moor up to Pil Tor. This was my second time on the moor with Russell, a beautiful brown racehorse-cross-highland pony.
I’ve called the film Two Hours On Dartmoor because that’s how long the ride was, even though the film is five minutes. I wanted to capture how time passes in a flash when you are in the Otherworld.
We were travelling over open moorland much of the time and I let Russell choose the path as much as was feasible.
I deliberately filmed most of it down his shoulders to the ground and on the path just in front, which is a view I tend to take as a rider.
I wanted to create a feeling in the viewer of being in a private world with a horse. The amazing views impinge only briefly – all concentration is within this horse-person circle.
I am interested in ideas of cross-species collaboration and seeing how I might explore this with horses.
I explored some ideas about horse domestication and its cultural meanings in a piece for the Dark Mountain anthology 13, Being Human.
Sara Hudston is a Dorset-based writer and photographer who focuses on the living world and spirit of place. She writes fictions and non-fiction and is a regular contributor to the Guardian’s Country Diary. https://sarahudston.co.uk
Photos and video © Sara Hudston 2021.
I took the memory of this and the other videos/ works with me on my day in the woods, on the beach, in the lanes- walking the dogs, riding my ponies, listening to Ali Farka Toure in the car.
The beat of feet, paws, hooves…put me a kind of trance…
The message from your works to me? “Rhythm/ body as transport into place/self.”