In the Animal Kingdom
I think I’m now vegetarian. Or mostly vegetarian. Vegetarian unless my body tells me that I REALLY need to eat some meat. It’s been almost two months, though, and besides a single ham sandwich I haven’t had the inclination to eat any other animal protein. It’s been sort of a gradual transition, over many years, but I can’t say I’m missing my old ways.
I’ve always been a little weird about meat - and I remember as a kid, crying because I just didn’t want to eat it. I was definitely a picky eater early on, and my parents had neither the time nor the resources to cook me separate meals so I just…found a way to get it down until it became habit. But I’m realizing that I never REALLY accepted my carnivorous side because I’ve never been able to eat meat if I cooked it myself.
I almost made the transition back when I did my horse massage course. I remember working out a knot in a horse’s chest, feeling the muscles relax and lengthen under my hands. I then realized that, were the horse a cow, I would have just been working in the area a butcher shop would call brisket. Bleh.
I guess I’m just continuing my journey of listening to and honoring the feelings I feel instead of squashing them - and this was a feeling that was REALLY squashed down in there. In resurrecting it, though, I’ve gained a little freedom. See, we watch a lot of cooking shows and I’ve always had to turn away when it’s meat time - but no more. It’s like, now that I know I won’t be forcing myself to eat it, I’m good to watch people prepare/eat meat. I think what I’m feeling now is called being true to oneself.
This whole thing has been on my mind in part because of the way our lives have become even more animal-centric since the horses arrived last week. This was no surprise - you add two more four-legged souls to the mix and the balance shifts farther away from the human. But, in all honesty, I’ve seen all of our animals emoting in new and interesting ways these past few days (or maybe I’m just becoming more aware of their shifting feelings).
The horses are on what’s called a track system - basically just a fenced area with another, inner, fence. The horses live between the two fences, roaming in great circles to find resources like food, water, and shelter that are distributed around the ring. It helps simulate the way that they might roam in the wild, though on a MUCH smaller scale.
For Cirrus, this has been great. He showed up, starting searching, and hasn’t stopped. He did spend his first two and a half years in the wilds of Wyoming, so this whole concept is second nature. Paloma, however, has struggled a little.
She was gathered at only a few months old and, from then till now, the things she has needed have largely been delivered to her. It’s gotten SO much better in the past few days, but for the first few, she was MAD. Mad that the hay was in slow feeders. Mad that she had to walk so far (like, 100 feet) to get to water. Mad that all the food wasn’t in one place, but instead spread out at several feeding stations. I did my best to help her out, show her the way, make sure she was never overly hungry by providing easy snacks throughout the day. But there was a simmering grump that I’ve never really gotten to experience with an animal.
A particular instance comes to mind, where I went to replace hay in one of the feeders (keep in mind that there were three others, with plenty of forage available to her at the time). I made the walk down from the hay shed to the far end of the track, carrying my hay bag like Santa with his sack of toys, and hung it up. Paloma was following (having seen me carrying the FRESH hay) but hadn’t made it to the feed station before I started heading back up the track.
In this situation, Cirrus would have continued on, with a bright and curious look on his face, to see if anything had changed at the feeding station. Paloma did not look. She saw my now-empty hands and followed me back up to the top, pinning her ears and swishing her tail and generally letting me know I was the most-awful-human-ever for playing this disappearing trick on her.
I did my mucking chores while she continued to grump at me until, finally, I was fed up with her giving me the horsey middle finger and walked her yellow butt back down to the hay station. About twenty feet out (aka, the place where she decided not to look before) I stopped and just pointed at the deliciously full hay bag. She crankily took a few steps forward and then - lo and behold! She got close enough that she couldn’t miss it. She was immediately all sunshine again and trotted the last few steps before beginning to happily munch.
As an introvert, I am still in awe of how comfortable she felt telling me EXACTLY how she was feeling AND how easily she was able to go from one emotion to the other. Her feelings (and the energy behind them) were so strong that I think I could have felt them even with my eyes closed.
The other big feeler has been Bisbee, who feels many things all the time (and all of them strongly). There’s her trouble with being in cars, her aversion to baths, the absolute terror of having her feet handled. I believe all of these things are related to her rescue - being put in a car and driven up from New Mexico and then being cleaned up for adoption photos, etc. All appear to be traumatic experiences she had in the eight short weeks of life before she joined our family - things that now color the way she moves through the world. I am proud to say that I don’t think she’s had a truly bad experience with us, before this week.
But this week, she got shocked by the electric fence.
We knew it would happen (though we tried to prevent it), and when it did it was terrible. That one shock had her afraid to be outside. Afraid of me (because I happened to be standing near her when it happened). Afraid of the horses because they were there, too. She spend the better part of two days curled up in the bathroom, as close to behind the toilet as she could get. Because she was still eating and drinking, I mostly just let her be - offering comfort when she wanted it, space when she didn’t.
Having been accidentally shocked by the fence myself, I can attest that it hurts…but this reaction was still much greater than I had anticipated. While she has since bounced back magnificently, her vibrant little self shining brightly once again, I’m going to be thinking about her vacant PTSD eyes a lot going forwards. Not so much how I can prevent her from having scary experiences, because sometimes life just presents them, but more how to help her recover herself more easily.
When not out back with the horses, we’ve been out front working on something really amazing for the garden. It’s not done yet, but with some help from our first house guest (who is here now and will soon be put to work!!) I think we might get it done today. Our bare root apples are in bloom and I’m seeing what a jewel this little corner of the property will someday become.
This particular project hasn’t been a smooth process - in fact, after taking this photo we realized we had spaced all of our posts incorrectly and had to pull them OUT and repound them back into the hard clay soil. Ouch. But we’re doing a lot of learning and getting some new upper body strength - so maybe it’s all a win in the end anyhow?
Yesterday morning, while we were working, we heard a commotion in the shed - the dogs chasing something through the dark, dusty corners. After shooing them away, we found a baby robin who had fallen from its nest in the rafters. Eric, being Eric, swooped in and scooped up the scared little peeper, climbed a ladder, and deposited the little poof back where it belonged - all the while telling it how cute it was and telling me that he loves animals.
I have wondered many times over the years how he and I work - because in so many ways we are SO different. And then I see him do things like nonchalantly saving a baby bird and it’s very, very clear. He’s just one of those people who brings great heart and generosity into the world - and this was just another small miracle proving it so.
And now the art check-in…because all of that madness above is what becomes making in the studio. Every experience informs the process - the how and the why. Last Monday I made something just for me, because it was time, and then I began pulling stones to share with you. Soft, gentle greens. A few bright bursts of blue and orange. Kindness and yearning and freedom and questions and understanding in a pallet of potential. I’m thinking July for the next collection. When it feels done, I’ll know.
I also pulled out my leather tools, which may seem strange after the way this post began. Life is full of contradictions I guess - but vegetarianism aside, leatherwork still feels ok to me. Exciting even. It’s is such a beautiful, living material in the way it shapes and falls and that’s what I felt I needed this week.
Building off of an idea I had in January, I dove into a project that has shifted and changed and been informed by the past few months. I picked some wild flax growing outside the back door and got sketching. Watched the design blossom. And then - set to tooling. Can you imagine this beauty, soft and warm-colored with turquoise in the center, hanging from your shoulder and resting on your hip? I can. I’ve got many hours left to sit with her, before she’s finished, but imagining the treasures she’ll carry sure makes the time fly.
