Send the Rain

I milk every morning, every evening. And when I do, I set the milk down just outside the gate because I need my hands to close the gate. And in doing that, I always take a moment to look, to try to really see. I live in the most beautiful place in the world. People work all year long to take vacations to places less beautiful than this. That view there is literally breathtaking. I’ve never been able to actually capture it in a photograph -- it is too big and I’m not Ansel Adams. I can do small work with photographs but I don’t know how to do the large landscapes. People see the very large horse on the hill and think he is a rabbit -- the photographs make everything smaller that way.

But the mountains fold back from that gate in the most perfect way. The first hill a bald knoll with a cedar on it, and a curve so sensuous. In the bottom cleft of that hill the ironweeds and joe pye weeds are blooming now. The mountains behind are forested. The sky always changing the way skies are, last night grey and cloudy with a large moon rising (I was late milking and the moon full). Often at night there is the call of a screech owl. I know its tree by the back creek. This is the moment I remember to breathe, my moment of emptiness. Every morning, every evening.

If I could leave a mark on the world, I think I wouldn’t. In fact, if I could, I would erase some of the marks I have made. Still, I’ve probably done reasonably well at leaving only footprints. Ok, so I happen to wear jackboots sometimes. The next rain will wash even those marks away and that is good.

Hopefully last night’s rain will encourage the turnips. And some of the beans. The other day the cow smashed my finger on the gate and I thought it broken but thankfully wasn’t. Half the first batch of hatchlings succumbed to an outbreak of coccidiosis last week -- hated that. The second hatch was successful (24 live a week later), and the third batch is in the incubator. The cow still isn’t bred. The donkey still isn’t ridden. All that needs mowed still isn’t mowed. The wood shop is almost a shop again, many of the old damp boxes that have been cleaned out of there were burned before last night’s rain, the smoke like prayers to the heavens. I delivered pizzas of peace for supper tonight -- the wheat in them came from Montana and that’s the furthest anything on or in them came. I really must get out of the house a bit more but I feel like I haven’t got my land legs or something. We have three of the cutest puppies in the world -- half Aussie and half bad boy dog. Speak if you even think you might want one, they need good homes. The girl has sapphire eyes, both the boys are perfectly marked and well merled, all of them are thoroughly childrened.

And it is almost time to milk again.