We went by their house with milk, this family we've known for some years now, I don't know how many, but mostly peripherally. We have some things in common (interest in healthy food and in growing things), and some things not in common (religion). I always expect friends to be more than this somehow. But when Pat died, suddenly and unexpectedly, it really hit close to home. The milk was all we knew to do for them -- their church & family would do the rest.

But I feel so much for them, for their loss. We stood on the porch talking. She told us how it had happened. She said she was comforted by her faith but she was stomping her foot at God about it anyway. I do not share her belief system and yet somehow I know her God can take her foot stomping. It made us both smile.

And I had the most amazing feeling. Sometimes there is no "other", it is all same-same, there is no separation.

I am not one who believes that we all really deep down believe the same thing. I don't actually have a problem with someone thinking I'm going to hell; I really don't feel the need to convince them otherwise. We believe (whether this is religious/spiritually or the things we believe about people or about how the world works or ought to work) very different things. And these different things lead to different actions which lead to different results. It isn't all the same just like a Twinkie isn't the same as a carrot.

Standing there on that porch, holding her hand, with a gulf of different spiritual beliefs between us, we were still same-same. I still love her, and I feel like she still loved me, without any need to make me smaller or less for our differences. And I am glad she has her beliefs and is comforted by them.

The funeral is Saturday. I don't like funerals, mostly for their religious content. But I wouldn't not stand up for him.

I also think our goat is going to die. That has nothing to do with this and yet everything. Work is less joyful because I feel betrayed by my boss. The road is badly washed out. The roof leaks when it rains hard. Is the new old van going to quit too? It is just one of those times. But I look at Pat and Deb and I know they struggled just to find a piece of land, to put roots to a dream. We could pull back to this farm, to only this farm, and I am happy here with these people and have plenty to do and plenty I am interested in . . . but I don't want to give up horses again. How close was I to dying a few weeks ago when I couldn't breathe. Does anything matter? Does it matter if it doesn't matter?

My family matters. My farm matters. Beyond that, I am lost.

The goat is ancient, like 12 or 13 years old. She is the daughter of our first milk goat. I'd always dreamed that we'd always keep her line going and yet, she's still the only one we have of her. We've sold some, we've eaten some, all boys. Of the girls, the bear ate some, and one died from some neurological something in December. I was a bit surprised that she had conceived again. I think she has a kid lying transverse. If the kid is transverse, and if I can't get in and fix that, she's dead. A vet could section the baby and have some chance to save her but this would cost more than a young, pregnant nanny. It doesn't make sense to do it and so we won't. I may not ever actually know what was wrong with her, but I think she's dying.

This reminds me of when the dogs came and killed all the geese. I felt like an irresponsible goose person, like I'd let them down. I feel that way toward this goat, and her line. I've done all I know to do, and I haven't violated my ethical system, but it sure makes you want to violate it. Like having the car break down yet again makes you want to violate it, even when you know a "new car" is no guarantee of it not breaking down. What I get for my ethical system is to be with my family, to know this earth, to not run from my spirit, so many things really.

But what I feel right at this moment is entirely not good enough.

So I'm going to go trim the horse and donkey and other goat hooves. If I don't get all the dishes and floors done, so be it.


(yes, the goat did die, peacefully, this afternoon -- an era has passed -- but the trim work and the house work all felt good)

(I hope some day one of the girls can write about our journey through the woods to the goat today, and trying to help her, and then knowing we couldn't. I think the best of me was there.)

RIP

I am shocked, I am sad, but mostly what I want to say is CONGRATULATIONS Jim old boy! You done good, see ya next time, and you are welcome to haunt here. Lovelovelovelovelove

Mortality

February has been rather quiet I suppose. Frozen, snowy, and when not frozen, muddy. Hard to get much done except the stuff required to stay warm. Oh, we did have two nice days -- they were so welcome. I've thought a lot of thoughts, of course, always do, and continued to watch the economy and the country collapse and be amazed by the denial involved in that.

A girlfriend that I grew up with was found dead in bed the other day. My age. No pre-existing conditions, just had had some stomach flu for a couple days. And not that I'd seen her in 30 years. But still.

Both of my parents died in the last decade, my dad ten years ago this year, my mom two and a half years ago.

So you pull a carrot from the ground, or you chop the head off a cabbage, or you hold a chicken in your arms and it is warm and breathing and then you chop its head off and pluck it and turn it all into dinner: That's how mortality is. Not dramatic. Death scenes are not romantic or heroic; they might be rattling or they might catch you off-guard but they are really daily, like what's-for-supper.

So we die.

But how do we live?

That's the question that I keep coming back to again and again. It isn't a mortality dependent thing. There is no bucket list to complete. But there are questions that include -- are you honorable? and, well, are you honorable. I mean, it is such a trick question, isn't it? I'm not much of a one for dichotomies, but is one more concerned with superficialities or depth? Has one, in one's life, produced more useful stuff than he has consumed? Has one kept one's promises? Done what he has said he would do?

When I think of my children, what do I want for them and how am I providing that? I want them to know how to live with a sense of abundance, but also know how to live small, where abundance is easier. I want them to be able to pursue whatever it is they are interested in, but also be able to support themselves. I want them to know that the secrets of life include butter and not being suckered into debt. I want them to know they are loved beyond any doubting and that they always have each other.

We provide that by, hopefully, living that.

Bear Medicine

It started several months ago. "Have you see [this or that] goat today? [He or She] wasn't with the herd tonight." And we'd all try to recount when was the last time we'd seen that particular goat, and then we'd all spend time on rounds trying to find it or its body.

To no avail.

We had too many goats. More than we like to carry on the place. We only had them because we'd been too lazy to slaughter and hadn't needed the meat. Since they cost us nothing, are meat on the hoof, why not? Well, there are lots of reasons why not actually, but anyway. They started turning up missing.

And I went through everything. What about my management of these goats was killing them? For surely they were dead, even though we weren't finding bodies. Could it be worms? I wormed everyone. Could it be selenium? I bought a block with extra selenium and put it where only goats could get to. Never mind that we'd never had these problems. What else could it be?

When they continued to disappear, my mind went further afield. When you hear hoof beats, it just might be zebras, after all. Those crazy neighbors down there -- could they have something against us and us not know it? Job Corps kids with nothing better to do? Teenagers who bust up mailboxes decided to get more ambitious? It wasn't hunting season and besides it would take an awfully drunk hunter to mistake a goat for a deer, especially more than once.

We walked the perimeter. We studied the goats who were left. We searched for clues.

To no avail.

When Hotsauce went missing, I knew something extra ordinary really was up. He wasn't at all sick with anything, he was big and healthy, he wasn't stupid, he wasn't too young or too old. But what was it? No body. No clues.

The goat who had gone missing before him, the kids had found the body, in the creek. Which I thought was an awfully odd place for him to have died. But a few hours later, when the adults went to check it out, there was no body.

So it could be coyotes. Everyone around here blames everything on coyotes it seems. We haven't ever seen or heard coyotes or any evidence of them. Doesn't mean they aren't here, of course. Our biggest predator problem is people’s loose dogs, but we usually catch sight of them before the mayhem and dogs wouldn’t have been able to get rid of the body like that. They are usually too stupid to actually eat what they kill.

Then one of the twins was there when I milked at night but not there the next morning. As soon as the regular morning chores were settled, I went looking. I took the dog with me. Quite often, if you watch the animals, you can get clues as to what is happening around you that you are otherwise ignorant of. So if you are in a field and you see an animal looking in a particular direction, chances are there really is something in that direction to look at. So I took the dog with me knowing that if she went off in a certain direction that I would want to look in that direction.

I went all through the woods. A goat can just be asleep behind a tree and be nearly invisible so I looked pretty hard but didn’t see anything at all. Well, I did note the likely route of getting firewood out of that particular area. I scanned the back field. I walked up to the rise there so I could see the entire breadth of it. It is hard to describe how you look for something that might be dead because it is just noticing something a little out of place usually. Something dead is close to invisible until you are right up on it usually. Unless the vultures have come already but there were no vultures yet.

I walked down to the creek. I so enjoy our creeks. Someone once said I laughed the way a creek laughs. I hope so. In October in this fourth year of droughts the creeks are low but still delightful and full of life. The creek is rocky so I walked up it. Then I noticed the dog had disappeared. I called for her. She came from the direction of the long flat through the woods just off our property and into national forest. She had a goat sized backbone in her mouth. I knew that wouldn’t be the backbone of the recently disappeared but one that had disappeared previously. I kept moving in that direction.

Then I saw it so suddenly it startled me. There in the creek. Exactly where the kids had said the one they found had been, with a bluff on one side and an open retreat through the woods on the other side. A fully intact goat except that it had a hole in its flank and all its innards were laying about two feet away from it. And all the delectable innards, the liver and the heart in particular, were gone. What was left was all the light colored stuff -- the lungs, stomachs, intestines.

Coyotes would never leave that. Dogs wouldn’t do that. Bear. I hadn’t really thought of bear, but we do live in a bear preserve and we’ve seen them and experienced some loss from them before when they ate our bees. There is plenty of mast for them this year, but since they are fattening up to hibernate right now, small fatty goat livers must have proved quite the temptation.

Our neighbors had complained some time ago about property damage on their place and I would now bet it was this bear. I’d bet he is a young male and I bet his territory is getting crowded up on the mountain. I did find a track, and a trail, which was pretty exciting. We talked to the kids about how to get home if they were out somewhere and ran across the bear -- to not run away but to not challenge him either and basically try to get home and I think mostly they’ll be hanging a little closer to the house until he goes to sleep this year. We will probably need to put an electric wire up along the creek to discourage him from coming onto our property and eating our animals. We hadn’t done that since our animals are not tempted to walk off into the woods. I’m not sure what else we could do. We can’t legally shoot him or trap him and the wildlife people are, well, shall we say, yet more stupid government bureaucrats. The donkey should be a deterrent. A guard dog would be a better one perhaps. A fold to put them inside before dusk should work.

Meanwhile, we still have our biggest strongest goats and they are really the only ones we should have had anyway.

the title has a link to a little information about bear energy if you are interested but trust me, living with it is a holy [sic] different proposition than meditating on it