A Little Walk on Different Terms

It has finally dawned on me that I have been working hard to keep from learning a lesson that our dogs have been teaching with equal force and persistence.  Tir and Nia are inside dogs.  Yes, we live on an acreage where I know they would dearly love to run free.  There are trunks to christen, rot to roll in, unusual scents into which their snout would love to burrow.  There would be the unbridled exhilaration of stretching the legs and moving full throttle.  For a few of those very reasons - along with the additional reality of hostile teeth and sprays and claws potentially behind any bush - we keep them inside or, otherwise, leashed.  That, and we are cautious and protective to a fault.  When they do go outside the trip is primarily utilitarian.  There is need for exercise, to be sure, but their bodies have other needs we prefer them to satisfy outdoors.

They are, in this sense if in few others, well-trained.  When the urge makes itself known to one or the other of them, he or she will take up position by the front door.  We take the hint, gather up the leashes and proceed outside and down the driveway.  It needn't take long.  Besides, I have other things to do.  Call and response.  A biological liturgy of need.  Down and back.  Mission accomplished.

But that is precisely what rarely happens.

They sniff.  They circle.  They stretch to the full length of their recoiling leashes.  They explore.  Tir routinely seizes the opportunity to lay on the driveway or the road out front, roll over on his back and signal his desire to have his tummy rubbed.  He never extends such an invitation inside.  It is a ritual confined to the driveway or the road; if coerced, perhaps just off the gravel, on the grass.  Nia, for her part, is busily locating any morsel - a fallen walnut, a deer dropping, or a clod of potting soil - to chew and swallow.  This, for her, is a culinary treasure hunt.  Conspicuously absent from any of this perambulation is bodily relief.  We have made the trip outside for this singular purpose, but it is only accomplished after my patience is exhausted, as demonstrated by tugs and verbal harassment and much stomping of feet.

It has happened yet again.  Tugs, barking (mine, not theirs), coercion, bribery.  Finally, and only at the last remaining second of my patience, business.  And then, suddenly, it finally made sense to me.

Early in my life, when we would visit my grandparents who lived in a sparsely populated rural patch of south Texas, we would spend hours rocking and gliding on the expansive front porch.  We watched cars passing on the state highway just across from the old school.  We reminisced.  We waved at acquaintances turning onto the county road heading further off the beaten path.  And eventually, almost every afternoon, my grandmother would suggest, with eager and childlike enthusiasm, "Let's go for a ride!"  It being my grandmother, we would, of course, comply.

A "ride" simply meant piling into the car and driving county roads out in the country and farm roads back into the brush simply to see whatever there might be to be seen.  There was no pinpointed destination, nor predetermined time frame.  We drove until we were collectively ready to return home.  On foot, it would be an "amble".  In the car it was a "ride".

The dogs, I have finally comprehended, have simply borrowed a page from my Grandmother's playbook.  Business - purpose - is secondary.  All this time, I have been leashing up the dogs for a utilitarian strike.  They have been going on a jaunt.  For me, the steps are functional.  For them, it's all about excursion.  Bodily need versus exploratory event.  And they mean to wring out not simply their bladders but the fascinating possibilities of life itself.

It has taken me awhile, but I am finally learning.  Even in winter, with a chill in the air and snow on the ground, there is still plenty to see and smell, plenty to romp th
rough and peek beneath, never mind my numbing fingers and face.  Not so numb, however, to prevent a smile.  I might just take off in a run, and roll onto my back in the middle of the road.  Maybe Tir will rub my belly.

If not that, at least relax, and walk, and see what might be there to see.

A Melancholic Coup in the Coop

You always seem to be the last to know 

Man, that's just the way that the story goes 

There's nothin' you can do when the fields have turned brown 

Man, you have to face it it's a young man's town 

     It's a young man's town 

     Full of young man's dreams 

     All God's children gotta learn to spread their wings 

     Sometimes you gotta stand back 

     And watch 'em burn it to the ground 

     Even though you built it, it's a young man's town  

----Vince Gill

Sam was a surprise.  The two Mottled Java chickens arrived at the farmstead three and half years ago, already 8-weeks old, and we presumed them to be the two laying hens we had purchased.  When, a few months later, "Samantha" began to crow and strut in proud display of much more ornamental feathers, "Sam" was undeniably born.  Despite this unintentional introduction to our flock, SamtheRooster remained and settled in - into the flock, to be sure, but more surprisingly into our affections, as well.  He handsomely patrols the yard.  He alerts the hens to take cover when ominous wings beat overhead.  And he is, well, quite fond of the ladies.  At least when he is feeling himself.  

Last winter, Sam struggled.  When the polar vortex settled over Central Iowa, Sam suffered.  Indeed, every morning when we released the chickens we expected to find him dead.  He spent the days in a stationary stoop, silently, hunched over despondently near the coop entrance like Willy Loman returning home each evening in "Death of A Salesman."  We eventually diagnosed some frostbite - understandable in those sub-zero days - but the problem seemed a deeper, more existential ennui.  Nonetheless, Sam soldiered on.  Then, as if on Easter's cue, Sam revived in the spring.  His posture returned, along with his prance and patrol.  When his libido likewise returned with disconcerting verve we knew that so had the "Sam" of old.  

Meanwhile, baby chicks were growing in the barn - one of whom revealed itself to be yet another unintentional rooster.  A Blue Copper Maran, "Gallo" eventually gained admission to the larger flock along with the other youngsters, and Sam quickly put Gallo in his place.  Let no one, least of all Gallo, be confused about who was in charge.  Since summer, they have benignly co-existed.  

Until a couple of weeks ago, when a tectonic shift began grinding out a new landscape within the flock.  Gallo, having patiently bided his time, began to intimidate.  Sam began to cower.  More than once I looked out on the yard and witnessed the former standing atop the latter, pecking the older rooster into submission, or chasing him into the "freshman" coop, or variously harassing Sam into the lower reaches of the pecking order.  Then, two days ago, I watched Gallo chase Sam across the chicken yard and over the fence.  

A coup in the coop.  

A violent overthrow.  

Sam hung around a few moments, but when I looked over awhile later he had vanished.  Twice during the day I vainly searched the acreage for the humiliated bird.  Absence, along with the presence of my own disquiet.  Evening came and suddenly there he was; in the front yard, a safe distance from the coops and Gallo out back.  Lori maneuvered him, against his will, inside the fence and eventually inside one of the coops, but we knew something would have to change, to match the change that had already occurred.  

Yesterday, while Sam remained safely confined with a couple of hens inside the JV coop, I reestablished a segregation fence around the freshman coop - a subset of the larger chicken yard.  I gathered up the de-throned rooster in my arms and relocated him to the safety of the smaller enclosure, along with a couple of hens to keep him company.  We'll see how it goes, and if it will go on indefinitely.  He has his space, his remove from the hassle, companionship and food, shelter and water.  It remains to be seen if he has contentment.  We have long talked about subdividing the chicken yard and establishing a kind "Shady Rest" for aging chickens, given our aversion to retiring them to stews.  It never occurred to me that Sam would be the first resident rocking on the front porch.

This morning, releasing the flock from the safety of the night, Sam toddled happily down the ramp along with his roommates.  That, in itself, is encouraging.  In recent weeks he has been the last to emerge, remaining sequestered some days for hours.  He has been out and about within the narrower confines, moving, pecking, and watching on occasion the sky.  If it feels like exile to him, he doesn't seem to resent it; happy, for now, to be free of the bullying.  I feel for him, though.  It's tough to watch the fields turn brown on the other side of the fence; and live, the old man, in a young man's town.

Still,  I'm watching.  For my part, I have led a privileged life, blessedly free from the torments of bullying and blithely ignorant of palace intrigue.  I've endured none of the pecking order dramas of the chicken yard, notwithstanding the usual jostlings of professional careerism.  And yet I'm not getting any younger; and though happily retired and meaningfully engaged in satisfying pursuits, the view is...different from this side of the yard.  Perhaps Sam has wisdom to share - 

about patience, 

about resilience, 

about adaptability, 

and about the acquiescent embrace of changing times and terms.

Perhaps.  I'll watch and see.  

In the meantime, the King has moved to a new address.  Long live the King.

 

The Already, and the Not Quite Yet

After a tumultuous tug-of-war, the seasons have reached a kind of detente, establishing a fragile "demilitarized zone" between the crisp mildness of autumn and the bitter cold of winter.  While shoveling and parkas have been prematurely pressed into service, it is too soon to store the short sleeves.  It snows, but it also melts.  We've had our milky clouds, but also our melting sun.  Every day is a surprise, but the suddenly slowed motion after a few tumultuous weeks enables a closer attention to the subtleties of change.

The leaves have fallen but the grass remains green.  The ornamenting pumpkins have sunken into themselves, but the solstice remains weeks away.  The bare ground in the chicken yard oozes underfoot with yesterday's rain, but hardens with the overnight freeze.  It is a seasonal, climatic alternation between "neither one" and "both/and."  Nature, indifferent to the ambiguity, goes about its work with patience and equanimity.  Autumn and winter, like our two beloved dogs, may tussle on occasion, but more beloveds than adversaries, they will eventually work out the transition to their mutual satisfaction.

I rather enjoy these ambivalent days of no longer autumn and not quite winter.  There is yet space for gratitude unencumbered with mittens and balaclavas.  We can walk without bracing; work without layering; collect the mail without counting the cost; drive without death-gripping the wheel.  We have shopped and decorated and made plans for the holidays ahead, with the sense that it's all premature, even if the calendar disagrees.  It's quieter, but yet lively.  We've moved deeper inside ourselves, but the soul is still actively hunting and gathering like the busy squirrels outside.

Studying in school the major periods of time, I remember wondering how everybody knew when the Middle Ages ended and the Renaissance began.  As if the character of the world shifted with the calendar's fresh page.  As if "poof," we've moved on.  I know now that it doesn't happen that way.  Life is "fits and starts."  Change is both slope and plateau.  There would have been signs that something tectonic was shifting, but surely the labels followed a rearview assessment rather than a morning's discerning view.

On a more local scale we were certain that winter had descended a few weeks ago by virtue of a series of sub-zero days and snow.  And we were certainly wrong.  The birds are yet present, though their eyes are glancing south.  The wind has not settled on the north, though it is leaning in that direction.  My thermals and flannels are near at hand.

But not quite yet.  These are liminal days with their own stories to tell and their own wisdom to teach.

Like patience.
Like humility.
Like the sense to prepare but the mindfulness to indulge.
Like gratitude.
Like the centering grace to take nothing for granted.
Like a few more glorious days in between.

Fall will fall away, and winter will settle down around us.
But not yet.

Not just yet.