I caught this farm on Route 30 in Salem, N.Y., and it spoke softly of Spring, the late afternoon light – photographer’s light – hitting the sides of this farm, buildings all laid out in a symmetrical row, freshly tilled fields filling the air with a rich and loamy smell.
This is the first photo I’ve ever taken of a deer. I have to be honest, I don’t care for deer. The are, to me, the rats of the natural world, tick-bearing pests who are plain and not especially interesting. I am in a minority in this. Most of the great spiritual writers love deer, their simplicity and vulnerability. My wife is fond of them. Thomas Merton spend hours just watching them and reveling in what he saw as their spirituality.
I see dozens, sometimes hundreds of deer every week, but on the new farm, they are visible every day, they come out behind the farmhouse to graze in the woods and open fields. I saw this one grazing out through the woods – I saw the donkeys staring at her, and I was carrying my big lens, the 300 mm and was drawn to capture this very pastoral and quieting scene. How do you photograph something you don’t like?,” I wondered. Simply, I thought, simply. There is something beautiful to me about this image. So today, I took my first photo of a deer.
The farrier’s work is physical, brutal, dirty, wrestling with large and anxious animals, bending over constantly, hands pressing hard on heavy medal instruments. I am grateful to people like Ken Norman, they make it possible for people like me to own animals like donkey’s. I could never come close to doing this myself and would not long survive. Ken has suffered bruises, sprains, broken limbs. He shrugs them off.
My dog Red is a wonderful dog. I believe in spirit dogs – they come for a reason, and leave when they are ready. They enter your life and mark the passages of time. They open me to new experience. They walk with me on the hero journey. Red has been with me less than a year, but he has entered my life fully and completely. His purpose for coming here has not yet been revealed to me. Orson brought me to Bedlam Farm, Rose helped me to live there, Izzy brought me to hospice work on the edge of life. Red is fully present, but his purpose here is not yet clear to me. I eagerly await for it to be revealed.
Ken Norman was one of the first people I met when I came upstate and his visits are like seeing family or an old friend. I enjoy knowing Eadon Ryan, Ken’s apprentice and a savvy young farmer from Pawlet, Vt. with his own donkey and beef cows and chickens. Ken has been showing Eadon how to trim hooves and the two of them seem like father and son sometimes, they are close and easy together. Ken is generous about sharing what he knows, and Eadon is a very unusual man, he is content with himself, smart and curious. He always has a lot of questions about our animals and our work, and he also shares what he knows – which is a lot.
There is a comfortable and honest chemistry about these two, and I thought how great it is for someone like Eason, who is bright enough to do whatever he wants, to dream of his own farm rather than a Wall Street money warrior job. And how lucky he is to find someone open enough to teach him this ancient work. Eason plans to spend much of the summer working with Ken and also building a sugar house so he can sell maple syrup. I’ll put up a photo album later today.
