Flo used to hole up in the woodshed during winter storms, that is where I first encountered her, sometimes she went under the porch. Her life is different now, for the past few weeks she has been living in the farmhouse, she surveys the storms from her cat stand, her favorite perch, when she isn’t in my lap.
How mysterious life is, when I lost all of my photos that I took all morning in the power outage, I was discouraged. Then Red and I went out to clean up and I decided to focus my photos on him, not the dark and brooding storm. I love photographing Red because he has a different expression and demeanor every time we go out. Sometimes he looks ferocious, intense, driven, other times he looks, as he does above, quite regal and composed. Here, everything is under control. He is where he wants to be, the sheep are where they need to be.
He seems to settle into himself, to stay focused but more relaxed. Another face of Red.
These photos are better than the ones I lost. I love this about photography and about life. There is always another moment, another photo, another opportunity to be fulfilled.
There are no simple lives, there are no easy lives, we all have our challenges, struggles, pressures, joys and losses. Today, I suspect few people reading this had an easy day, or for that matter, an easy month. The weather is not my story, it is our story together. Hundreds of people shared their weather on my Facebook Page, it was more riveting than anything ever broadcast on the Weather Channel. Today was Valentine’s Day, Maria and I don’t make a huge big deal out if but we usually give each other something, and talk about love and what it has meant to us and our lives. We like to sleep late, one of us makes the other breakfast in bed.
At 5 a.m., I woke up and slipped a card under Maria’s pillow, then a box with a small Wabi-Sabi (Japanese) necklace in it, so she would find it when she woke up. I got up early, anxious about the animals in the storm, and I knew right away the kind of day we were doing to be in for. It was worse, at that. There was not going to be much spare time. The animals were cold and hungry, unnerved by the howling winds.
We were up before dark, maneuvering into huge boots, jackets, grabbing shovels, buckets of water (the outdoor faucet was long ago buried in ice and snow) from the bathtub, digital clocks blinking all over the place from the power outage the night before. We had been forced out of the bedroom by the howling winds and cold that overwhelmed our infrared heater and sent us to the living room. I had to dig out some wood from the shed – snow had blown in on it and we had lot of wood to haul inside for the hungry stoves. I dug out a path in the yard so the dogs could get outside and do their stuff. We knew our plow man would be a long time coming today, he would be backed up with so much snow, he is only one man, hard-working and inexpensive. I was happy about our Pole Barn, it was dry and safe from the wind, just what they need, all that they need.
But the farm was an arctic wasteland, the gates and roosts and water buckets and cars and driveway buried in tons of snow. Huge icicles hung off the roof, the mailbox was sheared off by a snow plow, the animals trapped inside of the Pole Barn. Two hours later, we were still at it, digging out paths, feeding the chickens, dragging hay out of the barn, staggering through huge drifts. In a few hours, we would do it all again. I suddenly felt bad for Maria, in the way men sometimes do when they feel they should be doing more for their family, giving them more. Maria doesn’t need my assistance to live, but still, I felt a stab of remorse. “Maria,” I asked, “do you like this life we have?”
I was thinking of the other kind of life, the life most people choose to live and are happy with, with plenty of heat, no wood, town snow crews. With no hungry donkeys needed to have the ice brushed out of their eyes, no old farmhouses with eaves swathed in ice, no water or wood to haul, no chickens to feed, barn cats to shelter, sheep to tend to, no manure to muck out of the barn, no winding paths to dig, tight storm windows, doors that don’t rattle in the wind and allow the snow to blow in under them. The mic from the pasture have fled inside, the bats in the attic squeak and flutter in the wind.
We are in an 1840 farmhouse, it needs lots of fixing up, we will be awhile getting to fixing in up. I am so tired today, everything hurts, my electric company texted me and warmed me, at my age, to stay inside and not shovel show. Nuts to them, I shoveled all day, Maria knows better than to suggest otherwise, and there will be more tomorrow. My heart did not mind, my legs and back and feet surely did. I wondered, briefly, on this Valentine’s Day, if Maria didn’t secretly wish for an easier life, a different life, a life with fewer-back breaking chores, and as hard as I worked today, she worked twice as hard. I was happy about the feet warmers I bought her on Amazon, they kept her warm. I suppose that was my real gift on this Valentine’s Day.
Maria looked shocked when I asked the question, as if I had proposed flying to Mars. “I love our life,” she said, “every day of it, every minute.” And she picked up her shovel and went out to start the long process of digging out her buried car, then to dig a path to the woodshed so I could get to the wood easily. I went off to replace the bird seed the ravenous birds had just emptied, chipped away at a mound of donkey manure frozen to the barn floor. The wind picked up, snow swirled all about us, and I knew Maria was telling the truth, she does not ever lie, or even know how to do it.
I love our life too. Today was as hard a day in it as we are likely to have in our lives, barring some awful thing, and it is not over yet. I think often of the lives out there that are harder than mine today. Tomorrow, we will meet George Forss and Donna Wynbrandt for lunch at the Round House, a Valentine’s Day lunch we meant to have today. No chance today.
I used to live that other way, in that other kind of house, storms meant nothing to me, someone else took care of almost all of it. I don’t ever wish to return to it, this is my life, my destiny just as much as sheepherding is Red’s and I can’t imagine a better Valentine’s Day gift than the love of someone who wants to share it with me.
Someone posted a message on Facebook under a photo of Red in the photo saying “poor dog, he must be sad running through all of that snow,” and I am sorry she could not see Red and know such a dog, to know just how happy and fulfilled and joyous Red was to be out in that huge snow, plowing through drifts that would have stopped me and many dogs cold – Lenore could not get it through. He couldn’t wait to get out, to stay out, to come out again, as usual, he was so helpful to me, getting the sheep out of the Pole Barn, down the path to their feeder.
Red is fulfilling his destiny, just as happy to be living his life as I am to be living mine. I suppose this is what we share. Sad, no, Red is not ever sad working, not in the rain, the cold, the snow, or the heat.
The new superstorms, one after another, raging all over the country, month after month are challenging in so many ways. For me, and for anyone who lives with animals, there is a particular, sometimes very painful responsibility. Last night, when the power went out, I realized I had not filled a half-dozen buckets with water from the tub, I we would have no way of getting water to the animals out in the pasture, without power the heated water buckets would fail, the tubs would freeze.
We are also conscious of wind driving snow vertically in a storm like this, it blows through barnyard cracks, it blows into the Pole. Snow and wind are a dangerous combination for some animals, donkeys and sheep are quite hardy, but storms present a number of challenges. How will they get to the water buckets? How will they get to the feeders? Do they have shelter from the driving snow and ice, from the wind? If these new giant storms challenge us, surely they challenge animals as well and they challenge the people who own them to be prepared, think ahead. I think we need a generator of this storms are going to continue, the animals need heated water in the winter.
We are re-thinking our roost, this kind of cold and snow can overwhelm even the most carefully constructed roost, high winds can penetrate even well constructed wooden shingles and planks, I am reluctant to use heat lamps, they cause awful fires sometimes. We have to think about all of this for next year, if there is money, I want to think about a frost-free pump so that we don’t have to haul buckets all winter, and the animals will always have water.
The scope and depth and ferocity of this storm caught us somewhat by surprise, that isn’t good enough for animals. They need food and fresh water and shelter, even and especially in the face of these new kinds of storms, which seem a regular feature of our lives. I am sorry so many of our political leaders choose to remain in denial about the weather, I can’t afford to do that, my donkeys, sheep and chickens deserve better.
