We went to Crystal Hill, where local people have been pulling small crystallized stones out of the ground for generations. I do not ever find any, Maria seems to know where they are, she bends down and gently touches the soil and comes up with beautiful stones, most of the time. I love to walk ahead of her – to give her time and space – and the dogs and I sit down by a stump or a rock and wait for her, or i will try and take some photos of the deep woods.
She has the kind of focus and concentration that I lack, I do not have the patience or eye for this kind of work. The dogs and I sit and watch – we all love the same woman – and after a few minutes, there is an exclamation, a sound, and she gets up and holds up a beautiful stone. I think she is a pagan, she is of the earth, she has a special kind of feel for it.
I love going to Crystal Hill, I love watching Maria find these beautiful stones, some end up on our windowsills, some in her quilts, some on her desk. She gives some to her friends.
One interesting thing about this photograph is that the sheep are lying down in the sun and the feeder is nearly full. That is the sign I look for to know when it is close to the time when we stop bringing the hay out at all and let the sheep and donkeys graze for their food. The grass is not quite high enough yet, and we have fenced off the pasture on both sides of the house to give it a chance to establish itself over the next few weeks. My guess is we will stop putting hay out on Saturday or Sunday.
The donkeys and sheep can graze behind the Pole Barn or out beyond Lulu’s crossing. We are still filling the water buckets because the ewes are all bred and due any day, and we don’t want them to have to go too far to get fresh water. Speaking of lambs, it is past time for us to see some. We must have been slightly off in our calculations, they must have been bred a bit later than we thought.
We know from the vet’s ultra-sound machine that four of the five ewes are pregnant, we saw the lambs. Sometimes in April was our belief and everyone’s estimate. We have a bit of April left and the ewes are clearly carrying. Maria is eager to see some lambs and so am I. Soon, I think, soon. The udders are down, everyone is bagging up, their bellies are drooping low.
I believe we get the dogs we need and we get the animals we need. I always imagined a Peaceable Kingdom at Bedlam Farm, and most days, that is what I see. I came out fill the water bucket and I saw just about every animal on the farm gathered around to see what I was up to, to get some attention, perhaps some food or a treat. Flo was sunning herself in the middle of the yard, Minnie was by the barn door, the donkeys were lined up at the gate, reminding me that they love carrots, Red was waiting to go to work and Lenore was observing the passing parade. The sheep were arrayed around the feeder, resting, chewing their cuds.
The chickens were off to the left and Frieda was in the house, resting. Otherwise, they were all there.
I believe animals center and calm when they are fed and watered regularly, get attention, are with their own kind, are treated well. You can easily spot an animal who is not treated well, I am channeling James Herriott on days like this, our farm is a peaceful and beautiful place. I stood and soaked up this scene, and it was very good.
The Animal Rights Dance is held in different places, four times a year, marking each season. The dances celebrate the return of animals to the world, after they were so nearly driven from it for so many years.
Once the dance was held in a big stone cathedral in New York City. The big horses walked right down the aisles, their breath steaming, their grateful eyes crying a stream of emerald crystals, their hooves echoing in the eaves, where the wild cats danced with the bats in the moonlight.
Once Spring, it was held on a farm in Northwest Ohio, people brought their cows and goats and sheep and ponies, they rode their horses and came in big wagons, their harnesses were garnished with herbs and fresh flowers. One Autumn, it was in a Church on the East End of Boston, people came in long lines with their rescue dogs and cats, some rode trains and came in busses or sailed there in motorboats and big boats with sails. The dances are held everywhere. One might be held in a banquet hall on Staten Island, or in Central Park in Manhattan or a along Michigan Avenue Chicago. Maybe a ranch in Nevada, or on a hill outside of San Antonio, or a glitzy dance floor on Hollywood Boulevard.
One Christmas, the Animal RIghts Dance were held in Key West, the giant sun setting over a vast flock of chanting green parrots and colorful macaws, as the alligators fled into the swamps.
The dance is open only to people who wish to keep animals in the world and to people who love people and animals both, and pledge to show compassion for both.
The animal lovers come from everywhere to the dances. They are overjoyed to see one another – farmers, rescue people, shelter managers, vet techs and vets, carriage drivers, hunters and trainers, behaviorists, shepherds, animal rights protesters, animal control people, writers, K-9 police officers, movie-stars and breeders, shelter workers, bomb-sniffing dogs, breeders and therapy dogs, border collies, Labs, mutts and a rainbow of mixed breeds, and out in the country, cows in corrals, goats, sheep, rabbits, donkeys and horses of all kinds.
They came in gratitude and in celebration. For the heart is right to cry whenever an animal leaves our lives, is taken from us or hidden away, is never seen again by human eyes.
They begin every dance by giving thanks for the horses, the powerful spirits of the animal world, who were nearly driven from the cities and habitats of man. The Animal Rights Dances began commemorate the great animal revolution, where humankind rose up, after so many hundreds of years of cruelty, indifference, arrogance and neglect, and fought a great battle to save the horses and keep them in the world, to save the last horses in the great city from being driven away, to drive the last cars out of their rightful place, the great park in New York. Statues of the great carriage horses were commissioned – Pepper, Paddy, Scout, Tyson, Thunder – along the paths built for them more than a century ago.
And everywhere, people rose up to save the animals in their homes, their towns, their cities. There is much to dance about.
What is the beginning of happiness? It is to stop sitting in judgement of others, to think you know better than they how they ought to live their lives.
The horses are still the stars of the dances, but there are many animals now. There might be tall and handsome carriage horses, bouquets of flowers in their shiny carriages, horses have always loved to dance, lowering their heads up and down, snorting and prancing and showing off. They people who come testify to their lives with animals: 4-H ribbons, cell phone photos, great rounds of cheese, fresh milk, paintings of the great carriage and draft horses, dog show ribbons, sometimes even the ashes of lost pets, their stories punctuated by tears and sighs. The farmers with their prize heifers, trainers at the fairs and in the circuses, the blind people with their guide dogs, the people saved by the search and rescue dogs, the veterans and emotionally challenged who are healed and loved by their therapy dogs, the children who so desperately want to see animals in their lives.
Are we not the same, after all? Must the voices of those who divide us be so loud in our world, those who would unite us barely heard?
Video screens surrounded the dance floor, free and moving testimonials to the best dog or cat or horse or chicken there ever was on the earth. People poured the images of their animals onto vast websites, where they are shown at the dances, and archived for future generations. The dance floor was ringed with vast tables full of food, the smells were too much for some of the animals, some of the people, they sometimes swooned.
It is a strange and mystical dance sometimes, shrouded in love and mist and memory and loss, but a loving place too, filled with joy and emotion. The Animal Rights Dances are mostly about love and determination- a coming together for the love of animals in the lives of people, a great resolve to never again let them be driven away by people and spirits who war against the magic and mystery and romance of the world.
The animal rights elders – people who have loved animals the longest time – are at the doors to take tickets, to collect anger and argument and shouts and placards and judgment. Put you righteousness in the silver bowls, they say quietly. They ask everyone to put their rage and cruelty in a cup, they are exchanged for money and put in the Animal Rights Dance Collection Box. Everyone brings a gift, a photo or pie or box of cookies, a potluck supper, a story or poem, or photo of their dead dog or cat or horse, they line up for hugs and pats.
“Dear ones,” says the card handed out at the door, “get all the blame out, end the mental squabbles that clog the brain!”
The dance was an instant success, from the very first one, it quickly became a sacrament in the sometimes hard and painful lives of the animal people, anxious and spent and bruised, they came for healing and support and understanding and encouragement from the other people who understood their lives and the lives of animals, they spoke a language beyond words, an understanding beyond consciousness. They talked about money, loss, health, bills, their work as missionaries to keep animals around, and figure out how to pay for them. They all had stories, they all wanted to tell them..My Brandy, My Susie, My Harold.
Lessons of the animals: every morning, I accept my life, I squeeze a drop of compassion into my eye.
At the dances, they meet in small groups, hey talk about giving true rights to animals, most importantly the right for them to live alongside of us in the world and never be forgotten and discarded again. They talk of giving rights to the people who own and live with them and love them – the freedom to live their own lives, make their own choices, live in different ways. To never again be attacked and have their lives threatened and invaded by strangers and government officials who knew nothing of them or the animals they claimed to be saving.
And one day, in the great city, the new mayor himself came and spoke.
“Let us pray,” he said. “Let your good thoughts become your beautiful dog, your favorite horse, the once-in-a-lifetime cat you will always miss. Cultivate your mind and heart to its most compassionate and generous depth, he said. I am here for all of you, I want to be the leader of each of you, I work for you all, we each walk on our own path, go our own way, love as we can. We all do the best we can here. My friends,” he said, “let compassion be your beautiful lover, the captain of your soul. Everyone here is deserving of it, every animal, every human. We are here together, united in common purpose for one thing: to make sure that the animals stay in our world. We have learned,” he said, “that you can never help an animal by hurting a human being.”
The new mayor, known everywhere and much beloved, was greeted with a great cheer, at the first dance he swore he would be the leader of all the animal people, he was not there to judge, or to tell people how to live, or to use his great powers to frighten or intrude on the private lives and decisions of law-abiding people, or take their lives or work from them. He had kept his word. He forced the rich developers in the great city build a great and beautiful stables for the horses in exchange for land, it was a drop in the bucket for them. He found a green pasture in a vast park by the water for them to walk on, he closed off lanes of traffic so they could regain their rightful place in the park and be safe, he banned the cars and trucks and busses from the park so they could be safe.
The new mayor understood that the people needed animals in their lives. He brought horses to each of the boroughs, to visit schools, to help troubled or needy children, to haul vegetables to homes and give rides in parks and along the ocean. To drive the elderly to Church on Sundays. He brought sheep back to some meadows, and goats for milk, and chickens for eggs, and one by one, the animals returned to the urban areas of the world, they have so much work to do, they were much- loved and needed by the people, they healed them and enriched the imaginations of their children. He even – this was once only to be whispered – saved the elephants and brought the circuses back to the park and also to see the poorest people in the city.
All the grudges and hurts and sorrows have now passed. I breathed in a poisonous feather, that finally fell out.
And so the new mayor had become the leader of they a mighty movement now, all over the country they began working to stop the real horrors facing the animals, to close down the corporate farms that never let the cows walk on grass, were working to shut the corporate slaughterhouses where chickens and pigs never got to stand up or turn around in their lives. They were working to make it illegal to sell the meat of animals who had been cruelly treated, they had stopped the slaughter of so many thousands of horses, kept the carriage horses in the cities where they had worked for so long, kept the ponies who gave rides for children.
Before the dance begins, the pilgrims are called to the pulpit to get their praise and rewards. The old woman who brought her pony to schools so the children could ride them. The man who took his Labrador to the ocean every month so he could dive under the waves. The circus brave enough to bring back their elephants. The women who rescued a frozen dog from a snowdrift and brought him to life. The border collie who visited the lost souls in the veterans homes. The farmer who refused to sell his cows to a big and greedy farm because they would never see grass again. The Midwestern mayor who told the people of his city how the animals who became their fast food were treated, even though he knew it might be his defeat. The widow who bought sheep so her border collie could fulfill his destiny. The couple who saved a big old draft horse from the slaughterhouse auction and drove him into the city each weekend so he would work and live and earn the money for his hay.
Let common sense rule whenever you sit down with others. Leave your guns and arguments in the field, they might otherwise go off.
Before we dance, said the mayor, I want to say to all of you that we have come together to work together for the sake of the rights of animals in our world. For the real rights of animals. We missed them, we need them back, we will keep them. We honor them by respecting one another and the different ways in which animals can be loved. Compassion, he said, is nothing more than empathy, not just for the animals, but for the people who care for them. We all do our best, we all have the right to walk in our own paths. In our movement, we are one. Thank you all for coming together.
At the end of his speech, the great carriage horses led a parade of animals through a great call, a wondrous procession of dogs and ponies, cats and goats, elephants and lions, sheep and alpacas, cows and donkeys, a great symphony of grunts, barks, brays, baaahs, trumpets as the humans cheered and stomped their feet and clapped their hands.
Don’t worry, shouted the dancers, we will not let sadness and righteousness and anger possess you. We will borrow all the gold and faith and goodwill to get you back.
There is no person, no dog, no animal, the new mayor said, who is not invited to the dance on our beautiful crystal floor, a million stars twinkling in the skies. Let us rejoice, he said, the animals are returning to the world.
And a million songbirds began to sing, and the angel chorus beat the drums, and the great line dance began to make its way, the end of the Animal Rights Dance, until the next season.
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Do not keep the angry game going. It will steal all of your wealth.
