Day: January 10, 2015

For the past year or so, I have watched at horses have moved into our lives, work and consciousness. Before I began writing about the New York Carriage horses, Maria took riding lessons and began to explore a growing connection she felt for horses, as well as dogs and donkeys and sheep.

Then I got into the horse controversy in New York in earnest, writing about them many times this year, and researching their lives and history. I also felt a powerful connection to them, I believe they have been communicating with me, calling me and others to their side in their struggle for relevance and survival in New York and elswhere.

The horses have awakened me to the narrow vision and rigid ideology of the animal rights movement in America, which increasingly seeks to remove domesticated animals who are not pets from our lives. The horses remind us that what animals desperately need is support in remaining among us.

Maria and I have pursued this new interest in different ways and on different tracks.  We both loved Rocky, our blind Appaloosa Pony, Maria especially became attached to him. We have become friendly with a number of horse people, often visit Blue-Star Equiculture, the horse rescue and retirement home for work horses, in Palmer, Massachusetts. Maria has become attached to one or two of the giant horses, and is planning a visit to the farm for a week in February. My interest is mostly in photographing them and writing about them, I am not drawn to riding them.

Maria does want to learn how to ride them, and I believe she is thinking about eventually having a horse on the farm.

In New York, I met Chief Avrol Looking Horse, the spiritual leader of the Sioux Nation and a peace activist and  horse defender. He told me the horses had prayed for me to come and speak with them, something that is hard for me to accept but I have come to feel must in some ways be true.

I watched her today with Chloe, a rescue pony at Ken Norman’s farm. Eli-Anita Norman, Ken’s wife, gives riding lessons and she and Maria were talking for some time, but that is for Maria to write about. I think this is something deep in Maria and I want to be nothing but encouraging about it, I think it is a natural, empowering and beautiful direction for her.

Maria’s love of animals is very deep, it is perhaps part of her faith, along with her art. She has much love to give, I have seen it again and again.

You might recall Nikoline, the Bedlam Farm Barn Fairy, she has grown up a bit, she is eight now, and we saw her today at Ken Norman’s farm – Thornwood Farm – she was riding Jesus, who used to be a Bedlam Farm donkey. He is living at Thornwood with his mother Jeanette, who was also at our farm. Four donkeys were too many for us – Jesus was a happy surprise. They are Nikoline’s beloved donkeys now, and she and her friends ride them all over their farm. She has lost none of her charm and charisma.

We went to see Ken Norman, our friend and farrier, at his Pawlet, Vt. farm this afternoon, we also were very happy to sees his wife Eli and daughter Nikoline (the Bedlam Farm Barn Fairy) as well. We brought soup and bread.

A little less than two weeks after surgery that replaced both of his worn-out knees, Ken is home.  He can stand up on his own and walk with crutches. He skipped a rehab facility and is working with nurses and physical therapists at home and in nearby Manchester. He is climbing up and down the stairs in his 200-year-old farmhouse, driving his very patient wife nuts,  and is as grumpy and irascible as ever, which is a nice thing to see.

I think of Ken as a kind of strong and giant Care Bear, he can sound like a grouch but he has an enormous heart and has saved many horses and donkeys and bailed out many a horse and donkey owner. It has been clear – Ken and I are texting buddies – that he has been in enormous pain for days,  that is beginning to ease somewhat.

My plan is to take him out to lunch in a week or so, he is already getting a bit stir crazy, although he is busy with his Iphone and Ipad (Steve Jobs is smiling down on him), texting his friends, managing his gofundme crowdsourcing site, which has raised nearly $31,000 dollars in three weeks to help him get through the next three months, when he will be without any  income.

It cannot be easy for this restless and hard-working man to be still for so many days, and his rehab will be long and difficult and painful. Ken has worked in great pain for more than a decade, he said he pulled over to the side of the road more than once and cried in anguish and wondered if he could live in such agony for much longer. Soon, he will be in little or no pain at all, and back at the work he has devoted his life, to and thanks to so many of you good people, he will not have to worry about his farm and family and horses either.

Ken is much loved by many people – he helped save Simon’s life and worked hard on his twisted legs, and has been a friend to me for a decade or more. All kinds of good people – horse and animal lovers, good samaritans, friends and farriers, rushed to his aid when he said he needed help maintaining his farm and family – and more than 30 horses, many of them rescues- during his recovery and rehabilitation. It is easy to forget how good most people are, we so rarely hear about them. They are plentiful.

Ken took one of my photographs to the hospital with him – I was humbled by that – to hang on the wall. Maria and I got a tour of the barns and pastures and saw some of the beautiful horses there, many of them rescues. It is a big and expensive operation there – tractors, medicine, round bales of hay, machines to remove manure. Wonderful to know that it can continue and be safe through this cold winter.

Ken has received the money he asked for, and he will not ask for more, but I know that any additional money he receives will be well and wisely spent. He is stoic, but I know he has some hard days ahead. But he is doing well. Seeing Ken was a great way to end a challenging week, it was just wondrous to see him up and moving around, looking strong and it will not be too long before he is out trimming some hooves. Good news for lots of animals and lots of animal people.

Tableau at the feeder, early this morning. Donkeys and sheep feeding together, Red keeping watch, Zelda watching me, she is the guard sheep, a scene. What’s next, I wonder, for all of us, for our farm?

On Saturdays, I try and let Maria sleep late, she is a chore-obsessive and I have to sneak out of the bedroom with Red to go outside. If she wakes, she will jump up and rush outside to help. This morning, she was exhausted, she slept soundly. I went out and it was cold. Red did not notice.

I wonder what the neighbors make of this strange man running around the pasture in his nightshirt or robe. Maria does this for me on weekends if I am not paying attention.  I realized as we went out that it was exactly a week ago at the same time that we noticed that Simon was not eating – a first for him, and a few minutes later I saw the strike strike him and knock him down.

Thursday night, Lenore died and her death crashed my website and shut down the blog and touched as deep a chord as I have ever seen struck in my life with animals. As always, I was surprised, I live in my life but do not always see it. Many thousands of people took the trouble to post comments and sent messages and talk about how she touched them. Many thousands more watched from a distance.

Lenore was the most cheerful of spirits, she brightened every space she was in, I always told her I thought she had an engine implanted in her tail, it never stopped, even at the end.

I was proud of telling the story of these wonderful creatures in words and photos, in a way that touched people, it is, after all, what I do. I must have done it well, I thought, for so many people to care.

This morning, when I went out to the cold pasture,  I went to the gate with carrots for Lulu and Fanny – they are starting to bray – I felt Simon’s absence, there was no bone-rattling bray to greet me and get the day going.  He always paused for a hug or kiss on the nose, and loved to try and grab some of the hay in my arms and knock me off balance. Before going out, I whispered for Lenore to come downstairs and eat, she needed no second plea, but she was not, of course, there. It is in the small things, I think, that you feel their loss.

Time is a cleanser, too. I want to remember Simon, but there is already no trace of him, even a few yards from his grave. The donkeys and the sheep gathered at the feeder peacefully. They were hungry and gentle this morning, Liam even stood and visited with Red for a few minutes, there was a sweet truce before Red turned and said enough, get back to your flock.

It is hard for me to believe it has been a week, it seems like yesterday. Time is a powerful thing, it lives in it’s own dimension, it heals and rushes along, the river of life. It pulls me forward, and challenges me.

There are so many things to do. What a lucky old man I am: Make love, write books, take photos, talk to friends, feed animals, plot and scheme for the next chapter of my life, an ongoing story that pays no attention to time and does not walk for too long in lament and struggle and loss. On Tuesday, off to Disney World, then back home to face taxes, the winter, the crisis and mystery of life. I am grateful for it, all of it, so happy to have the chance to live and to feel so many things. There is nothing like being human, of the gift of feeling so much, my heart is no longer broken, it feels so much.