Here’s Fate’s second herding secret of the night. If you are 15 weeks old, and some of the sheep think they can ignore you and run you over, then just bring in your big brother for a few minutes, they will take off in a hurry and you can run rings around them and work on your outruns. The big man can yell “away to me” when you go on the counter-clockwise side and in a few months, if you are patient, you get to be the one who makes the sheep run fast. They do not ever pick on Fate when big brother is in the pasture.
I’ve decided to share some of Fate’s herding secrets, she is a savvy rascal, she is teaching me as much as I am teaching her. Secret one. When you are small and confronted with large and obstreperous sheep who have backed themselves into a corner and won’t move and don’t think you can make them move, hide in the grass. Don’t run, just make yourself nearly invisible. This will fool them, and when you spring out and charge, the will run off and you can get around them.
In Paul Moshimer’s last message to me before he took his own life two weeks ago, he told me he wanted to come to New York and bring Joshua Rockwood’s horses back to him from the rescue farm where they had been taken. Paul said he would drive his trailer from Massachusetts and there would be no charge.
I was not surprised by the gesture, it was typical of Paul to reach out to people in trouble, he was a master of the grand gesture. He did it without fanfare or hesitation, and expected nothing in return. Paul and I both shared an identification with Joshua, what happened to him seemed so wrong to both of us. Like me, Paul was greatly troubled by the animal abuse hysteria that seems to be engulfing so many innocent people, destroying so many lives, removing so many animals from our sight and our world. It was painful for him to see the cruel, often vicious assaults against the people in the New York Carriage Trade. Like Joshua, they were innocent victims of a new kind of Inquisition.
Paul had read my posts about Joshua and he called me up right a way and said he wanted to help. I believe the turmoil roiling the animal world upset him deeply, I believe it was wearing him down, he talked about it often, he was worried that it would affect me and my work.
I didn’t know Paul that long, maybe a year, but that was how it was with him. I haven’t spoken to my real brother in years, I cannot imagine calling him for help, although I always wished that I could. Paul was my brother from the first, I always knew I could call him for help. But I never had to, he always offered help without being asked,
Joshua’s persecution was not a remote threat, Paul was living it. Blue Star Equiculture, which he ran with his wife Pamela Moshimer Rickenbach, has been targeted for years by people who claim to speak for the rights of animals and who are outraged at anyone who supports the work of animals.
Interns and students who work at the farm have been threatened and harassed and told to hide their involvement with the horses, their contacts have been hacked and published on the Internet, vandals came to Blue Star in the night and opened the pasture gates, Paul and Pamela were frequently accused of animal abuse and torture because they believe in the right of draft horses to work, and the rights of people to work with the horses. And the right of horses to remain us, to keep the bond alive. Every time one of their beloved horses die, enraged people in far away places call the police and demand they be investigated.
It is an awful thing for someone who loves animals to be constantly accused of harming them. Just ask Joshua Rockwood or the New York Carriage Drivers. Or Paul or Pamela.
I can tell you that no horses on this planet live a better life than the animals at Blue Star, that was a passion of Paul and Pamela both. The great irony is that they deserve medals and awards for the work they have done, with people and the horses, the assaults on them seemed almost tragically unjust. I guess they were.
This hatred and tension and suffering of the carriage drivers and people like Joshua weighed heavily on Paul. And all the more so because he felt his distant arrest for assault – he served 30 days in jail in Maine – meant that he felt could not defend Blue Star or the horses, that the farm might be damaged by any association with them. That his past might be used against others, against the animals. He was probably right about that in a way, it would almost surely have been used against him, but I told him the power of the horses is greater than the hatred of small people. I never had the sense he believed me, he knew well what hateful people can do.
So many people, including me, told him that he needed to shed that shame. But he could never bring himself to believe it, or to do it, shame ran deep in him. And then, his legs and hips started to hurt so badly he could hardly walk. A lot for a proud man to swallow.
Yesterday, I went through my final messages from Paul, there were a dozen or so on my Iphone voicemail queue and some more on Facebook Messenger. I will be honest, I suppose I was looking for a clue or some message that might explain why he hung himself, when he had found a world he loved so much. Like everyone else who knew him, I had a hard time believing he wouldn’t have said goodbye when he had spent so much time saying hello.
It’s time for me to move forward now, I will surely be at the memorial services for Paul in July, but I also need to accept that there is no letter for me either, nothing to help explain this, or to help me understand it. I think he trusted me to do that for myself. So I will celebrate his friendship and move on, I will let the people closest to him deal with his loss in their own way, there is no more story, really, for me to tell. I will remember him by telling the great story of Blue Star whenever I can and for as long as they let me and anyone listens.
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One of the messages from Paul was about someone who hated me. Paul called me up one day to tell me that he was very upset that a good friend of his hated me with a vengeance, this man was convinced I was writing about the New York Carriage Horses for personal gain. I told Paul that I could not imagine what that personal gain might be, as I stopped doing paid work for a year to write about the carriage horses, and it did my heart good but not my bank account.
I said he had to let go of his friend’s anger, I learned a long time ago – and he needed to learn it also – that every time anyone speaks from the heart or says any worthwhile thing, someone will hate them for it. That is the way our world works, that is the way the human mind works. A human heart can be big, like his, or small, like his friend. He said he wanted to argue with him, talk to him, explain what he felt was the truth.
Forget it, I said. You don’t need to do that. It will do no good. You don’t need to speak for me. I didn’t know his friend, I said, had never spoken with him, he had no reason to know me, love me or hate me. It did not hurt me, it ought not to hurt him. Let it go.
But it did hurt him, he mentioned it many times. I understood for the first time in that long and difficult telephone call how harmful all of the anger and rage that swirls around the world and the world of animals was to him. I had the sense he could not escape it, could not find a place so safe it could not reach him. There may have been a dozen other things on Paul’s mind that I do not know about , I am neither a psychic or a seer. To go further is the province of Pamela and his many sons and daughters, not of me.I t does haunt me, though.
Can cruelty kill? I suppose so, I don’t know if it killed Paul. It didn’t do him any good.
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The horses Paul referred to in his last message were taken from Joshua in a raid on his farm from him by the police and some people who said they were animal rescuers. A judge has since ruled he didn’t need to pay one dollar for their care, but they are still being kept from him by the district attorney. He may never get them back.
Rockwood is a young farmer selling grass-fed meat to local people. His farm was raided by the police in March, he is awaiting trial on 13 counts of animal cruelty. He is accused of having frozen water receptacles in sub-zero temperatures and of having unheated barns, among other things. Ken Norman, our farrier and a long-time horse rescuer said the charges were all “Bullshit Misdemeanors.”
Paul believed, as I did, that Joshua was innocent and the charges against him were outrageous. He wanted to support him, as he supported me and so many others. He wanted to attend all of the hearings with me, I know he planned to. The last time he came, we had dinner at Panera’s. We each had a turkey sandwich. We were planning the next meal at a local Thai restaurant. Neither of us drank liquor any longer, each for different reasons.
At the court hearing, Paul towered over every one else. The motorcycle riders from the Oathkeepers saw him as a brother and shook his hand and invited him to stand with them. The reporters ignored the scores of people waiting outside and rushed up to interview Paul, so striking in his large frame, white hair and beard. It seems that once you are a Fire Chief, you are always a Fire Chief.
This morning, around 3 a.m., I had a dream, I think. I heard the sheep calling out and the sensor light came on in the yard. I got up, put my robe on and went outside to check, Red came with me. I heard a voice calling to me from the two Adirondack Chairs by the garden. It was where Paul and I sat and talked on his last visit to our farm, I got up early and found him out there taking pictures with his new Sony camera.
“Hey,” he said, “I hope you don’t mind, I have to come this way to pick up a horse.” I turned around and saw his big blue Ford truck and the giant Blue Star Equiculture trailer parked out in the driveway. He had, he said, been driving all night. I didn’t mind. We sat down and talked.
It was very easy to talk to Paul, he was a good listener.
I was so looking forward to going with Paul when he brought those horses back to Joshua, that would have been a triumphant ride. In our distracted and conflicted world, justice is a beacon, compassion a shining light. I read and listened to Paul’s message and it was clear to me now that he was not done with shame. One of his last messages urged me to read a book by Ron Johnson called “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” a book about the mob destruction of lives and reputations on Twitter and other social media.
Paul knew what it was like to be shamed, he felt shame every day of his life for his one great mistake. It cast a shadow over his new life.
This morning, I had this vision in the gray time between darkness and light. I heard a noise outside, I went out in my robe, Paul was sitting in one of the Adirondack Chairs where we sat out and talked at sunrise the night he stayed with us at the farm.
“Hey,” I said, “man, it is so good to see you? Is this a dream? I thought you were gone.”
Paul laughed a hearty laugh, sometimes he looked like Santa Claus, sometimes he looked like a King of England.
“No, Man,” he said, puffing on what looked like a think brown cigar, “that was the dream, my friend.”
Of course, I think, my heart lightening, my soul rising. That explains everything.
I learned a long time ago that smart people don’t need advice and fools won’t take it.
Unwanted advice is, in my mind, a breach of trust to give advice to people who don’t wish it. Maria and I live in a fishbowl, and it is a fishbowl of our own making. We are not recluses who live on a distant mountaintop and are invaded by intrusive paparazzi. We live open lives and share them, and we love our lives.
When I put up a photo of Maria riding Chloe without a helmet I warned her that some people would be upset, and we would hear about it. That is not such a big deal for us, it happens rather frequently, although Maria is new to the fishbowl, I have been living there a good long time.
It is the price we pay for writing and making art, for living in the new world of social media, where personal messaging systems suggest intimacy and friendship, even when they cannot truly exist. I have had an online stalker sending me nasty messages about my dogs, my dog training and my decisions about dogs for years now. She is especially cruel and seems damaged in many ways. I briefly considered trying to stop her, but then realized it was much wiser to simply accept her existence.
This is the background noise of our world, like a train’s horn in the distance, or thunder from a distant storm. We have given up the idea of privacy in our time, the sense of sacred space around our lives that is protected and inviolate, the idea that we have the right to make our own choices and live our own way of life.
One day, I think, we will awaken and see just how much we have lost and how much we have gained.
I sent my stalker to the spam folder instead, she is like family to me now, her messages from the ether piling up in some cloud folder.
In our world, there is nothing one can think or write or share that does not upset or alarm someone, and when some people saw Maria riding Chloe without a helmet, they were quick to message me, scold me and warm me. “What’s wrong with you?,” said one. “Didn’t you read about Christopher Reeves? Make her wear a helmet.” We were setting a bad example, said some, Maria should always wear a helmet. Didn’t I care what happens to her?
Then there are my very favorite messages, they always begin with the same words: “I know you don’t like unwanted advice, but…” Wow, there is no surer way to get me not to take advice than to send me a message that begins in that way.
I had to laugh at this last message, though. If I went to Maria and told her she had to wear a helmet, I would be wearing one soon enough, but I would be lying on the ground, there would be no pony underneath me.
What, I wondered, does it really mean to be sexist in our culture? Does it mean a man tells a strong and independent woman how she must dress, what safety means to her? I think of John Wayne in one of his most popular movies chasing his wife through the town and spanking her for being cheeky. The audiences loved it, they wouldn’t love it today.
Maria is a wise and strong and very sensible human being, I do not tell her what to do, what to wear. And why are people sending these messages to me? Chloe is not my pony, I do not ride her, helmet or no. Maria and I are a couple, we are not one thing, but two separate and independent people. If anybody wants to talk to her, they can send her a message directly, she is apt to be much more polite about it than I am.
And what does it mean to be a strong woman? That you need a man to tell you how to ride your horse or what to wear, and what is safe? I know nothing about riding horses. If it were me, I doubt I would wear a helmet to ride 200 yards on a stable pony on flat grass in my backyard. I would wear one in the woods or out on the road, for sure, I imagine Maria would do the same. It is her decision.
We live in a new world with new ideas about community and friendship. I have nearly 25,000 friends on Facebook and I appreciate them, but are they not friends in the known sense of the world, I will never see or speak to hardly any of them. Do they know me well enough to tell me what to do? Facebook suggests that they do. And there are so many things to warn each other about, this is the golden age of the lawyers. We live in a phobic and fearful culture of warnings and alarms, I remember what happens every time I put up a photo of a dog sitting on the front seat of a car.
Henry David Thoreau took many risks in his year at Walden Pond, his journey and his writings would have had little meaning for us if the year had been safe, if he had followed all of the warnings and the rules, if he had lived in the time of social media. Risks and challenges have defined my life, if I had not taken any, I wouldn’t be her to message, I wouldn’t know Maria, there would be no Red or Fate or Simon or Chloe in my life. I would probably be dead by now, worn out by too many years of working for greedy people with no values but profit and loss.
I love Maria dearly, and would hate to see her get hurt, but I would rather see her hurt than give up the strength and independence that are the foundation of her soul and art and spirit. And I would rather give up my own life than be the person who presume to tell her what to do and how to think and what it means to be safe.
And if I wouldn’t do it, how do strangers sitting at computers in distant houses have the right?
People always tell me when I write about this that I am asking for it when I share my life.What do I expect, they ask? I expect ore, I will always expect more. I always think that is like telling a young woman she is asking for it when she wears a pretty dress to a party. No one has the right to tell other people how to live and what do, unless they are harming other living things or breaking the law.
This, in fact, is the cancer at the heart of the animal rights movement today, the idea that you can drive by a farmer’s fence and invade his privacy and property and inform on him or her and tell him how to treat his animals just because you can. Safety and responsibility, like suicide, are intensely personal issues and decisions. I will never give up the right to make them for myself, I will never take that freedom away from anyone, strangers or the people that I love.
So it is an important thing to write about for me, because we are talking about identity, not about helmets. Identity is by far the most precious thing we have, we an lose it in a stroke or see it die by a thousand cuts. Every person out there who enters my life and tells me what to do is offering me yet another cut. I hope I never tire of calling attention to it.
That is the precious new boundary in our changing world.
Lady Chloe has settled into life on the farm. She hangs around with the donkeys, her very distinctive neigh can be heard when she is looking for them. She is a very distinct presence in the pasture, and she has greatly added to the spirit of the place. Chloe is businesslike, as ponies are. She grazes much of the day – we keep her away from the lush grass so she doesn’t overeat – and she comes right up to Maria or me when we are in the pasture. She takes her carrot and apple and like the donkeys, goes about her business.
She doesn’t need to hang around with people all day. We have learned to be careful about animals and food. The sheep have become pests because so many people have fed them here, equines will eat and move away, sheep are not independent, naturally. Equines need some attention each day, they value their carrot or apple.
I like Chloe a lot. Maria loves her, and the two are very connected. I am getting to know her. She comes up and sniffs me, checks my pockets. She loves to be groomed and have her tail brushed, Maria loves to do it. The farm feels very much alive after this winter, it is great fun to go outside.
