I saw today more clearly than ever before the very powerful symbol that is the tale of our two barns, one being taken apart, the other being reborn, both right alongside one another, sharing the same pasture for more than 150 years. This is, in many ways, the symbol of my life, of our lives, Maria and me. I see the old and collapsed barn as the fearful, closed and lonely side of me, and the new barn as a testament to life and renewal. Clearing out one, restoring the other. Everyone working on the barns feels it, sees it. This is why we needed to come here, to give rebirth to life, ours and to this much loved and lived in old farm.
You could not train dogs to do this, at least I couldn’t. I walked out of the house and the three of them were sitting together in the light staring across the street at something. Red, of course, turned to look at me. I thought of a dog bus stop. These three know how to make a photographer happy. All I had to do was whisper “stay, stay, stay,” and lift the camera.
Reinforcements arrived from the Common Sense Farm, a nearby religious community. They work hard and do good work and they want to take about 30 per cent of the old barn and use it for their farms and help me burn or remove the rest. They will work at an hourly rate and I think we can make a good size dent in getting the collapsed barn out. I am thinking creatively and frugally about work, something I never quite learned to do.
Maria and I were both touched yesterday considering Rocky’s struggle to make sense of the changes swirling around him. For 15 years, this blind animal has lived alone in his world, his pasture, following paths known only to him, one to the stream, one to the good grass. He had worked out his eating and hiding places and lived without shelter or much human or animal contact. He was much loved but, as happens to the denizens of the world, he was caught in a web of circumstances he never understood or controlled.
Rocky’s world is changing. There are people outside of his stall, trucks coming and going, sawing and hammering. His paths are blocked by fence posts, wire mesh, debris from collapsed barns and debris. Yesterday, he walked out of his barn and walked right into one of the posts being built for the new pole barn, where he will spend time. He was stunned, disoriented, turning back and forth and then walked into another one. In a few minutes, he had figured it out and was back on his path out into the pasture. But this is just the beginning of the changes for him. More construction, electricians, new animals, chickens, barn cats. We considered confining him for a few days, but I believe that would be much more frightening and confining for him. He needs to move around for his own health too. He needs to see through all the change and debris, and he has enormous skills at seeing and feeling his way, even though he is blind. Perhaps this is why Red sits with him, to show him the way.
Animals are adaptable, and Rocky is one of the most adaptable animals I know. He will figure it out. Hard to watch, though.
I do not see Rocky as a piteous or sad creature, quite the opposite, and his world has changed much more for the better than for the worse, and it will get better still. Yet it was painful to watch him realize that his paths are not the same, and that he needs to find new ones. A projection, perhaps, but I know too well what that feels like, as do many of you.
