We think Liam was injured, bitten on the back, perhaps stomped by one of the donkeys – it would almost surely be Simon – who may not have recognized him as a sheep. He is trembling, breathing heavily, back in the barn in a stall. We treated wound, a deep scrape and have separated the donkeys in a separate pasture. Complicated stuff.
Pumpkin, the second lamb, is doing well. Maria is preparing to away for most of the week to Gee’s Bend, Alabama, an important trip for her, a great thing for her to do. I’m just awakening to the idea of her being gone for four days. It will be hard for both of us, good for both of us.
Next Sunday, I am going to New York City with Maria.
A friend asked me why, and I said I wasn’t quite certain yet. I told her I am going because a Native American Chief named Arvol Looking Horse, 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred white Calf Buffalo Pipe of Peace, has asked me to come and believes I am an answer to his prayer. He has been calling for help to preserve the broken connection between horses and human beings that is being challenged in New York City.
Chief Arvoll is speaking before the United Nations next week, before he does, he is holding a ceremony for the horses and for peace in Central Park on Sunday, May ll, from 6 to 8 p.m. I will be there, Maria is coming with me. I’m bringing my camera too.
I said I want to go because the horses have been talking to me, calling for me to draw attention to their desperate plight, to help keep them from being exiled from their long history of working with human beings and in human cities. And I am going to stand with the carriage trade owners and drivers, because the people the horses work with are being cruelly and unjustly treated. People in the moral community ought to stand alongside them. My friend blinked, and just said, wow, as in who are you, really?
There are times when one is called upon to define themselves, to decide who they are really are, who they wish to be. Next Sunday will be one of those times for me.
The horses, I believe, are calling attention to the deep wounds of Mother Earth, and the violent and cruel ways in which human beings have broken their connections with one another, surrendered their empathy and humanity to principle and ideology, and hurt one another in perpetual mistrust, anger and conflict. If our ties to the horses have been broken, the horses are calling the rain and the thunder to show us that we are a broken people as well, we are destroying our world.
The chief is calling forward a special blessing honoring Mother Earth and the Horse Nation at the Cherry Hill Fountain in the park. All are welcome. Animal rights demonstrators have already said they will be coming to the gathering – it is World Peace And Prayer Day – to protest the existence of the carriage horses in New York City, and to demand that the horses be banned.
Chief Arvol is aware of my writings on the carriage horses. He wants to speak with me about them. We may walk together through the park or ride together in a horse carriage. I am eager to meet him, he is a reknowned advocate for animals and a revered spiritual leader as well.
This is all curious stuff for an author living on farm more than 200 miles from New York City. I do not own a horse (I had one), I do not want a horse, I do not live in New York City, I have no influence or power there, and am not seeking any. I have never had any involvement in New York politics. I could not be farther from the power circles there. Yet it seems I have a powerful connection to the story, to the danger facing the horses, I am drawn to writing about the cruelty and hatred of human beings – from each other, from the natural world, surely from the horses.
I am connected to Chief Arvoll in ways I do not understand but hope to grasp better when I meet him. In a statement today and distributed online, Chief Arvol wrote “today the Horse Nation is being dismissed as having no worth any longer in this Society. There is no-where for them to roam free and in places where they feel they have worth along with humans, they are being dismissed and replaced.”
That is very much the story in New York, a place where the horses have history and worth and good care, and where some of the wealthiest and most powerful forces are determined to drive them from New York, claiming that the work they do is cruel and abusive. They say the horses have no place in the great city any longer. There is so much at stake in this conflict, if the horses are banished from the New York, they will disappear to rescue farms or slaughterhouses, they will never again return to work in partnership with human beings as they have for thousands of years.
The very idea of animals working with human beings will suffer and continue to be challenged all over the country by people who favor ideology over animals.
I believe the Chief is right, I have been called by the horses to speak for them somehow and to write from my heart that they do belong in the city, in all of our cities, not just on rescue farms. The carriage owners and drivers alone have kept our human connection to these wonderful animals, they are the only ones who have kept the ancient promise and found work for them to do. I believe I am also called to give voice to the great injustice being done the human beings who are the horse’s keepers in New York, who live and work with them and love them and care for them.
The people seeking to exile the horses seem to see them in the narrowest of ways, as piteous creatures in need of rescue from human beings. They are much more than that, they have great worth and place in our lives. I believe the horses in New York are awakening the people there to the great loss that would be felt if they were driven from the city.
I was uncertain about going to this ceremony, I am outside of this struggle, removed from it, it is not my work or my life. I am busy, we are lambing, it is always expensive to go to New York, not a good time for me to go. Yet this is both my work and my life in so many ways. I am grateful to Chief Avrol for his acknowledgement of work, for asking to meet me. Maria felt strongly that I should go, and so did I, in the end.
The old stables in New York City are sacred ground in the history of these animals, they are their last refuge there, the last connection the people there have with the natural world, and with the great horses who have helped human beings grow and survive and prosper on the earth. They have every right to be there, anyone who loves the earth and who loves the animals who live there are called upon to honor their worth and to respect their right to be in our world, amongst, sharing the joys and travails of life.
The work animals have done for and with people marks perhaps the greatest and most glorious chapter in the history of the human-animal bond, it calls our for respect, not contempt. The human beings who work with the horses call out to us to, they remind us of what it means to be a human being, to live in uncertainty, to be subjected to cruel and unreasoning assault, to be free and choose a way of life.
Chief Arvol refers to the Horse Nation. He is aware, as horse and animal lovers are, of the tragic irony of taking 220 large and healthy and beautiful horses away from their good care and sending them out into the great equine diaspora – 155,000 horses being sent to slaughter in Canada and New Mexico every year. A newspaper in New York reported last week that it would cost $20 million for rescue farms to feed and care for that many healthy draft horses for the rest of their lives, assuming there were places for them, assuming their owners would send them there.
And a number of rescue groups have pointed out that it would be a tragic mistake to displace horses who are being well cared for, thus taking so many places away from the many horses who are needy.
The question for us is worth. Do we value these animals and their work with us, do we wish to preserve animals in our world, our lives, our cities. Supporting that idea is a very good reason alone to go to New York. Talking a walk in Central Park with an Indian Chief is not bad either.
The animals at Bedlam Farm learn quickly about cameras and videos. The photoshoot is a part of life here, and Liam picked it up right away, this morning he and Susie obligingly posed for the first official photoshoot at the farm, Maria with her Iphone video. Went well.
Susie brought Liam out into the world this morning to meet the other members of the flock. A bit of sniffing, some circling around and Liam was voted in. It is not hard to get accepted for membership into a flock of sheep. It looked neat, thought.
This was Liam’s first morning out of the stall. We brought him out to meet the donkeys, he was carefully sniffed. One of the donkeys – we think it was Simon – might have nipped at his back later, there was some blood on it, a scrape. We are putting the donkeys in the side pasture for a week or so, letting them see the sheep and get used to them. Simon is intensely protective of the farm, as we learned with Rocky. When Liam gets bigger and more mobile, he’ll just blend in with the other sheep. Simon has done this before, to Red, Minnie and of course, in the worst case, to Rocky.
The real life of real animals. Liam is fine. If Simon wanted to kill him he would have.
