As they readied their horses to ride to the tree where Paul died, Zoe and Brian took a minute to see down and gather themselves and be together. Their faces said as much as any words. I was never very good at being young, I do much better being older, but I have long believed that if our bleeding world is to be saved, it will be the young people who do it. Not the angry old men in Washington and shouting on cable new channels, not the generals in their big offices, not the bankers counting their numbers, not the cruel people who write hateful messages to people on Facebook because they follow their own truth.
If our world is to heal and live in peace, it will be the young people who decide to do it, and come of age. This is the metaphor you can see, a tragedy has opened a door, can fill a void, and not for money or power or fame or the newest devices, but for a better world. A world that restores the broken bond between people and animals, that treats people and animals with care and dignity and respect. You can see it here.
This is what I see when I look into their faces, when I see them kiss and hug the horses, brush them, put balm on their bites and sores, walk them, feed them, show them how to live safely in our world Godspeed to Zoe and Brian, their moment is coming at Blue Star, perhaps for the rest of us as well.
I think it is the young who need our support and encouragement. Joseph Campbell writes that it is the joy and responsibility of aging to help the young, to pass on what we know, to encourage them to learn and seek for themselves. Godspeed, Zoe and Brian, and all of the others like you on your journey to build a better world than the one we have left you.
People tell me I hide behind my camera and my need to watch, rather than feel, and I suppose that might be true. I will not soon forget the gather of the horses at the tree where Paul Moshimer decided to hang himself and end his life. This is something I expect Paul knew how to do, he had been called to the scene of many deaths in his career as a fire chief and first responder.
Pamela decided to take the horses out to the tree late in the morning, she makes her decisions from the heart and carries them out suddenly. In minutes, a dozen people appeared and began scrubbing and brushing the horses, tying their tails into braids, putting flowers and ribbons in their manes, getting halters on.
Pamela insists the horses look magnificent wherever they go, and they did, all groomed and gussied up. it was joyous to see them preening with excitement and anticipation. They seem to love to go out and show off. Pamela, a former Philadelphia carriage driver, said she would ride Piper, a horse she is especially attached to and wear a dress that Paul bought her in New York City after they got married, she said it was the last dress he bought her.
Pamela is a regal presence, she is, like Paul, a commanding figure. The two of them were made for magazine covers and photographs, she hates the term, but they have star quality. She grew up in the jungles of South America, then moved around the United States, and is deeply connected to the Sioux culture and faith system. She is tall and dominates almost every space she is in. The horses walked slowly from the farmhouse down to the pasture where the tree is, they circled it four times, as is the Native-American custom, and then turned inwards towards the tree to say goodbye.
Clearly, the horses sensed the emotion and sadness around them as they turned towards the tree, where Paul was found. They stood still, in silence and respect,and seemed to turn somber, to reflect the mood around them.
When I got home last night, several people called me to ask me if I was okay, and how I felt. I asked Doug Anderson, Paul’s friend and a poet, the same question, and he answered, “upside down and sideways.” A good answer, I thought, to a question that really can’t be answered or even asked.I don’t have that kind of mind. Maria sat quietly at the fire and went into a deep meditation, I was taking in every person, every car, every gust of wind, the fire, the firekeeper’s work, the clouds in the sky.
It seems like a few minutes ago that I was standing in a cow pasture with Joshua Rockwood, the young farmer unjustly accused of animal cruelty and abuse and awaiting trial, and I saw a message from Blue Star Equiculture, the voicemail said it was urgent, I needed to call. I had already gotten several messages asking if I had head the news, but I didn’t know what the news was. I had turned off my phone when I started walking with Joshua. When I called, Pamela came on the phone and told me what had happened, I asked her if she wanted me to come. She said yes, please, Maria too.
The next day, we left for Massachusetts.
That day, I stood in the pasture trying to absorb the news that Paul was dead, I just couldn’t process it. Pamela told me how he had died, and that made it all the more stunning and beyond my comprehension. I left Joshua’s farm, called Maria and the wheels started turning. If you are a journalist and a writer, you learn to detach yourself from things and feel them later.
I don’t yet know how I feel really. I am not a sorrow thief, Paul’s death is not my tragedy, it belongs to Pamela and his family and oldest friends perhaps. Paul and I had gotten close and truly valued one another, but I do not want to steal anyone else’s sorrow, what I lost is not the same as what Pamela and his daughters and the young souls at Blue Star lost. That is an important boundary for me. I feel fine.
My lover and partner is here with me, so is my work, the animals, my blog, my writing and my photos. I have no grounds for speaking sadly of my life. Paul’s loss is an enormous thing, because he was an enormous man, he was a great friend and great presence that carried weight. A difficult space for anyone who knew him to fill. He and Pamela had the gift of knowing how to look, to stand out without seeming to want to, and it helped draw great attention and flocks of people to their farm.
But when I thought about it, sitting by that tree, I found some clarity, some understanding.
Even though Paul always wanted to be a better man, he was very much a man. His life was about being the rescuer, not the rescued, about being active, not helpless, about being powerful, not crippled, about being one who helps the sick, not who is sick, about giving orders, not taking them, about control, not surrender. I don’t know what happened inside of his head, he did not choose to tell me, but I can imagine a man like that choosing not to embark on the path our culture has chosen for older men who once were strong, and are growing weaker and more vulnerable.
I am at the age when people have started opening doors for me and offering to take things out to the car. I have always been the helper, never the helped. I don’t care for it. And Paul was in much more pain than I am in.
If I could not imagine Paul killing himself, neither could I imagine him in a nursing home, or in a wheelchair, or of asking anyone else in the world to take care of him, even if they wanted to. That may seem selfish to many, and perhaps it is, but it is also very much a part of the powerful man. If there is one thing we own in our lives, to which we have irrevocable title, it is our lives.
I believe it is for me to understand, not to judge. In many ways I recognize this searching and intellectualizing as the hiding place it is, it is much safer to observe and consider than it is to let go and feel. I know Maria feels this is the way I have dealt with my own sorrow and pain, my own shame and disappointment. This is perhaps one of the most powerful things Paul and I shared, with were both disappointed in ourselves, felt shame and sadness about some of our decisions.
But I know I lost something too when Paul died, and I feel it, a bit more each day. Each morning, I look in my inbox for his wisdom, his thoughts about my writing, the videos and music and essays he loved to chew over. Each morning, my heart sinks when I see they are not there. And realize that he is not there, and will never again be there.
Paul had to process life in his own truth, and I need to do the same. I will not steal anyone else’s sorrow.
I am proud to be the documenter. There was a firekeeper at the farm the last four days, and if there ought to be a firekeeper, then there ought to be a story teller. To me, one is as precious as the other.
I was standing by Paul Moshimer’s favorite place at Blue Star, the waters behind the farm, the site of a Native-American peace post, and I was surrounded by the people who live and work at Blue Star Equiculture. They were looking at me, listening to me read something I had written for Paul. I was nearly struck down by the power of their faces, almost all of them young, quick to laugh, quick to cry, able to listen.
Paul had taken his life just a few days before, and few people were as hard hit by those in front of me, huddled together by the river.
Watching them, listening to them was a revelation of sorts, I felt it almost physically. Oh, I thought, this is not an end, this is a new beginning. Blue Star Rising, this is their future and glory.
In nature, life and death are one, death clears the way for life, and often makes it possible. These open faces were heartbroken at the death of Paul, he was a father to them all, and a mentor and friend.
So this is what is happening, I realized. The next thing, the Third Way, the hope and resurrection for Pamela and Paul’s idea of the Blue Star. A community learning to live in harmony, restoring the bond between human beings and animals, understanding animals in a wiser and more mystical way, beginning the long and hard process of healing Mother Earth. A better way than the rage and cruelty of the world beyond.
It was right there, looking into my eyes on the riverbank.
If you spend any time at Blue Star, you will also be deeply touched by the hearts and souls of these young people, they are hope and the salvation. They are not saints, they are not perfect, that is too much weight for anyone to bear. But they are special, extraordinary, if you ever doubt the power of animals to affect human beings, you can see it in their lives.
They love one another as they love the horses. There is no cruelty, judgment or competition among them. Trust is their drug. You will not see them with their faces in their cellphones all day, or sending sometimes mindless messages on Facebook. They are not on the left or the right, they are not Luddites. They know technology, but their eyes are looking at one another, at the horses, at the hard work they do every day. They are not planning for their retirement funds or seeking a way to score on Wall Street. They are fighting for meaningful lives in community and nature, and with animals.
And they are very strong.
“We want to live in a different way,” Pam’s daughter Zoe told me. “The culture outside offers us no way to live, we don’t want our lives to be a scramble for money, or to trample people.” Blue Star, she said, is a different way, a life of meaning and freedom and community. It is the answer for them and for people like them, living outside of the circle, yearning for a life of meaning and compassion. A life where people once again live with animals in their everyday lives and learn from them, rather than run and hide from them and permit them to be taken away and vanish.
I asked them if I could try and capture this spirit in a photograph, and they all understood, I didn’t have to explain, and agreed. My work is understood there, and so is theirs. I feel as accepted as they do, and that is as rare for me as it is for them – and I asked Pamela to come and be in the photograph. No, she said at first, this is their moment, they are the answer now that Paul is gone. No, I said you are the answer too, this is the joining together you pray for, the call of your horses, who made it possible, the Third Way. No one is excluded at Blue Star, every kind of person comes there is touched by the wand, is sprinkled with the sparkling magical dust.
And then, there are the mystical horses, I don’t even know how to talk about them, they are the wizards and spirits and guardian angels of Blue Star. One by one, they come up to me and touch their noses to me, and look in my eyes, and I feel something shifting inside of me.
It was a beautiful thing for me to see these young people, they lift my heart, the writer and photographer is almost always intruding and invasive, there is sometimes no other way to tell stories, to document the truth. Pamela took me aside, and she said, “I want you to move freely here, do not be afraid of it, the horses have chosen you to help tell our story.”
After I took the photos, and sat by the fire for Paul, I wanted to help out, I grabbed the manure rake and started shoveling the manure and Brandon, a young man who comes to the farm on weekends and is powerfully connected to the horses – everyone there is – came rushing up to take the rake. As I get older, that happens sometimes. I’ll do that, he said, I’ll take care of that. I want to do something useful, I said. Don’t you know, he said, how much you do?
He could not have seen my eyes grow moist, or understood why I was so started to hear a 17-year-old man – very much a man – say that to me. These young eyes and hearts are the new prophets of Blue Star, Pamela saw that right away, and so, I know, did Paul. In our last talk together, in my living room a month ago, Paul said he hoped I would continue telling the story of Blue Star, and of the young people who flock to the farm and see a better future than the one the world has chosen for them. I thought it curious that he would ask that, I understand it better now perhaps.
The Native Americans often sing of the Blue Star, the better way, the new beginning. We must, they say, restore the bond between people and animals, especially the horses. We must learn to live in harmony, or perish together. This is the magic of Blue Star, it’s power and importance. You can see it coming together there, you can see a future that is possible for human beings, and for animals. These young people know how important they are now, they all sensed it, they are rising to it, right before my eyes, I saw it.
Yesterday, I walked among this chosen people, saw the fire in their eyes, the sweat and dirt on their bodies, their love for one another. These are the outsiders, the oddballs, the ones told they had to fit in, the strong and braves ones who found their own path. I know, I was one of them, still am. So is Maria.
They laughed and joked and bantered, but never with sting, there is no cruelty in the barns and pastures at Blue Star, some of these people told me how broken and in pain they were when they came to Blue Star, how the horses and Pamela and Paul had saved them, how this would be their work.
Sunday, Pamela asked me to sit down with her and watch one of Paul’s favorite videos, it was a poignant and brilliant affirmation in music of one of the most powerful spiritual ideas in the world, I Believe In The Good Things Coming. Paul watched it again and again, almost every day. He believed very strongly in the good things coming, and in helping them to come. At Blue Star this weekend, in this photograph, and in every one of my visits there, I saw this in the faces of these young people, of our future, whose time has come.
Death does make room for life, and affirms it. They believe in the good things coming.
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Helping Blue Star. We are at a crossroads, as the elders believe. We will learn to live in harmony, with one another and the animals, or we will destroy our world together. If you see fit, please help Blue Star. The farm is in Massachusetts, but it belongs to everyone. You can donate, become a member of the herd, or send them good thoughts and good wishes. You can purchase blankets (Maria designed the farm’s symbol) posters, or help with hay. If you live nearby, you can join the volunteers there.
