Bones

 

I've lost two more calves. This makes four total, so far this year. One was stillborn just yesterday. The other had been sick, and was treated for gastroenteritis and pneumonia for four days before succumbing Wednesday morning. Ella helped me doctor him Tuesday night when he received three shots, and we tubed him with electrolytes. We tried to nurse him with a bottle, but he was too weak. We talked to him, encouraged him, and cajoled him. It is so difficult watching them suffer. It makes me question each decision I made: Did I catch him quick enough? Did I diagnose correctly? Did I use the right medicine? At a certain point you realize that nature will take its course. It's part of the deal, but it it still leaves me angry and heartbroken.

Since this week is Ella's spring break, she was with me when I loaded him in the pickup on Wednseday. We drove slowly down into the hills, the calf on the tailgate, back along the grassy creek bed. Ella and I searched for the carcass of the calf I brought down a week or so ago. No signs of it anywhere. The efficiency of nature -everything is reclaimed.

We unloaded the body and drove to a spot where I dumped an older calf last year. It was a clear spring day with a bracing cold breeze, and the air smelled of native sage, astringent and clean. We found blanched bones scattered like runes implying magic and mystery. We gathered some of the bones to bring home. 

Next to the creekbed is a wheat field with a windblown ridge where we sometimes search for arrowheads. Ella and I walked to the ridge, hoods up, backs to the cold wind, noses dripping. We walked silently with our heads down, looking from rock to rock, trying carefully to sidestep between the wheat furrows  Ella found two pieces that show signs of being shaped, but no arrowheads. I was just glad to have company while I searched the ground for bones, arrowheads, or possibly some kind of meaning to it all.

More photos here. 

Comments

[Penny]

The contrast of your High Plains almost spring landscape and weather is not lost on me. While I revel in my last spring in northeastern Oklahoma, I also look forward to my return to Sterling this June. Today I drove around town to delight in pink and white dogwood, redbud trees, tulips, and azalea in bloom. These brilliant colors are in contrast to trees just barely budding out and grass not yet green. Spring in eastern Colorado is much more muted, later, and then there is the wind!

I am just loving your blog, Ned, and it reminds me of why I am choosing to return after seven years in exile!

Penny

[Jeff]

This was a good one Ned. I've been away from the site for a while. I'm glad to see that the great posts are continuing.