Through this Gate
I've been a long time gone, but I'll try to catch you up.
Roughly five weeks ago, around mid april, the herd needed to be moved so they could graze the fresh, fast growing, spring grasses that thrive under the windbreak pines. During most of the sixty day calving season, the herd resides in one pasture. It was time to move.
Moving the the herd is not a big deal for the momma cows, since they have done it their entire lives. However, for the baby calves, it is a new experience. They have spent their whole life, as short as it's been, in this one pasture. They have never been through this gate, nor any other gate for that matter. It is, for them, exciting and scary.
For this reason, moving the herd with the baby calves, for the first time of the season, is always interesting and entertaining. To start the move, all we do is drive to the gate, and yell, "Come boss!" with the "boss" drawn out long and low. The cows lift their heads, and bellow. Then they walk, or maybe run, towards you. The cows know exactly what this means, where the gates are, and what to do. The calves, on the other hand, don't have a clue.
They have no idea how this is supposed to work, or what a 'gate' is, or why mom is so excited. Some of the calves make it through the gate, but I'm guessing it is only by pure dumb luck. The rest find it all so very exciting that they stick their tails straight in the air, buck and juke, gang up together and take off in a dead sprint, usually in the the opposite direction of where you want them to go.
On the chilly cloudy morning of a day that was only forecasted to include rain, I moved them through this gate. Or, I should say, I tried to. The cows made it, but the calves didn't. They ran off down the fence, with their frantic, desperate mothers running down the other side of the fence, screaming loudly. I gave chase in the Polaris 4 by 4, headed them off, and chased them back to the gate. We went through this ritual four, maybe five times, and each time the calves were met at the gate by their bellowing, needy mothers. Each time the calves spooked and ran the other way. And really, who can blame them?
Eventually, I managed to get everyone through the gate. To use the local vernacular, it was like "pushing a rope." In other words, it was damn near hopeless.
The wet, rainy day turned abruptly into a spring blizzard. Winds whipped the thick wet snow. Driven fast and horizontal, it stuck to the north facing side of trees, fence posts, the cows, and myself.
Surprised by the blizzard, I took two bales of hay to the cows: one alfalfa bale for food, and one grass bale for bedding. I was hoping to keep the calves warm and dry. The tractor unrolls the bulk of the bales, but I have to get out and unroll the bale butts by hand. Look closely at my self-portrait from inside the John Deere, and you you can see the wet snow stuck to my many layers, as I grimace and sneer. I was tired.
It turned out to be a typical spring storm here on the Colorado highplains: a raging, winter blizzard one day, and then springtime the next. The following morning I find the calves bedded down, close together, in the grass, drying in the warm sun.
Saturday, May 28, 2011 at 01:43AM
Reader Comments (3)
1:43 am? Really Ned? I was going to ask how you found time to write this one since you were up and down ladders all day but I now get it... you're an insomniac too!
Nice to see a "fresh" post!
Love the photo of the gate...it instantly reminded me of the old Torii gates--something to pass through to move from the mundane to the sacred. I think most of the time I'm like those calves.
Rich self portrait, too....thanks for posting it.
John, One reason I was awake at 1:43 is because you fed me all those tasty Indian starches, and like Hummingbird I was all a'flutter.
Rachel, Thanks for the comments here and and at other posts. It looks like you have directed other friends (also poets?) my way. Thanks for that also.
Your right, of course, about the gates being like Torii gates. I spend quite a bit of my time opening, closing, and rebuilding them. Each one has its own personality and quirks. They do separate the profane road from the sacred pasture; the public from the private.
I hope you won't mind if I steal this metaphor for a future post.