Rhythm

The early morning  'chores' at the Dairy, shared with whoever may be around, shifting as the birds begin to chorus, include ...


stoke the fire in the kitchen, get the kettle rumbling;

sledge-hammer the ice on the waters for the different bunches of pigs (a snort of pigs, truly the most nakedly self-preserving single-track survivor species. It's sort of shocking. Is it that they suggest something about ourselves?), for the dogs and bucks and whethers and the main herd of goats;

milk the milkers, favourite Yonkers ('Yonkers Bonkers') of possibly Soy Bean. They're named by year, like all the named creatures (hens, roosters, wethers without much future, miss on names), so the young Maremma guardian dog Aticus was born last year, and we're now dreaming up names like Bonkers, Bruichladdich and Butterfly for the goat kids about to pop. Still none though Star was due today ... We started with 23 milkers, all by hand, though the machine is used when all's in full swing after the kidding explodes. What an intense thrill it was to get the knack, and day by day feel the growing rhyme in the fingers, the warmth of the goat's belly against your head, and see more and more of the milk actually in the pail. Gorgeous creamy milk - Nancy breeds for a high fat content rather than for quantity. Bit by bit the milkers were dried up as their due date approached, though we still had four going when we had to suddenly abandon the farm to get Kai to A and E. He charged out of the kitchen to say goodbye to Nancy and co, just leaving for Albequerque, meant to be leaving us and Mike with the farm. Tumbled with enough force to dig a clean, deep split in his forehead, through to the dull glisten of skull. So we all end up in the truck, Kai bandaged as a pirate. The scar will grow with him, and the tale. That was then that, by the time we returned 3 days later, the four long-runners were all dried up;

bottle-feed the lambs that Nancy picked up from a friend, not doing too well there, now long-legged and proud, fed and lavished with love and attention by Freya and Kai. They move them around the higgle of barn rooms, once the goats are gone, as if they're stars in a ballet.

Having said that, we managed to lose them both yesterday, they slipped out under the long legs of the herd. We hiked out with the radio-tracking device linked to collars on a couple of the goats, but they were far off and away over the rocks at speed, and Freya was the first to hear bleating as we tracked them. They wouldn't have survived. But are now very happy lambs, safely tucked in with the most expectant of the goats,



 

move them goats! Alpine, Nubian, La Mancha and Oberhasli, agile as mountain goats, many incredibly long-legged and able to reach high to graze on the juniper. F and K as Crazy Monkeys at the rear, getting the show on the road. Only in the wildest of blizzards has the herd not been out, but usually the goats are up and away, the Maremmas weaving in and out and around them. They're huge dogs (80 - 100 lbs plus), sharp, LOUD, with the guardianship of the herd (from wolves, bears, coyotes) rooted smack in the middle of their chests - they were doing the job in the Italian Alps 2000 years ago. And they learn quickly - Aticus, still only a pup, wearing his responsibilities as if they were medals, shouldering the abuse he gets from his father Utah, so proud when he returns from the day job in the mid-afternoon and gets if lucky a little praise,

get breakfast rising - good, solid, farm breakfasts, with chores under the belt, blast of blue sky, sharp oxygen, rooster, the rounds of the dairy checking the way things are, then the echoing din of the one of the kids hammering at the thick length of pipe - the Coonridge gong - and in to smoke and warmth and piles of pancakes. Or waffles, or biscuits and gravy. And yep, the odd porridge.

Back to Star - we checked her, like all the other imminent goats, this morning, feeling to see whether colostrum was beginning to gather, if their 'pins' had fallen away - when the tendons that hold the pin bones on either side of the tail widen and loosen - and if their vulva felt soft and puffy rather than tight. There were five who seemed real close, so they've been at home today, in their own wee pen with alfafa and hay and Freya, Kai, Julie to keep them company, between making vast piles of cheese. So that's where I'm heading now, for a final check before the moonless trail to bed. Having said that, Nancy says they often come early morning, so Freya's the best eyes for any problems. She was coming into the kitchen on her own, first thing, no-one else about, saying she liked the time to herself. But now she heads straight to the goats and the lambs, Kai in hot pursuit.
 

 

Christmas in Magdalena, and a visitor

December 21, the third full eclipse of the moon on the night of the winter solstice in 2010 years, so good times for change. We watch the shadow spread from the dusty desert village of Magdalena, New Mexico, tin drums and Apache whoops rattling the silence for a while.

And then next morning we hike up all alone the four of us, into the Magdalena mountains, and at 8,000’ sit beneath a juniper as broad as our backs together, bark in thick wedges like the scales of a dinosaur, old enough for the stillness.

It's Christmas, and we splash out, celebrating in the tiny, bright Western Motel, with an ocean of a bed and a sparkling Christmas tree conjured from the twisted bones of a long-gone cactus, a stash of pinecones, and a glitter-ridden burst of Ponderosa needles as a star. After a night’s fiddle-playing at the one and only village ‘Package Store/ Saloon/ Cocktail Bar’ – take your pick, wear a hat – Christmas dinner is at Bobby’s, the garage owner, ‘blaster’, belly as big as that juniper, dignified Navajo wife Clara, here in the high desert since his great great grandfather shepherded sheep to the spot in 1857. His trailer is tight as a tin bath, even more so with the hunched Christmas tree in the corner, and their two daughters back in town. But we feast on turkey and pumpkin and a pile of delicious Indian fry bread. She grew up early on the reservation 30 miles out of town, but was stuck in the Magdalena boarding school for native americans most of her childhood. Those big old buildings are now all shuttered up, bleached in the sun, like so many on the outskirts, once bustling with miners, long gone. Though there are voices still, maybe spit stains on the floor. And, Christmas morning, we search for carols along the empty unpaved streets, find a deserted Catholic church bright in a hole in the tough desert, and sing our own.

We stumble on a good place at the right time. Bobby and co have heart gleaming in their eyes, and names like Walt. Behind us is Arizona, it's almost as if we've fled the place, on the run. Our one and only really unhappy farm, and it spilt on us. We leave and bunker down in Show Low, a place before the border, spirit carried in a name (won, so they say, over a game of cards) thinking of what to do next, lost, downcast, frustrated, angry, lonely, disheartened, alone. But Magdalena beckons, and as we climb over the White Mountains and into western New Mexico, the wild, sparse land carries echoes of our most far-flung adventures in north-western BC, back in September. Like there we might be free, tred light. As we head, squeezed close in Granny White Dragon (now with 220,000 on the clock, and character to her creaks) we feel as so often the intense preciousness of the wee band we are here under the open, alien, desert sky.

Magdalena


Take this oak leaf, brittle

as today, mid-winter. Hold it

smooth as wind in your hand.

Just place it, in the water, let it

carry us home. Let it


be. To lengthening days and blackened

pots, and what? How it will seem,

the dust of Magdalena in a bowl

of soup, fragments in high heels

clipping a street, hurrying

for places where the wind

don't creak and doors

are shut. What of us,


four musketeers, thrown

from our cocoon. Granny White

Dragon still, alone, in-service. While we

ride our leaf across the pond, tipped

beyond. Let go

the lonely cowboys in their high heels

kicking dust through ragged fences,

beer in their eyes. The wash

will take it all, with the empty

bottle snug

in marron grass. Old


juniper heaves another year

on buckled shoulders, bark cracked

as a raven's song. There are honest

smiles between the shuttered

windows, though the sky needs

neither heart nor water and we can live

in fear. Three threads


we weave together for an anchor,

we need no dynamite to blow

our graves. Our place is of

white sand. So as our gilt

leaf tips and we feel

empty, alone, in fear

we might let go our chain, connection

freedom and belief

sink home.

Even away in Magdalena in the glow of our Christmas tree it takes time to find our feet again. But on Christmas Eve we hike up and over 10,500' to the South Baldy ridge of the Magdalenas. That's why we miss those carols! The path's more feeling an absence than seeing a trail, and the snow's heavy as we get toward the top, 'pulling' the kids on the ends of sticks as whatever creature of the moment it might be (horse, snow leopard, cheetah, etc).

And, of course, it all gets very late and the way back is long. As the night gathers we spot fat cougar prints, really fresh, in the snow. We try to keep our eyes on the branches of the trees that we pass under while keeping on our feet. The tracks head off, then re-appear a little later, and we really wonder who's watching whom. The last 4 miles or so are in the dark, me carrying Kai for speed, Freya still skipping, and we're happy.

So, on Boxing Day we pack our tricks, say goodbye to The Western, and head for those hills again. Three cold nights in Water Canyon, warm days, hikes returning to drag limbs of oily ancient trees out of the forest, thick smoke as the pasta brews. Still something not right, unsettled, seeking integrity and the spark of self-worth. And nervous about Coonridge, and Nancy - we've arranged to meet her in Pie Town on 29 December to get the ride in - how it will be, whether we might find ourselves hemmed in again.

But there are sparks as we move. Becs painting in oil. And, in the night before the fire by torchlight, so far away, the feeling to so many of Captn Simon Fraser's gathering of 18th century fiddle tunes, the taste of sea and wind and loss. Thanks, Ginger!

We pop in on the friendly Magdalena postie on the way out. He'll kindly forward the surrealy massive pile of Christmas parcels for the kids (mostly Granny G) that have all gone where they shouldn't after our quick exit from Moonrise.

Dad

It's all so different when we get back. We're two weeks at Coonridge, puffed full by the warmth and edge and opening of the dairy and the land, and we hitch out with Nancy to GWD, ride the snow, and rendezvous with Dad, would you believe it, at the Western. He arrives 30 minutes after us, walking in the door as if he'd just been baking cake in the kitchen. Rather than 4 days into some mad cross-Atlantic canter of a week, talks to medics in Los Angeles about what we learn from the failed prevailling 'wisdoms' of medecine in the past 50 years, and then us. Celebration! The warmth, release and strength that comes from being rooted. You see clear the way the kids open to it too. And there's time for Dad to make his first acquaintance with the bright lights and drawl of the package store, and get a bottle of wine in as I cook supper on the Trange flame outside.

He stays 3 fleeting night though maybe that made it all the more magic. Like the fairy arriving out of the deep blue sky, a blue like no-where else we've been. Kai sleeps on the sofa-mattress tucked close to him, and Freya's brilliant about that because it's special and she doesn't moan. Early morning and they're both in there sandwiching him for stories, snug as bugs.

Those two days we cram. On the first we stock up on Trange stove pancakes (Becs the maistro), then puff up to the near summit (give or take) of North Baldy in the Magdalena's, through groves of golden oak high as your shin. The kids lead the way much of the way, and may have now learnt that over 10,000' you can't get much story out of Grandfather. Up there he's keeping his breath. It would be the perfect spot for argument. Then, the following morning a local almost grabs ahold of us to tell that if she had one day to spin, the absolute must at this time of year would be the Bosque del Apache (woods of the Apache) wildlife reserve on the banks of the Rio Grande. So that's where we go, and she's spot on. There are tens of thousands of wintering Sandhill Cranes and Arctic Geese sheltering in the wetlands, and we hike through high grasses, past water (so long since we've seen any real body of water) and into a spot where we're all alone and twisting this way and that in the wind to watch the bare sky crossed with the drawn stacatto, or the floating descent of a line of cranes, or the tight gleaming beat of geese, or the silent harrier low to the ground. I've never seen such a breathtaking gathering. Just beyond the green and water and the slow chug of a tractor - you could be in the Camargue - the desert unfolds. And we head for chunky, recommended burgers in a western joint, a hotch-potch band sipping beer and shuffling into a tune.

Dad leaves before dawn next morning. We meant to see him off, but he's through the door like that fairy. He takes with him a pretty ludicrous assortment of odds and ends we won't manage to get home (like a fish-tackle box we were given by a guy sleeping on the docks in Charlston. Call it sentimental - we've caught one, a bunch of tiddly Bullheads, and had to swim out for too many hooks), and the first jar of Coonridge Organic Goat Cheese to hit the UK. When he vanishes into the sky that brought him, he leaves the vapour of home, love and passing time.

Coonridge, Western New Mexico, since December 29th

We came to this place thrown from side to side in Nancy's big old truck, the dark night huge and wild and unknown beyond the feeble headlights, and the track so rough we more climbed than drove it. It took us five hours from Pie Town, scratch of a spot itself, couple of pie shops always closed it seems, along dirt road to find a safe haven for Granny White Dragon, then shifting great heaps of stuff from her magical guts, lobbing them into the Dodge, as the dark came, and the wind brought the first taste of snow. Then the track, 2 rough hours maybe, Becs and I glancing at each other wondering where on earth we'd ended up after all the dramas of December. If we hadn't got in that night we wouldn't have, because later, feeling our way along the now-so-in-our-bones homeward path to the one-room perch of a cabin on the bluff, sorting matresses, Mike helping puff the stove to life, the snow came thick. And at 8,500' it stays a while.

This place has become our home. Just for a while. Tail end of Feb, and there's fresher snow scattered in the corners, beneath the juniper shadows, but the path has turned to mud, the southerly wind is warm, and light is carving out the edges relentless. Freya unravels from her sleeping bag long before the sun has risen, the east a precious line of purple fire - fine as a heartbeat - and is dressed, out the door and shooting down toward the dairy and 'the chores' before you could say 'please pass me the jar of green chile cheese'. The days have become patterns and I'm not sure we'll ever be the same.

Nancy and Andy (dairy-partner, x-husband) have carved out a life in the most remote corner of New Mexico over 30 years. A life with goats! Now a herd of about 70, and creamy soft cheese we've been stuffing into pots the past few days, flavoured with a pinch here and there, 'southwestern', 'chile chipolate', curried, herbed, sealed and shipped out in heaps of boxes in the back of the truck to land on lucky tables across the south-west. But it began with just a passion for goats, 6 years living in an old school bus (now Mike's spot) figuring out how on earth to scrape life and living out of a desert, only 13'' in a good year and the ancient juniper and pinnion so dry and elemental that they stand stooped for ever even when they're dead. Running water is blue moon here. Day after night after day of empty sky, stretched to the jagged mountains, as if at sea. When it comes, apparently, it creates massive torrents, the dry earth just can't hold it, and the deep scars of the arroyos are all about us. But there's not a scrap running now, and every drop we drink here, and wash in, and re-wash in, is gathered treasure drawn from every possible inch of roof. We lug it from the tanks into the kitchen in great old pepsi vats, and tip it into the cauldron that chugs away on the stove. And here at the cabin the kids revel in their occasional bath-in-a-blue-bucket in front of the fire, good fresh snow-melt off the tin roof.

The cabin's our haven, warm and welcome at the end of the path. Right now the kids are asleep on either side of me, each on their matress in their little sleeping bags and the warm Navajo liners that Becs made them for Christmas. Their step into sleep each night is a miracle of ease, the day full up even above the brim. Along one wall Becs has begun to gather the oil paintings she's been grabbing moments for, almost daily, they're becoming like a trail. There's a sink with a hole that leads to a bucket. Not the poo-bucket, that's outside, beside the ash bucket. Lots of buckets in this place, and vast amounts of old wire - wire for holding together the goats feeders, wire for hitching open doors, wire for closing tight the fencing we used to catch the wild hog - off and away after too much heat - before moving him like a canon ball back into his pen. And lots of hooks ... to hang pig hams on, or popcorn pans, or butchered goats, or sacks of cheese.

So our cabin, facing the shimmering expanse of dawn, is tiny and quite cluttered, our bed up on a woodern platform above Kai's matress, Freya and Kai each with their narrow shelf for books and snow leopards and bundles of twigs and treasures, our stashes of food for hikes and pails for water. But it's silent save for the rattle of the stove when the resin bursts and the breath of the kids. And sometimes it feels like the other end of the path is very far away, and that when we step through the battered kitchen door - one of three, all open and shut and banging back and forth - with the rough plastic stapled across it, into the bunkered down cave of a kitchen, tomorrow morning, we'll be going some other world.

What tales the cobwebs in that big room would tell. I swept away a great mass of them a while back as, dripping black with years of risen grease, they were a fire hazard. But there are still plenty in the darkest corners and behind the long stretch of haphazard jars, bottles, ancient dictionaries, goat tracking antenae, puzzling boxes and old nori packets that covers one entire wall. Nancy will use some to heal goat wounds. But the others need to keep watch and listen to the music and somehow keep hold of all the accumulated wonder, fury and living disorder that spills from that room. Below it's black floor (mopped for the first time last week, mud-ridden again in moments) is the the root cellar dug into the earth, hung with hams, and above is Nancy's bedroom, piles of paper, clothes, wood tilting from every available spot not occupied by a cat. Sandwiched in between, that kitchen room was home three weeks ago, in temperatures so brutal you couldn't break the ice, to ... Nancy, Mike (here since July, mid-50s, used to be a college professor now can't get a job, guitar his passion, grows his beard so long that in Russia he was mistaken for an Orthodox priest), 4 piglets (2 died, lungs seared by the cold so they couldn't grow), a dozen buckets, two vats of smouldering pig mash, us four, a ripe pig skull, Kocoa the old guardian dog now so creaky she's half rug under the table, the stove piled high with wood churning to keep the heat, Julie and Derek (young WWOOFers, an inspiration, caring, passionate, open, absolutely adored by the kids), strings of chiles, a dead chicken (the cold), three or four other chickens half-dead, Nancy holding one out above the fire, two guitars, the fiddle, carpets and old covers hung over the windows, bits of butchered goat, gallon jugs of fresh milk, hundreds of jars.

Sometimes it's all a bit much! But once again these travels have shown us that the heart of places lies just beneath all that is alien, and here that heart is bursting - it's Nancy, the way she senses with her fingers, her halting loving determination as she leads one of the wethers across the ice to put a bullet in its head, her bare desire for a good world. It's the gut-wrenching beauty of the goats as they move up and out into the wilderness, scattered yet together moving with a single will, like a flock of starlings, Freya way out in front with her favourite of the day, dipping under branches, Kai in the midst of the flow like a child of the Old Testament, the crunch of hooves on iced snow and the space of the silence. It's the essences of water, the slap of milk in the bottom of the pail, meat, space, fire, shit, juniper, the shifting weight of warm bodies about you in a barn at night, a note from a string. It's the love that's gathered round the kids. And it's the freedom to think again about what life might be about.

 

Crossing the Yard


It could have been another

went that way. He is proud

chuffed and buckish, young enough,

his back-bones liquid as a wisp

of will. Fortune bends low

to his ear. It need only

whisper,



'Amoro'. You, friend, are different. Your spine

swings only when I brush it. Head-

first you chisel even these steps, across

the silent milk-room, hooves

skittles on ice. The sun has yet

to find your corner. Still,

there are shadows passing, threads

of breath scuttle low

to the open door. They leave



only rattles, a murmur.

I have wetted my finger

and run it down the bursting

lattice of your days.