Trauma Farm (25 page)

Other creatures also stand still, pause, look, listen, smell—gaze meditatively on a meadow. Yeats, the peacock, will sit for hours on the split-rail fence or the second-floor deck outside our bedroom and stare endlessly at nothing— or everything. His meditative skills are extreme. All animals have great reservoirs of patience when they watch their world.

One hot afternoon Sharon and I walked up the hill to admire the moss and wildflowers in bloom. The last ewe had yet to lamb, late in the season. As we passed the corral by the driveway, we noticed she was down, panting, in the middle of a large circle of stumps, almost ready. Upon returning a half-hour later she was lambing. Since all was going well, we stood in the driveway and watched.

We suddenly became aware that the whole gang had moved up to where the ewe was lambing, and they were also watching. It was a scene out of a nativity painted by a naive artist. The ram, the other ewes, and their lambs surrounded her. The black horse, Jackson, stood sentinel among the sheep, and the peafowl perched on the stumps, the cock fanning his tail. Our Araucana rooster stood erect and alert on another stump, while the cluster of hens clucked softly, pecked at the grass, and watched. Even the dogs had entered the corral and sat patiently among the chickens. It was as if the creatures of the farm had drawn a holy circle around this birth, blessing it. Grace lives in the land and awaits the moment when it can surprise us with its tenderness.

NOT LONG AGO
a young Steller’s jay fell out of its nest and miraculously survived cats, dogs, and raptors as it ran around our yard, unable to fly, while its parents screamed useless instructions. We heard the ruckus and saw the jay— and the cat closing in. I snatched up the baby jay, and that really sent him and his parents screeching. In one of my few moments of brilliance, I sized up our species quince, which offered little by contemporary standards—a thicket with a scattering of pale, applelike blossoms and a few tiny fruits— unlike the orchard quince, which bore giant, heavy golden fruits, or the decorative quince with its bright red flowers. We’d kept the shrub because its near-impenetrable tangle shelters migrating songbirds from cats. A covey of California quail lived underneath and would spend the day darting out to the fig tree where the bird feeders hung, dining off the scattered seed from sloppy eaters.

I thrust my arm into this thicket without decapitating the chick and sat him on a branch, safe, while his parents berated me. As I peered at him on his branch—his jay-spike not yet grown so that he reminded me of a mohawked punk standing on a skateboard—he abused me even more.

For the next few days his parents dutifully brought food to him in the quince while he cursed the world, his parents, and the quail. We were grateful when he finally gained the strength to fly off, though I miss him in the way you miss an irritating yet interesting relative.

DELIGHT IS MULTITUDINOUS
. it is everywhere you stop and become aware, when letting it flow through your veins, and perhaps that’s why I often recall that story of the Zen monk and his reaction to the dinner gong, which like a clock striking midnight brought him to perfect attention. Moments. The world is a constant astonishment. Rain in a storm—each drop pounding so hard against the pond surface that the water reaches back up like a fist threatening the sky. An opium poppy suddenly sprouting unseeded and rebelliously wild in our vegetable garden. “Where did that come from?”

Japanese horticulturalists bred the camellia so that its blossoms begin dying even as they unfold. The idea was to create a pristine, complex blossom that also illustrated the transitory quality of life. Glory and death simultaneously— like discovering a rat-child on the road. It was near dark, the hour after sunset; the birds were shutting down, except for the ravens putting order to the last dregs of the evening. I had shut up the coop and was walking back around the barn. Suddenly I noticed a tiny creature squirming among the weeds and gravel. It was a baby rat. Rats! My nemesis. I had been fighting them for so long in the feed shed that I’d taken to midnight forays with the new pellet shells, which have a range of about ten feet—shooting the rats out of the rafters until I discovered that the minuscule pellets, at close range, could just puncture the tin roof. Now I have two leaks and am even more annoyed at the rats.

However, this was a blind baby, slow and lost, as if it had accidentally crawled out of the nest too early or someone, cat or dog or raccoon or mink, had murdered its mother and it was on a last, slow, desperate crawl for life. I knew I should kill it, but I didn’t have the heart. I was reminded of Mike once shooting starlings in his cherry trees while simultaneously raising baby starlings that had fallen out of a nest. He hated those starlings for their thievery and the damage they were doing to endangered songbird populations. Yet babies are different. Every creature deserves the chance to reach its prime. However, an adult pest is another story, and then it’s every bird or man for himself. I knew I’d bring this rat baby into the house, feed it, warm it by the fire, and then release it far away in the bush. Sharon would be annoyed at first, superficially, before she helped with great tenderness.

Sam, the border collie, came up behind me. She saw the baby rat and, before I could move, snatched it, killing it instantly. Then she tossed it up in the air as if it were a toy, caught it, and swallowed it whole, happily trotting off down the road again, while I stood alone in the bluing darkness, overwhelmed once more by the arbitrary casualness of death.

WHEN YOU CAN
’
T STOP
moving, then you have stopped living. We exist in a strange era whose landscape remains as slow as ever, yet our lives keep speeding up. Trauma Farm provides us and our guests the opportunity to stop moving—to regard the world. A string of hummingbirds following their mother like beads on an invisible chain floating through the air. A fairy slipper orchid at the edge of the clearing hit by a streak of low yellow light as the sun sets, or the haunted flower of the ghost orchid beside a stump in deep forest . . . .

Summer afternoons I often sneak away to a local swimming hole. Every year a truck mysteriously appears and dumps sand on this patch of road allowance fronting the lake. The docks anchored offshore are anonymously maintained and replaced by unknown farmers and citizens. All is unspoken because of today’s liability laws and wacky insurance claims. Rumour has it there’s even a mysterious bank account where locals can donate $50 to cover general maintenance, but like everyone else I have no idea who runs it. Another farmer donates a portable outdoor toilet to stand on his neighbour’s property just next to the beach. All this allows the glory of summer to unfold for the many island children who luxuriate at the beach daily.

Salt Spring is fortunate to have a swimming hole for every social group, or maybe islanders worked it out through the mysteries of community osmosis. There is the howling mass of children at Stowel Lake, swimming and banging about among the trout, water lilies, leeches, and docks, while once in a while a turtle with a six-inch shell swims blithely among them. I’ve watched it several times, its sage’s head on a snaky neck high above the water. Yet somehow, magically, the children seldom notice these gentle, wise old creatures usually sunning on a nearby log.

Blackburn Lake has a nudist dock surrounded by mud and lilies. This is where the young island workers with their beer and joints stop by for a dip after a hot day roofing or house framing. It also is frequented by a squad of young tattooed women with face metal dangling from their piercings, as well as hippie elders, everyone enjoying the luxury of a swim and an opportunity to dry naked in the sun. This dock can be hilarious around five in the afternoon when it gets crowded and sinks to water level under the weight of too many sunbathers. Thousands of daddy-long-legs live on its floats and are forced to surface onto the decking as the floats sink, which causes eruptions of panicked sunbathers fleeing the harmless spiders. Lately, this dock has been overrun by what the locals call “skids and vandals,” who insist on bringing their dogs.

Then there’s the dock anchored in the middle of Weston Lake, usually occupied by our wealthier elders, also without clothes—quiet and meditative. You have to enter the lake via a narrow trail and swim out to the dock. It’s calm and relaxing. Cushion Lake has a wharf and seems to be fancied more by teenagers and local families, but this dock is looked down upon by a few waterfront residents who would prefer the lake for themselves and fret about liability and pollution of their drinking water by the swimmers.

Despite the many children screaming and kicking sand, my favourite swimming hole remains the tiny community beach at Stowel Lake, where dozens of babies, kids, teenagers, parents, and grandparents all gather in a mutual chaos that works out just fine. And I’m hoping we can eventually rescue the nudist Blackburn Lake from the dog owners who make it miserable.

the swimming hole

I’m sorry,
my darling

but the chores are undone,
the lambs unfed,
the wood unchopped,
the beans not weeded.

It was hot
and the sun lives

in a strange sky.

It made me think of many things.

I found myself at the lake,

floating past the dock,

where girls with enormous breasts

sun naked on the cedar planks

while the skinny boys pretend

they are only dancing in water,

but I was not watching.

The sky unnaturally blue,
the bullfrogs humming among the lily pads,
I was drifting in a black lake,
stunned by a single scudding cloud.

It’s the swimming hole.

What can I say?

There are so few of them left.

I floated away

on my back, defenceless

in a changing world,

the limpid water
very soft,

and very sweet.

Working with earth and animals draws us into the world, nourishing our ability to be surprised—empathy— the ability to pull up our lawn chairs and blankets and wine and hot chocolates with good friends and their children on the grass of a meadow on a summer night under the stars. The Perseids in full fiery glory, the avalanche of shooting stars catching our attention in the clear August evenings. Embers of white light shooting across the sky while we exclaim and laugh and love the night. Thomas Mann said: “Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfilment.” He knew the world, like that crazy monk throwing down his hoe.

The ground is changing beneath my feet. It always has. Living with the land is living within the river of life. By the time this story becomes a book there will be many more victories and defeats. Lives and legislation will change. Change is everything, always was. I write these words as a mirror to a moment—what I know and what I’ve seen—so that the children who follow will learn what was lost, what was won, and what still lives.

This afternoon the air is warm and yet there’s a restlessness in it, and I see the swallows are flying low over the pond, which means the barometric pressure is driving the mosquitoes down, and there’s a composty taste to the air. The weather will shift tomorrow, maybe even tonight, although only a few cirrus clouds are parked on the horizon. As if the same thoughts have just occurred to her, Chloe the goose raises her snakelike head and utters a long, plaintive honk, the sound wave dimpling the dark slate of the pond.