Saturday, on the way home from San Francisco, we took a shortcut that was new to me, cutting away from Hwy 101 at California 154 through Los Olivos, which brings you back to Hwy 101 at Santa Barbara, saving many miles and coincidentally taking you through ranch country. At one point we stopped and got out to stretch, changing drivers so that I could meditate while my friend, M., drove. The turnout was actually the entrance to someone's pastureland, and there were some calves and cows there, grazing.
I was raised on a farm. I grew up bottle-feeding calves, currying them, petting them. When I see a calf I get a certain feeling that, when I parse it out, contains the sense memory of smells--the calf, the warm milk, hay, straw, the old dusty barn; the warmth in the stall while outside the winter wind might be blowing a blizzard; the feel of wiry hair, warm breath, rough, slimy tongue; the sound of the calf bawling for its bottle and the weight of him against your leg when he begins to feed. It was so special to get to do this chore. I got to know a lot of calves this way, a new one each year from the milk cow, and years later I could walk through the herd and cows would scatter, except for the bottle-fed ones who would stand and wait for me and sometimes walk right up to me, butting me with their head, expecting to be scratched and petted.
One dark, cold winter we had a young heifer die giving birth on the same day that another young cow birthed a stillborn calf. My father and uncles said the calf was going to die. Leave her alone. No, the other cow won't take a calf that isn't her own. Leave it alone. So I went out that evening in the snow and the cold and with my jackknife I cut the hide off the back of the dead calf; and I used baling twine to tie the hide onto the back of the orphan calf; then I carried the orphan calf and put her down, close to the childless mother and walked away and out of the corral to watch. The cow came over, eventually, to the calf and smelled her, and evidently, even though there must have been the smell of blood and flesh and me and everything else going on for her, there was enough of the scent of her own flesh and blood for the cow to nuzzle the calf and get her to start feeding. She lived, and after a few days the twine and cowhide costume fell away and life went on for the mother and the baby.
When I see a calf today, all of that history is contained within the feeling I get. It's a feeling of love, of being truly at home, of having something meaningful to do, of being useful and needed. It's a love that comes through me without me having to go look for it, but simply because there is something outside of myself that needs it, or that once needed it.
There on California 154, the other cows saw that I had nothing for them, so they went away down the hill to graze. This calf, though, just kept looking at me. Wondering whatever it is that calves wonder as I talked to him, because that's what I found myself doing. Having a conversation with an animal, asking him how his life was and complimenting him on his lovely coat and the beautiful pasture he had, with his own special tree. I wanted to stay, spend some time enjoying the feeling of peace and comfort and ease I was having; and I would have, but I had just enough time to get home before a speaking engagement that evening, so we got back in the car. As I was shutting the door, I looked up and the little guy had come over to the fence I'd just left and was sniffing around to see where I'd gone, or if I'd left anything for him, as if he'd felt the love, too. As if he knew there'd been warmth and love and thoughts of milk and feeding time coming from this spot right here where the talking mammal with eyes in the front of his face who stands on two feet had been just a minute before. I like to think he was missing me.
Love is what we are about. Love is what we are here for. Animals so often give us opportunity to practice our skills before we get to the task of trying to love the two-legged mammals. Animals can be so forgiving. They don't answer back. They don't challenge. They only love and ask for love in return. They are in many ways a more simple expression of nature, a less-complicated place from which nature's communion with itself can begin.
As I've let go of the stresses and the bad feelings of what was less than stellar about my childhood, I find myself more and more being given these gifts of remembering what was extraordinary there and then. How many people have had this gift in their life, an experience and patterning of absolute love at such an early age? How fortunate am I? I am wealthy beyond measure.
Adele doesn't know it yet, but we'll be taking a drive up there again in the very near future.
Today I will find one place where it feels safe to love, if not in my day then in my memory.
Calf, pasture, California 154
