ANIMAL

Laying on my back in the field, I roll my eyes up the trunks of trees toward the canopy. The long entangled branches stretch like arteries, waving in the breeze. My head feels heavy in the dirt, and the cool air splashes over my face as it swirls through the valley like a stream. As my body seems to sink into the soil, I can feel the trees being pulled from the Earth, their root systems like anchors that keep them in place as the cosmic forces stretch them towards the heavens. I imagine gravity like a blanket holding down the things on Earth that have a natural inclination towards touching the stars.

I hear the far away jingles of my dogs’ collars and tags, and I close my eyes.  Sometimes I spend more time with dogs than I do people. By sometimes I mean usually. I don’t typically notice this disparity until I am guided into a social situation with more civilized and socially acclimated human beings. I am immediately confused by the fact that they all don’t intuitively know where I’m coming from. Dodging eye contact, I sniff the corners of the room and maybe a few butts, hoping someone will throw me a bone.

Ever since human beings started to feed the wolves around their camps, the species began a new cycle of evolution. When I go out into the woods with my dogs, I catch glimpses of the changes. I see the wild instincts in them treeing squirrels and rolling in road kill and shit. Upon returning home, they re-enter the new age of wolf where I have to bathe them before they are allowed to get in my bed. Being around them in the field makes me more aware of changes in my environment, movements, and visitors. When I look into their eyes I see the dog, but I see humans, too. Our consciousness serving as an evolutionary ally to their own.

This companionship changes both of us and is not limited to our canines and felines. All domesticated animals we support and handle, and the wild ones whose lives are changed by the presence of our own, are linked in a chain of shared experience, different from the generations that came before. When we put out bird seed, mow down the meadow flowers, or put a sweater on our pitbull, we are tying ourselves together. My sheep lay down when it’s going to rain, but they also stand up in rhythm with the morning feed bucket. While the sheep graze in the fields, I watch the clover and fescue jump and darken behind them. Living attuned to the natural forces requires a marriage of values with the other creatures of this world.

The digestive nature of forage feeding ruminants can change the face of the planet.  Gathered in numbers, they eat the very tender parts of the plant and move on, leaving behind trampled nutrients and manure deposits in great numbers. The carnivores of the world, on the other hand, adopt huge territories and roam the lands leaving their hot, potent manures scattered in small doses across the land. While the cows, water buffalos, and elk of the world restore the fertility of grasslands, the wolves, cougars, and bobcats cull the world of illness and disease and maintain the dynamic dance of life that keeps our planet well.

The roles and relationships in the animal kingdom are infinite and span every facet of creation in class and order. The world is teeming with examples of predators and prey, hosts and diseases, companions and patrons. The broader results of these relationships generally contribute to an effect that is greater than each individual piece, perpetuating the remarkably creative building and diversifying quality of our universe.

On the farm, this realm is on full display in both the livestock and the wild habitat that thrives in and around them. When the soil has been punished by over tilling or nutrient loss, the plants grow weak, and the insect pests come in to lighten the load.  When livestock are not able to move from one area to another, the land gets congested. The grass roots shrink, the soil compacts, and the animals begin to show signs of disease and infestation.  

As the land loses vitality, so, too, do the livestock. When chickens are unable to eat grass, hunt insects, and tear apart unsuspecting mice, their egg yolks lose vitality. When they are unable to see the sunlight, their spirits are weakened and products harvested from these animals carry with them the energetic imprints of stress.

Livestock can have an incredibly nourishing quality to the land when they are able to occupy their natural niche. Chickens that roam through the trees, forage through a compost pile, or bob through grasses out on pasture, can hunt like the opportunistic carnivores they are. They can eat the tiny parasites that tend to do plants and animals harm. Pigs can similarly aid in the systems of the farm organism by eating waste and goats can clear the stubborn canes and brush of second succession growth.

Sheep and cows that are able to move quickly through grasslands can actually stimulate root growth as they stomp down and munch on plants while simultaneously fertilizing them with transformed nutrients from their incredible manure. The manure itself is a medicine: locally gathered herbal material brought to life by probiotics; the sensitivity of the animal imparted to the landscape.

When I think about the material world and how it is but a chrysalis for the subtle forces that infuse our reality, animals play a special part in bridging the physical with the spiritual. Not only does seeing a particular animal throughout the day give us a special clue into the deeper meaning of our journey, but our relationship to them is an important aspect of our own being.  

Our farms, gardens and tenderly cared for outdoor spaces are the most beneficial for all when they are designed as mirrors to systems that maintain health and vitality in the natural world. In contrast, where there are no frogs there is poison; where habitat is lost, destructive numbers of opportunistic and/or invasive species gather and further lay waste to the disturbed natural resources, a momentous symptom of the swaying pendulum of imbalance.

When a farm or homestead that is growing crops lacks pockets of natural habitat in and around it or nested into the neighboring lands, it can be difficult to establish ecosystem harmony. The niches provided by the crops themselves become the habitat and thus the war of survival is carried out on the leaves and stems. Typically this results in heightened instances of casualties and sometimes even total crop failure.

Even so, a little loss is to be expected, because the natural world is a fluctuating, living place. Where harmony does exist, it is in a constant state of breathing. The limitless activities that are carried out in one day from all of the living entities involved in the fabric of life are interacting and changing, the energetic framework of the farm morphing in subtle and grand ways at every present moment. To eat is to share and resilience is derived from plants and systems that have abundance to spare.

The closer we can get to allowing the natural harmonies to synchronize and collect, the more abundant our landscape can become. If we choose to have livestock, it is our duty to give them their most fulfilled, modern animal life: wildness and companionship married together to manifest in fertility and longevity. We must honor the human we have imparted to them and the sentience they have imparted on each piece of the landscape they touch.

Our wild relatives, the animals whose tempos are cyclic and remain obscured from the existential crisis of our own maddening level of self awareness, are archetypes whose combinations are holistic medicine for the Earth as an organism. Their flow across our planet relieves the energetic stagnation of the disruptive processes of human development. The deer are less devastating with a wolf in the woods, and yet, the vulnerability of a sheep humanized through interaction can fall prey just as easily to the wolf as to the factory farm and feedlot.