Musing

A Little Big Month

Artwork, Musing / July 25, 2019 / 2 Comments / By

It has been a big month; I have missed being here, writing. It doesn’t help that we’ve had all sorts of internet service trouble while our service provider claims to be improving our internet service.

We received rain through late June and July and I am writing to the sound of raindrops on our tin roof. With the arrival of rain came an unfolding of sorts. An unfolding of tightly held concern, an unfolding of hope, an unfolding of the grass as the earth opened up and took a drink. On a morning walk with the Kelpies the place was utterly still and while I sat in the grass trying to match the stillness I thought for sure I could hear the land sipping water. The grazing land bounced back beautifully (forgiveness received, bless you Mother N) and having grass available for grazing means there is less urgency about selling animals and a little more wiggle room about where and when they go. For the hay land, the rain is too late. We might get a small crop of late hay although not nearly enough to feed our flock for the winter.

Another reason for the big month is that my dive into doing artwork and sharing it has become another type of unfolding. In July I attended a studio trail event and right after that a national sheep show hosted in our province. I’m just coming off of the buzz from the latter event. I was hopeful this show would be a good crowd and it was.

Setting up one’s artwork in a public display space and then standing there, cleanly dressed, answering the questions of a very curious public feels a world apart from day-to-day, solitary life on the ranch, fiddling with floats on water troughs, mending gates, and wearing guardian dog drool on your jeans. I feel foreign and out of sorts at every public trade show. But then the questions and comments begin and perhaps because my art is so closely tied to my daily scene, and to what I know, I become settled enough to get through the day. Never comfortable, but settled enough to let it unfold as it will. The reception and feedback to the artwork was very strong and once again I am amazed at the folks who popped by to say they love the photos and the art and are following it online.

Back at home I settle into the peace and quiet of sheep, dogs and prairie land, and merge into the familiarity of ordinary work for my hands once again. The buzz subsides but the creative juices are turning. The more I dive into artwork and into writing the more tightly interwoven the facets of me and this land and livestock life become. There is no piece separate from the other now. Land, animal, nature, artist, human, humanity – every piece within the self and the self within every piece.

Do We Love Nature Tug Of War

Musing / February 3, 2019 / By

It’s early in the morning, it is the dead of winter, snow is on the way and the cold wind is sharp and angry. I can hear the whining with intermittent gusty howls. It will be an ugly day for animals and for people doing the work of feeding and sheltering them. It will likely take the life from some creatures, I just hope not from any of mine.

When I wrote and posted the last blog post Do We Love Nature I was conflicted as to whether or not to include the photo of the magpie on the dead sheep. Ever since I have been reflecting on why the conflict of showing a slightly offensive photo of mother nature at work is there at all. Why the feeling of treading a slippery slope when all I want to do is talk about and share the real deal of life and death that I see in this land and livestock life? Why didn’t I feel brave enough to post that photo and others like it as the first headline photo, or post it to social media? Instead I posted beautiful photos of the birds in flight. In public spotlight I too am caught in the trap of playing into nature as an entity to be worshiped for its glory sunrises and healing sunsets.

I find myself smack in the middle of a tug-o-war because I also find myself, if not loving every moment nature hands out, respecting every moment. That respect is what drove me to begin this topic in the first place. I know mother nature can take this rug right out from under me. I know she is kind AND cruel, she is peace AND war, she is calm AND she is chaos. She has a design crew, a detail crew, a killing crew, a clean up crew… Deciding how I will position myself amongst all of it is the key. But knowing and sharing what you know are two different things in todays animal worshiping world.

Those of us in a line a work that regularly presents such visceral occurrences of natures true identity develop an undeniable respect for mother nature. It’s one sided too share that in a worshipping viewpoint alone because while mother nature’s inescapable beauty certainly fills us up, her inescapable ugly just as certainly takes us down. So we are always seeing two sides. It’s very hard on us to deny and hide one side of the picture of our lives. I get that people do not want their days tampered by photos of the ugly side of real-life nature but I would venture to offer that it’s human ugliness we are most offended by, not Mother N’s.

What I am deeply bothered by is that we have become a people of all or none, a people of extremes and hence a people handing out ever more laws and regulations both spoken and, in the case of me dithering about a photo of a dead sheep, unspoken. Meanwhile Mother N goes on righting the balance for us, showing us the way. Sure enough, I don’t wish to see photos of extreme ugliness and cruelty either but the resulting protective shield we’ve thrown up for the 97+ percent of the population who live removed from land and livestock is removing us from the reality of mother nature’s brilliant balance. The very balance we need in order to get by in this world. She’s got this folks. We are not going to do a better job of this than mother nature, however with mother nature as an ally we’ll do a very truthful and purposeful job. We need to trust in this, all of it, good, bad and ugly, because within the trusting is where we find the nature of ourselves, and our land and environment certainly needs folks who are connected to nature, not just using her to further a propaganda agenda or a bottom line.

Do We Love Nature?

Musing / January 25, 2019 / By

An animal died yesterday. A runty lamb born last summer but never quite keeping up. And two weeks ago a ewe ended up cast in the tire tracks made from the tractor. We barely have enough snow to make a snowdrift and she tips onto her back in the depression of a tire track and cannot get herself back on her feet, therefore suffocates with the weight of her rumen pushing air from her lungs. Talk about bloody unfair, talk about a moment of hating sheep, of hating Mother N.

In this lifestyle I get so many chances to love nature, and to despise her. And I do both wholeheartedly. What is emerging now is an awareness, a small acceptance of nature as whole. That the good gains AND the ugly losses each build us up to be part of this whole – if we choose to be part of it.

We tend to love nature in seasons, especially our favourite season.
We love nature when she’s easy on us.
We’re happy when there is calm lakes, rosy pink sunrises and brilliant orange sunsets.
We’re pleased when mother nature works with us and gives us a good year however we determine that to be.
We love nature when there is flow in our lives; we need nature to create that flow.
We need nature as a soul recharging station.
We’re fixated on a display of nature as a calm meditative state with pink sunrises as the backdrop.
In agriculture we love to tell a story of loving nature meanwhile treating it as a commodity that must meet our bottom line.

But nature is a seer and a lover of the whole. There is a totality to this, a sum of parts that is absolutely necessary for nature to exist. Parts that build and parts that tear down, parts that are bliss and parts that burn. No matter, every part contributes to the whole.

We don’t want to meditate on the ugly side of nature though, we’ll take just the good bits, thanks. We have forgotten that we are nature and therefore part of this whole, ready for it or not. We are shocked each time we discover there is guts and suffering on the other side of the sunset glory. We are shocked that we got no warning of what came about.

So do we really love nature and the natural of ourselves, or just the sunset story? My struggle and frustration over losses has not lessened, there is still deep hurt/anger/sadness with each experience. But growing alongside the emotions is a small nugget of wondering about the whole of it. If we are seeking to exist in this land and livestock life with nature alongside, and not just as commodity, then there is something deeper, something entirely natural, that we must reach for.