My GwynnyDonk

I knew Gwynny was sick, but I didn't expect her to die.  All summer, she had minced around like a Geisha, but I hadn't worried about it because she was old, 28 years is old for a donkey, and her doctor had told me years earlier to expect arthritis in her old age, given her history of white line disease.  But by August, she didn't want to walk anymore.  She looked stuck in place, interested but unable, as if her feet were glued to the ground.  I had to take her morning corn stalk to her in the field, finally, because she wouldn't walk to the gate to get it.  And she was slow.  She didn't limp, she didn't falter, she just trudged.  I could see she was uncomfortable, but I didn't think she was in pain, and I never thought she would die.  I never thought she would die.

Gwynny in her first year with us, always the extrovert.

Gwynny in her prime, always the opportunist.

Gwynny in her heart's home, always with her beloved Benjy.

One Week to Christmas

One week to Christmas.  I don't have a single gift yet and the Christmas cards are still on the dining room table.  The only thing that has changed is that Fred and I are now at each other's throats.  He wants to mail the cards, and of course, with my writer's block, I don't. 

I have baked 15 pounds of sugar cookies; that's 15 pounds on my hips, not on the tray.  My sugar cookies, a recipe from America's Test Kitchen, are good enough for the dog and me to eat but not good enough to give away.  Although I have read everything I could find about making them, every batch comes out dense, flat, and much too sweet.  Every single time.   This is despite the fact that my butter is precisely 65 degrees when I start and the room is 64; I cool my cookie sheets between batches; I have opened two new tins of baking powder; I have beaten the butter and sugar for 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and finally 10 minutes.  What I do doesn't make a lick of difference -- the cookies are embarrassing.  So I am giving up.  I can't bake cookies forever.  Fred's officemates are not going to eat them forever.  Not the way they are.  This will not be the year when I give away tins of pretty cookies. 

Today I worked on Fred's decal instead.  He wants to give sweatshirts to his surfer friends with a decal that says, surf for life.  He doesn't realize how much time that can take, especially me, who is slow at everything.  I have looked at fonts and found some graphics on the web.  Maybe when he gets home we can put them together and get this thing on the road. 

Christmas is just a week away.

A Christmas Note

We hope all are warm and well at your house, as we are here on our little farm. 

It has been a good year for us, for the most part, though hard at times.  A grand spring brought tall, wet grass for our horse and donkeys and freed Fred and me to travel, him with his surfboard to Costa Rica and me with my walking shoes to the Saint James Trail across northern Spain.  Then, the summer broke my heart.  It took my beloved Gwynnydonk who had been my companion and confessor for 21 years.  We buried her beneath the treeline of the pasture, and now when I look out the window, I see just one horse and one donkey and a mound of red clay slowly melting into the ground where Gwynny used to stand.

Already on the day we buried her, the fall was coming on with spectacular beauty.  I don’t know why, but the season has been just breathtaking.  This time of year, we are mostly at home.  We walk in the evenings.  Fred has his fires in the fireplace, the dog and cat spraw in front of it, and eggnog warms in the microwave.  I am occupied with my new paella pan, experimenting with shellfish and veggies.  I love paella because it puts just one big dish on the table; it is a food of community, like breaking bread or sharing wine. 

Fred spent last weekend stretched out on the couch reading The Mighty Eighth, a collection of WWII memoirs, while I baked sugar cookies and sat at the dining room table grinding away at Christmas cards.  These will be the first cards I have sent in many years.  I don't know what has come over me.

We are waiting for winter now — snow is just to the south and west of us — and looking forward to the longer days that Christmas will bring.  Here in the bare-branched silence behind our garden gate, I guess we are growing older.

And so goes another year.  Ho, ho, ho!  A merry Christmas to you all.  We think of you often, always with best wishes.

The Infinity Scarf

Last week my husband brought home a plastic bag full of yarn, which was unusual for him, and he was quite mysterious about it. 

When I looked inside, it turned out to be a scarf knitted by our friend Nancy.  The card called it an infinity scarf and said that I should wrap it twice around my neck for warmth and comfort on the St. James Trail.  The scarf is blue and burgundy; it's made of a soft wool and it's very fancy with little fuzzy flowers.  It is a knitted ring, with no ends.  You slip it over your head, twist it, and then slip it over again. 

I don't know what to say.  I am overcome.  When preparing for a trip like the one to Santiago, it's rare to hear people say simply that they support you or even to ask you questions, other that that initial, seemingly innocent question whose purpose is to set up the dialogue.  "So," someone might say, "how far do you think you'll walk in a day?"  "Oh," I reply, "maybe 15 miles or so." And here it comes: "Well, if I were going, this is..."  how I would take care of my feet (good socks and lots of moleskin), what I would eat (nuts and dried fruit), how I would stay hydrated (2 full waterbottles at all times), the way I would spend my time (with a group of fellow travelers), when I would go (it's winter, you know)....   Someone asked me today, "Do you have a back-up emergency number?"  "What if you can't reach Fred?  What will you do then?  What if he can't reach you?"  All good to think about, but, as it turned out, the discussion was really about her brand new global phone.  Last time I saw this person, it was the ride to the airport. She wasn't offering me one; she just wanted to make sure I had thought about it. 

And then there are the people who should be going, too.  "I envy you," they declare, and then they begin to pack.  They point out what you should be taking (a cell phone, maps, a compass, a good pair of hiking boots) and what you should not be taking ("You're not going to take a cell phone, are you?" "No, not a book! All you need is YOUR book to record your experiences at night when you're not around the campfire."  "A pancho?!  No, not a pancho!  You have to have a jacket!"  How do people think of these things?   They come so well prepared.  They don't just mention things; they arrive with a point in mind.  They have thought it through and worked out all the details.  Any one of them could win the state debate trophy.

Sometimes they pause to see if I'm getting it all.  "So," they ask, "are you going to do it that way?" and if I say no, I think I'll be doing it this way, sometimes they just stand there and stare.  Sometimes they grimace a little or lift an eyebrow, but rarely, do they ask a question and almost nobody ever says, as Nancy did, I'll be thinking about you on your pilgrimage and I wish you well. 

So, this is a treat and I am savoring it gratefully.  Nancy, I will wear your beautiful scarf with affection, I will draw warmth and comfort from it, and I will carry your good wishes, or they will carry me, I hope, all the way to Santiago. 

Thank you.

Location, Location, Location

In a chicken coop, location is everything.  Our coop has three roosts that define the neighborhoods like railroad tracks. The front roost, where Roy sleeps, is high-priced real estate indeed.  Admission is by invitation only, which admit just three lucky hens a night.  The other six birds sleep on the back roost, perhaps a little close to the wall and consequently streaked white with chicken poop.  The chickens don't seem to mind.  It's comfortable there and safe, though unexceptional -- a sort of avian suburb, you might say, with hens warehoused shoulder to shoulder in a row along the branch.  Between those two perches and with one end right against the glass door, hangs the dreaded lower roost.  The low roost is where a young hen was pulled from the house and killed last spring, while I was installing my automatic chicken door.  An animal bent back the temporary wire barrier I had tacked up and pulled the little chicken partially through the hole, just far enough to bite off her head and leave the rest stuck there for the petsitter to find.   Even now that the chicken door is up and working, birds who sleep on the low roost must occasionally come eye to eye with a raccoon peering inside.  It's the kind of place a young girl dreams of leaving.

And leave they do, because in our coop the birds rotate.  Roy sees to that.  He moves the girls from neighborhood to neighborhood by issuing exclusive invitations to the high roost. 

I should tell you that although Roy shares his roost with three hens each night, there are only two invitations because Roy has had a special girlfriend since he was a little yellow chick, we call her the Number One hen, and in addition to other perqs of high status, she always sleeps on his left.  Roy sleeps in the center of his roost, and Number One sleeps on his left.  Dorothy, our eldest, sleeps two places down on his other side, and a guest bird sleeps between.  It's the guest who rotates.  I don't know the rules, but I do know that Roy enforces them.  I have seen him peck and crowd an interloper until she falls off the roost or moves to the back, so that someone else, the right bird, the invited guest, can fill the slot.  Four birds, no more, no less, sleep on Roy's roost.

Roy sleeps in the middle of the front roost and Number One sleeps beside him.

For a long while this winter, the guest bird was Arabella, with Ginger and Beulah taking turns from time to time, too, all mature hens.  Young girls start out on the lower roost, and eventually graduate to the back one.  All of ours have moved up -- nobody has used the lower roost since the incident -- but they still don't come uptown.  Their day will come, but for now they mature in suburban safety.

The odd thing is that Roy doesn't seem to like Arabella much, or Ginger either, for that matter, but he lets them sleep next to him.  Maybe the reason has something to do with fence mending or deference to age.  Or maybe the hens draw straws or have another way of awarding time.  For having lived with chickens for so many millennia, humans know little about their social systems.  Except, of course, that they exist.