Ruminations is the collection of the things that have occupied my mind over the past week. Paths the neurons have travelled twice. It’ll include updates on my various projects, things I’ve been reading, quotes that have inspired me, and any other number of things. Many of the thoughts will be incomplete. This is musings in their purest form.
Where there's life there's hope.
-J.R.R. Tolkien
Life & Death
I talk about cow births and deaths in this section, so skip this if that’d gross you out (:
Man, what a week. The majority of it was spent on a ranch in western South Dakota, in one of the most remote places on God’s dry, brown earth. Harding County is home to one person on every two square miles. The alkali dust taints everything, from the sulphuric water to the salty flats. Yet, living throughout this barren, brittle land is a myriad of creatures. Coyotes and cattle, meadowlarks and mule deer, antelope, porcupine, raccoons, sheep… all by the hundreds and thousands.
As I lived and worked among this veritable zoo, the stark coexistence of life and death struck me.
During calving season (the time of year the majority of a ranch’s cattle give birth), ranchers check their cows and tag calves often. I got to help my brother with this job while I was there: bumping across the prairie and hills looking for brand new calves. We saw hundreds of these baby cows - LOVE. When we found one and identified it’s mother, we gave the calf an ear tag that identifies who it belongs with and if it’s a bull or heifer (male or female).
Mother cows hide their calves well, nestling them into tall grass and the corners of valleys. The calf hidden and thus protected, the Ma Cow goes to eat. While checking cows with my brother, we came across one such calf - hidden away, presumably to be found by its mother later. It was tiny, curled into the smallest ball of black fuzz. The Ma didn’t come to claim her calf for several days. Eventually we brought it in to the barn to be taken care of - blind, frail, and hungry. I named him Barnabas.
We continued our checks. We came across a cow who was down, laboring unsuccessfully to deliver a calf. My brother did a quick examination and found that her calf was breech.
I don’t know how long it took for him to deliver the calf. I’m guessing 30-40 minutes, but I just don’t know. The Ma was tired of pushing unsuccessfully. The calf had to be turned around. It was a process.
Finally, the calf was delivered - not born, for it was already dead. Although it had been carried to term, it died at some point early in her labor. The Ma could barely stand once she was free of the baby.
As I watched this happen, I felt an incredible sympathy for the laboring Ma. She’d given it all she had. In her eyes, there was a look of defeat and pain. Although she eventually stood, we later found her dead as well - thirty feet from her stillborn calf.
How do you deal with that? How do you handle spending your time, your strength, your emotional energy too - pouring into someone and then seeing them die? That’s heavy, yet it’s what farmers and ranchers have to face frequently. Thank a farmer the next time you see one.
Because they press on - that’s all you can do. We drove back to the barn to tend to matters there: several bottle-fed calves. Barnabas, the blind calf, was huddled in a ball of fuzz again. I rubbed him, trying to send some life into him. I don’t believe it’s magic, it’s compassion. Imbuing a will to live into a helpless critter, because it’s not just an abandoned blind baby. It’s a life. Perhaps he just might see that someone else wants him to live, so he might fight just a little longer.
We gave Barnabas a taste of milk, and he stumbled along looking for more. A couple bottles of milk later, he had visibly widened and was standing on his own.
I had to smile. Life is not always beautiful - it’s messy, it’s painful, it’s hard. Where there is life, there must be death. But where there is life, there is hope.
There is always hope.
Dinosaurs
If I took anything away from my trip… it was a dog 😊
Meet Helga! I call her my dinosaur because she’s a giant dog. Half Catahoula, half Cane Corso - she’s a big sweetie. She just likes to cuddle, actually. At 8-9 years old, she’s now retired from herding and hunting. She’ll spend the rest of her days being a family dog, a campfire dog, a baseball game and drive-in movie dog.
Welcome home, Helga!