I went for a walk today.
When I dropped my kids off for the bus, it was 32ºF. By noon, when I emerged from the cocoon of my office, it was 58ºF, and the sun was shining. There was enough of a breeze to remind me that a jacket was the correct choice.
When the sunshine hit my face, I felt the cork that stoppers my seasonal depression begin to loosen. Vitamin D is a glorious thing, I thought. I decided to take a tour of the farm before I was obligated to be on a work call. The border collie trotted along beside me, taking her compulsory flank and bark of my daughter’s 4-H steers. She came back to my side, looking for praise, until she spotted a group of geese in the pasture a hundred yards ahead. She adroitly herded them back into their air. They honked their disgust.
The pasture beside the lane has absorbed its share of chlorophyll during the sunny days of March and is growing what seems like inches per day. Soon, the cattle will be pulled from the cornstalks. What remains will be plowed under for nutrients for this season’s crop, and the cows will return to the growing pasture.
I passed my brother on my walk. He was headed to the machine shop in the old Chevy truck. He noisily shifted the transmission into a lower gear and leaned over to roll down the manual windows on the passenger side. We chatted for a minute. He had been to the Liddell place, prepping the field for corn seed. He is busy, and I know he feels the stress of the spring work. And yet, he knows he is doing what he was born to do – not many people experience that kind of satisfaction. All I know is that I wasn’t born to send emails. He rolled the window back up, and I lifted my fingers in the common salute of country folk.
As I walked down the driveway toward the highway, I was reminded that we needed to burn the drainage ditches. For the next month, every calm day until the canal company turns on the water, the air will be tinted with the sweet, acrid smell of burning grass as we collectively, as a farming community, prep for the coming irrigation season.
The cattle, with their 2-month-old calves, bellered as I walked past. The calves looked good, and the cows were still plump in a pleasant way despite the demands of greedy calves. An old rancher once told me that those kinds of cows are “easy keepers,” and that has stuck with me as a goal of sorts. I want a herd of easy keepers.
I popped my head into the machine shop to say hello again or maybe goodbye. It smelled like oil and dirt, like the cab of my grandpa’s long-ago pickup. My brother’s blond head was in the hood of another farm truck, but he was talking on speakerphone to my dad. I smiled, waved him off and left for my office and the job that gave me the security to enjoy these moments.
I went for a walk today.
