As far as winters are concerned, the past one was pretty easy on me. I started to get quite concerned in mid-January when I glanced up at the mountains to the east where my summer water supply is usually stored in the form of some stout drifts and snowpack on the peaks and in the draws and north-facing hillsides. The white on the mountain was pretty sparse. At that time, I considered my usual luck and figured that the prayers of the valley farmers would be answered at my expense in March, when I was in the thick of calving season.
As it turned out, though, the prayers of the cowboys raced to the front of the line, and the weather in February and March remained in the lamb phase for several weeks, with barely a whimper from the lion. It was perfect calving weather, and my moods and my sleep patterns corresponded directly with the barometer and the weather forecasts. Despite the concerns I held in the back of my mind for what may or may not lay in store for the upcoming irrigation season, I basked in the glory of the present. There wasn’t much I could do about it, anyway, but to be perfectly honest, pleas for moisture from the heavens during calving season rarely escaped my lips. I’d worry about the water in May and June.
The work, drudgery and expense of feeding all winter really starts to wear on me the longer it goes on. On one hand, it’s kind of a nice side benefit to be among all the critters every day. If anything is amiss or out of place, I’m much more likely to be aware of it and notice any irregularities that may present themselves if I’m in the middle of it all every day. On the other hand, it’s not a real stretch to imagine myself growing complacent with the mundane, commonplace, everyday chores and failing to take proper notice of things that I should be in tune with. I could go either way. I’m not entirely averse to taking a shortcut now and then, should the opportunity present itself.
For instance, why would I take 30 seconds to stop and shut the gate after I pull through with a load of feed? As long as there’s little enticement in the way of something better outside the gate than what I have on the truck, the cows rarely pay attention to the open gate. The mild weather of my beautiful winter and spring revealed some of the pitfalls of complacency. You see, there was indeed enticement outside the gate at a much earlier stage in the season than I was used to. With temperatures in the mid-to-high 70s, the grass on the side of the road just outside the open gate greened up at a time of year when the brown usually persists. One Sunday morning, as I let the old blue Chevy creep across the field in granny gear while I nonchalantly flaked hay off of the flatbed, I failed to notice the 100 reprobate cows that were making a mad-dash jailbreak for the wide-open gate. It took me and the dogs an hour, plus a month’s worth of non-Sunday school language, to get the frolicking bovines back in the field where they belonged.
If there’s anything more consistently untrustworthy than a herd of green-seeking cows, it’s a bunch of horses with any opportunity at all to find an open gate. Just a mere week or so after my Sunday open-gate escapade with the cows, I dropped the hotwire that held my horses in a makeshift pasture in a pivot corner of a winter wheat field. You’d think that I’d know better, but I couldn’t help but press my luck. I pulled in with the same old Chevy to kick off some hay for the horses, with the misguided thought that I could kick the hay off and get back before the horses discovered their avenue for escape. Silly me. No sooner had I jumped on the back of the flatbed, than Penny, the 3-year-old filly, led a cavalry charge out the gate. In a rare moment of self-control, I pushed back the string of oaths begging to charge out of my mind and through my mouth. Instead, I gave the familiar three-note whistle that I use every morning when I chum the horses up for a bite of grain. In what was as beautiful as a choreographed production of a Russian ballet, eight horses all turned in unison and gracefully trotted back to where I was with the truck. I hurried back to the gate as the ponies began partaking of their meal, unaware that I had outsmarted them.
My musings on the events of that week led me to a couple of conclusions. First, there is true value in everyday, seemingly mundane consistency. Joy can be found in the ordinary. Secondly, happiness abounds in life’s tiniest victories, if we make the effort to watch and listen. It’s much more pleasant to revel in the small, good things than it is to rage against creation for life’s setbacks, many of which, like the weather, are completely out of our control. Thirdly, it’s not that hard to close the gate.
