Following the Lambs

I pull a thick blade of grass from the field and step over the mesh fence pulled taut along the top of the hill. Patches of stone are calloused white islands in the waves of sun-warmed pasture, outcroppings shorn of vibrant greenery over years of hooves and snow. Or perhaps the opposite? Maybe the sea of grass overtook the bare spots (not really bare but a jagged beauty all their own) and they are the hold-outs, the fighters, the free.

I feel the strength of millennia under my booted feet and turn west, towards the river, towards the next pasture, towards the horizon. The clouds look different here: they are distant and voluminous with pencil-etched grey hulls. All this water in different forms, even this grass in my fingers. The sliver of green fits between my thumbs, I raise my hands prayer-like to my lips and breathe deep beneath the empty spaces filled with blue sky. The chlorophyll-laced intermediary vibrates and screams a song of enclosure originating in my lungs.

A cloud-like body of fluffy white rubs up against my leg, one of his own legs bent and unused. An X on his back, bleating for milk, the lamb calls for nourishment that will soon disappear when the bag of formula is emptied, the last bottle of sugary powder measured and shaken and served. But I pretend that he wants something more, that he likes the actual me of me instead of my potential for surrogate mothering. He looks up and bleats again, my grass blade songs ignored. I drop to my knees, drop the grass to rub his soft wooly body. I learn quickly from him that I can give and receive affection even if it means something entirely different to each of us.

The shepherds move to the fence and the flock of sheep begins to crowd in, eying the lushness of the grass just behind the (usually electrified) mesh. The grass on this side has been chomped and chewed, a full day of jaw work and foamy cud-soaked lips. The flock could probably last another few days here, it seems to me (the uninitiated one), it is not devoid of all life yet. They could eat it down to the bare earth, the bugs, the stone.

But how is that healthy for anything? There are pastures yet untrod and unfertilized. It is work to get them there, to set up boundaries and take them down and set up more, to consider the future of movement, to balance the exchange of nutrients instead of utilizing a system anchored in a depletion of resources and excess of waste. It is work to keep these relationships healthy. It is work that is worth every thought and motion.

Is the grass greener on the other side of the fence? It certainly is longer, lusher, more tender than the clumps in this field. How are the sheep attracted? By sight, by smell, by knowing from where nourishment comes next? Or is it just because it is there? Would they conserve if they knew this was their home for weeks or would they eat just as much and expect something more? Are they content in the movement or is it a constant flow of anxiety?

The sheep are restless, the momentum of unfurling green strands of life pulling them forward. The shepherds unearth poles, gather mesh and metal to reveal an opening. A mass of bleats and strong legs rush in a white stream between the men, a delta of moving bodies fanning out on a half acre of new growth. Heads down, bodies finding their way, the sheep eat. They don’t see another open pasture before them, the one adjacent that they will soon devour, but they don’t need to. 

In this moment, they are content.

I wonder if I will ever be content. I wonder if I will ever be able to focus on the blade of grass in front of me instead of gazing through a cross-hatched mesh of restrictive energy, hungering for what I can’t have, what I think must be better, what I reason will fill my belly in a different way. This kind of life that has kept me running from one pasture to the next, nibbling for a moment but never truly satiated; not due to lack of resources but inability to put my head down and nourish myself with what is offered. Or sometimes lingering too long in a field well past its capacity to feed, a field in need of fallow time to recover, absorb, regrow.

Out of balance.

The limpy lamb stays by my side for a moment and I wonder if he will hold out, wait for a bottle that is not coming instead of taking advantage of the open field in front of him. But he bleats one last time and scampers off with surprising agility after the rest of the flock. Why linger in an old field when a new one is offered? He doesn’t look back.

I walk towards the uneven line in the grass where the fence once bisected the hill. I turn and look to the bare stone island surrounded by nibbled grass where I had stood. And I turn back around. The sheep don’t think to stay where there has been lushness in the past because it seems the safer, more logical option. They don’t stand, wait, long for what they don’t have out of fear. 

They move as they listen to their gut.

A body is close to mine. Not a white fluffy one but a furry faced one just the same. I smile up at the shepherd who takes my hand and walks with me into the next pasture, the greener one, where there is growth and movement and life. And suddenly I realize that like the sheep (and the shepherds) all I need to do is manage the boundaries, listen to my gut to know when it is time to move forward, and let myself cross into that nourishing wilderness when the opportunity arises.

(And, maybe most importantly, that I don’t always have to cross those boundaries alone)