Pop 89: Nature-Loving Nature
By Madonna Hamel
As the gate on the right closed on the horizon and the field, the gate on the left opened to a new lot of heifers. The fifteen Black Angus were herded into the ring for all of us to get a good look at them. “You might want to sit on your hands, Madonna,” teased Ervin, sitting next to his ranch hand Ian. “You French have a tendency to wave your hands around a lot, and I wouldn’t want you bidding on more than I’m already prepared to buy.”
Some of the red-headed heifers seemed more than a little bewildered and began swirling, like dervish cattle. A couple of others stopped to stare at us in the bleachers, eating our beef on a bun and drinking our fortified coffees. I wondered how far ahead into their futures they could see.
One young virgin gapes with big, wet eyes, and I can’t resist the urge to speculate on her emotional state. Is she upset by the pounding gavel or the tight confine of the pen? Is she yearning to be back outside, or is she longing for her ancestral homeland and its far milder climate? How long before she’ll adapt? I’m trained as both an artist and a journalist to ask questions, even dumb ones like these. But I know better than to pose them to a room full of ranchers. Instead, I lean in to whisper to Amber, Ian’s girlfriend, a biologist, animal behaviourist, gymnast and fellow observer: “Do you find yourself comparing these animals to our animal selves?”
One thing I do know is that this is the first time I’ve gotten this close to farm animals. To be honest, I never gave them much thought when I moved here. Apart from horses, my animal interests lie in the wild: coyotes, owls, badgers, turtles, and, of course, the reintroduced buffalo.
Several years ago, a friend introduced me to animal totem cards. I always knew that the Indigenous world-view embraces all animals as brothers and sisters. In fact, even trees - one-legged - belong to this large, embracing circle of relatives, as far as native cultures are concerned. The totem cards reminded me of this knowledge on a daily basis. The animals in my deck are North American, among them: eagle, hawk, elk, lizard, snake, skunk, moose, porcupine, coyote, wolf, raven, spider, bat and salmon. I’ve been using this deck for years, and there are some animals I have yet to pull, like jaguar or blue heron. But ant shows up practically every day - with his infernal life lesson: be ‘patient’. An ant, I am reminded, will strip a forest bare for food, even if it takes a year. Also, it is a builder like a beaver, is aggressive like a badger, has stamina like elk, scrutiny like a mouse, and give-away like a turkey.
Once I integrated animal awareness into my life, I watched as they arrived in my every day- in images and in sky and on land. Most religious origins understood the importance of love and respect for nature. Christ exhorts, “Ask the beasts for council.” Theologian Elizabeth Johnson, in her book “Ask the Beasts,” uses Job:12 as a kind of crowbar to pry open dry theology. Her book is a conversation between Charles Darwin and a Christian. While, as one reviewer suggests, “about half of the Christians in the United States would consider such an encounter inconceivable,” Johnson suggests that, in fact, “a creation that is infinitely loving” would, in fact, look very much like “the extravagantly rich and self-creative drama of life that Darwin narrates so compellingly in The Origin.”
I am jolted back by the voice of the auctioneer: “Startin’ at nineteen hundred nineteen and a half, I’ll take nineteen seventy-five if you wanna go boys yes-sir boys one more time nineteen seventy-five.” The rhythm and speed of his hustle trips along nicely, a kind of rap for cowboys.
I keep my hands safely grasped around my third cup of strong coffee and watch Ervin seated at the end of the bleacher to see if he’s bidding. It’s hard to tell. He sits calm but steely-eyed. The only sign of a bid is the slightest wave of his program at his side. He passes on the dervishes blazing across the turd-matted stage, and a rancher from Wyoming buys the lot. Stage door right opens to release the more-than-willing starlets out of the glare and into the great, chilly outdoors. I catch another glimpse of the bright December sky stretching over the blonde brush-cut landscape, and the door closes again. Exit stage right. All the world’s a stage for ourselves and our critters. And then it’s over. And we drive home, followed by a swiftly rising full moon.
The following Sunday, snow began falling heavily and blowing mightily. I rode up with Ervin and Ian to Ervin’s pastureland at Beaverdale. After we cleared the area of stones, we sat in the warm truck, awaiting the animals being ferried down from Cadillac. It wasn’t a good day to be hauling anything; the roads were slippery, with snow piling and visibility lessening by the minute. In the blowing sleet and the growing darkness, lights appeared on the horizon, but it turned out to be a plow. But ask me if I was nervous, sitting between those two burly men. I was not.
Over the years, I’ve watched ranchers work with their animals. I’ve watched them get up early to feed every morning in freezing weather. I’ve seen them they go searching for lost calves, treat foot rot, birth babies at 4 am. I listen to stories of encounters with bulls, protective moms, babies stuck in badger holes. I cringe at night when calves get taken away, and their mothers cry for them all night long for weeks on end. Indubitably, the “infinitely loving nature of creation” goes both ways. Ideally, we are nature-loving nature.