Category: mud

The Object of a New Year

barnstormingblogLeave a comment
photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.
– G.K. Chesterton

We hoped for some timely snow for a white Christmas but had to be content with a brief flurry that didn’t stick.  Then there was more hope yesterday on New Year’s Eve with more flurries and a few little skiffs left behind here and there, but nothing much.  Instead of snow that stuck, we were stuck with the same old muddy bare ground and dead grass and weary frost-bitten plants.

It is natural to desire an easy transformation of the old and dirty to something new and beautiful:  an all clean pristine white cottony sheet covering thrown over everything, making it look completely different than before.  Similarly, at the tick of the clock past midnight on New Years’ Eve, we hope for just such an inner transformation as well, a fresh start, a leaving behind of the not-so-good from the past and moving ahead to the surely-it’ll-be-better in the future.

But it doesn’t stick, even if there is a flurry of good intentions and a skiff of newness plopped down here and there.  Even if we find ourselves in the midst of blizzard conditions, unable to see six inches ahead and immobilized by the furious storms of life,  that accumulation eventually will melt, leaving behind even more mud and raw mess.

It isn’t how flawless, how clean, or how new this year will be, but rather how to ensure our soul transformation sticks tight, unmelting from within, even when the heat is turned up and the sweat drips.  This is not about a covering thrown over the old and dirty but a full blown overhaul in order to never to be the same again.

I lift my eyes to the hills where the snow stays year round: sometimes more,  with a few hundred new inches over several weeks, or sometimes less,  on the hottest days of summer.  Our new souls this new year must be built of that same resiliency, withstanding what each day may bring, cold or hot.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…within my soul.

Companions in Adversity

barnstormingblogLeave a comment
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

When shrieked
The bleak November winds, and smote the woods,
And the brown fields were herbless, and the shades
That met above the merry rivulets
Were spoiled, I sought, I loved them still; they seemed
Like old companions in adversity.
~William Cullen Bryant  in A Winter Piece

When the winds start to howl
and leaves are flying through the air
like birds on the wing heading south,
when branches snap
and trunks bend to the point of breaking
when the ground is hopelessly barren
and the hills are nothing
but continuing shades of gray
descending from the sky
when the sun disappears for days
and the rains are continuous

I love it all still;

knowing we are in this together
when the times are tough and
the mud is thick
and obstacles fall in our way
even to the end of time
as we travel this road
like old companions
broken, withered, splintered
but sharing the journey
wherever it blows us.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

A Doleful Hymn

barnstormingblog3 Comments
Photo taken today across the road from our farm- feeding swans amid the cornfield stubble
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,   
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,   
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,   
Trod with a lighter tread.
~William Butler Yeats from “The Wild Swans at Coole”

I was working outside before the sun was up this rainy morning, preparing the horse barn for our vet arriving to perform an on-the-farm surgery on one of our Haflinger horses.  As I prepared the shavings bedding, feeling anxious about the procedure to take place, I heard sounds overhead that come only a few days a year: the swishing hush of wings in flight and the trumpeter swan “doleful hymn” called out as dozens passed above me in a long meandering line against the early dawn greyness.

The swan flocks predictably arrive in early November to eat their fill, feasting in the harvested cornfields surrounding our farm, their bright white plumage a stark contrast to the dulling muddy soil.  And too soon they lift their long graceful necks and fan out their wings to be picked up the wind, leaving us behind and beneath, moving south, heading year after year for their wintering home.

These incredible creatures bring such joy with their annual arrival and brief stay, their leave-taking  a harbinger for this dying time of year, reminding me once again nothing on earth can last.

“‘Tis strange that death should sing…” but in fact,  ’tis strange that death should fly in and out on silken wings.

I give myself over to their beauty, and walk with lighter tread, singing a new song.

I am grateful my sore heart still soars.

‘Tis strange that death
should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.
~William Shakespeare from The Life and Death of King John

The swan, like the soul of the poet,
By the dull world is ill understood.
~Heinrich Heine

Mired in Mud

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Ten solid days of rain can have its effects. It takes its toll in a variety of ways on the human psyche–the bleakness seeps into my brain, making my gray matter much grayer than usual. Everything slows down to a crawl and climbing out of bed to another dark day requires commitment and effort.

Managing barn chores and horses these days is a challenge. Despite years of effort to create well drained paddocks with great footing, there is no such thing when the ground is super saturated from unrelenting inches of rain, and when the barn and paddocks are unfortunately placed on the downside of a hill. Every bare inch of ground has become mud soup with more water pouring off the hill every moment.

Mud in all its glory rivals ice for navigation hazard. Yesterday it was a boot magnet as I tried carefully to make my way with a load of hay to a bit drier area in a paddock, and found with one step that my boot had decided to remain mired in the muck and my foot was waving bootless in the air trying to decide whether to land in the squishy stuff or go back to the relative safety of the stuck boot. Standing there on one foot, with a load of hay in my arms, I’m sure I looked even more absurd than I felt at the moment, and at least I gave comic relief to people driving by. I won’t say how I figured my way out, but it did require doing laundry later.

I remember quite a few years ago when my daughter was about 5 years old, I was busy with chores as she was exploring a similar muddy paddock and I realized I hadn’t seen her for a few minutes and I went looking. There she stood, wailing, with one stocking foot in the mud, an empty boot stuck up to its top, and her other boot so mired, she couldn’t move without abandoning it too. By the time I got her extracted, we were both laughing muddy messes.

More laundry.

The Haflingers are not averse to the mud if they are hungry enough. They’ll hesitate momentarily before they dive in to reach their meal but dive in they do. Those clean blonde legs and white tails are only a memory from last summer. Even their bellies are flecked with brown now. Later, back in the barn, as the mud dries, it curries off in chunks and I start to see my golden horses revealed again, but it seems they will never be truly clean again.

What lures me into the mud, enticing me deeper in muck that covers and coats us so thoroughly that it feels I’ll never be clean again? Whatever I want so badly that I’m willing to get hopelessly dirty to reach it, once there, it is tainted by the mud as well, and never as good as I had hoped. I become hopelessly mired and stuck, sinking deeper by the minute.

Rescue comes from an outreached hand with strength greater than my own. Cleansing may be merely skin deep, only to last until my next dive into the mud, or it can be thorough and lasting–a sort of future “mud protective coating” so to speak. I can choose how dirty to get and how dirty to stay and how clean I want to be.

I need to go do laundry again.