Lockdown with Thunder

Extraordinary moments in unordinary times

Story: Conrad Beaubuen  Photo: Noble Beast Farms

If you were to follow Bloomfield Creek, down from the watershed delineated by Scoharie Road, down where the water flexes with the cuts in the land and then slides through last year’s tall grasses still flattened from the heaviness of winter; see the creek chase through awaiting farmland and then under Bloomfield’s main drag to arrive at a layover in the village’s Mill Pond. Here in this calm spot in the waterway, the voices of children would be heard from the nearby playground in ordinary times; in ordinary times the pond hosts kids’ fishing derbies and family picnics. These are not days of the ordinary, but yet the creek continues, tracking the curvatures of the land, trekking the slopes and drops of the earth’s surface. While the environs of the pond are silent at this moment, the spring waters, the freshets are anxious, eager to reach the mouth at West Lake.

Over time, streams and rivers and their intersections signalled civilizations to settle. Here at the junctions, prehistoric villages formed and later still, on those same sites, towns and cities happened, gaining from transportation routes and energy from where the land leaves off and water runs fierce. A mill built along a stream like the Bloomfield one I follow once captured the current, diverting it to a waterwheel putting in motion the shape of a community. From there an economy grew around the single enterprise—water drove a grist stone, a saw blade and the mill attracted newcomers to stay on, to work the land nearby. These arrivals then brought grain for milling and logs for sawing, mill-rendered boards assembled houses, churches, barns, and a town hall. Water fed the thirst of venture.

Trace the Bloomfield creek further, look how its waters run through the lower village and duck under the once rail line cum Millennium Trail, watch as it worms through a vast prairie-like bog, an ever expanding drainage basin carved in glacial times and amassing the sediments of the terrain, a vast bed of opulent muck and native grasses. Today these protected lands offer refuge for all that gathers, nests or takes root, while far below the soil, a limestone shelf filters water, holding it in cold dark caverns and underground streams. Seen from open skies above, satellite images describe a restful place, a place abundant of nutrients, an abstract work of the gods where a mysterious sepia toned serpent—the creek— migrates through high grasses while bound for the sea.

It’s here where I follow the shoulder of this refuge this morning, the untamed space that borders onto the farm that is home to the donkey Thunder and company. I arrived at the place for the 8 a.m. feeding of Thunder and Joe and Micah. Collecting a bale of hay from the barn, I loaded it onto the two-wheel cart with long and worn wooden handles then followed the lane and downward slope to the back paddock that rests against the bog. The tone was alive with the call of red-winged blackbirds and robins and punctuated with the faraway bark of the raven. The animals seemed content to see me, a caller to their world. Ears swivelled, a tail switched and a snort from Micah as they watched me release the latch on the short steel chain, the familiar metal-on-metal ring as I opened the gate and through it manoeuvred the cart and hay. It seemed that they had been snacking on the new grass fed by April rains, likely foraging at dawn as they were less enticed by my bale of dry hay than they were on a typical morning back in January. Hell, I wasn’t disappointed this morning; how could I be when despite the current restrictive movements of populations I am gifted with these moments of interchange; I feed them hay and they charge me emotionally—animal spirit. They power an uplift of mind and inner self that is as vibrant as the lime textured mosses that snug in the pockets of land.

When it came time to halter Thunder and walk him, he was hesitant to leave. I’ve learned to wait it out, to watch and listen until he signals he is ready to go. Donkeys aren’t stubborn. It is we that want to get on with our hurried lives and can’t abide to pause. It is one thing this donkey has taught me. By the time we arrived at the gate and about to open it, it seemed like everybody wanted to come. Joe was persistent. As I opened the gate a foot wide and attempted to lead Thunder out, Joe pushed his six-hundred-pound weight in an attempt to also get through; he wanted out and thwarted every attempted exit as he insisted to join us. It’s not often this happens; maybe he had hold of the scent of the full grasses that edge the nearby Millennium Trail. The message he gave off was that either he came with us or no one got to leave. I gave in. Temporarily hitching Thunder’s reins to a post I fetched Joe’s green halter with the blue rope from the drive shed, brought it to him and gently pulled it over his nose and tall brown ears. He then settled.

This is a different morning and the animals feel it. The lockdown has brought with it a stillness that I believe the wisdom of the animals, of the wildlife picks up on. It’s gotta be something about this not being an ordinary time, people talking through masks and then hardly anybody around is much less familiar to them and they are puzzled, maybe why they seem at odds, why Joe refused to stay back when there was a chance to cover ground with us.

I decided to leave Thunder’s crimson wool saddle pack behind and so here I am, trailing both donkeys on leads bound for the long, unbending lines of the Millennium Trail. I listen to the mellow percussive rhythms as between two donkeys and I, ten feet stride the gravelled plane of the all but abandoned pathway. I feel both soothed and empowered by these beasts of burden. Sandwiched between two donkeys and their thoughts, I am transported to a place apart, convinced of mythological proportions, a reverie no less when overnight, the faeries of the Isle of Harris in the Outer Scottish Hebrides have woven heavy yarn cloth over the place, sewn a woolly Harris palette the length of the bog; stitched a roughly hemmed fibred border in contrast to the ruler straight line at kilometre 31: we pause for a rest and as I look out to the largess of my surrounds I know I am one with the creek, the bog lands, the nearby rise of hill and my four-legged and most gentle companions; rest culture; extraordinary moments in unordinary times. t Conrad Beaubien with Thunder, Joe and Micah.