My four legged mentor

By Conrad Beaubien

I know with certainty that I’m holding the reins of another era. My treks with Thunder offer a takeaway every time. I know he knows; the unfazed deepness in his ever-kind eyes, a twitch with his tall ears is but one of the indicators I have come to understand. It’s a donkey sign language that after months of getting-toknow, Thunder has privileged me with learning. Never in one go, mind you. You see the thing is he holds back on what he understands that I am able to get in one walk. He dishes out the schooling in small easy portions, a lesson every time. Not sure if there ever will be a graduation day? I hope not, because the experience for me is lifechanging and so bring it on I say to Thunder. I say it in a soft voice to be non-disruptive of the rhyme of hearts beating and six legs rolling along the way of February ground. Besides, intimates seldom speak, and when they do they murmur in tranquil voices.

The pauses along our path become the music of the silent notes in our very own trail symphony, nature’s composition conducted by a man and a donkey accompanied with the orchestra of the fields, the streams and forests. If you know it, I compare it to the ancient music of Vivaldi in rendezvous with the contemporary sound of Mark Knopfler—global music where the notes of past and present merge in octaves that run up and down a heartened keyboard that plays itself whenever we are in the company of each other. Yes, this is it. This is one lesson on this day where the song of the creek can be heard beneath ice cover of winter. The pureness of newfallen snow draped over the vibrant flow now moving beneath our feet, beneath the old wooden bridge we have taken pause on. I know that down there in the ravine, in midst of my unseeing eyes and failing hearing there is a music that lives and meant only to be felt within our pulse.

Thunder’s head is usually focused to the ground as we follow the trail, him lost in donkey thoughts, me in my own. Yet we recognize togetherness; He’ll want to pause and figure out anything of curiosity or that needs to be reasoned in the way that donkey’s reason. They say with a horse you can tell it. In other words, with an unknown along the path, say a puddle, the rider can simply nudge with a heel in the saddle for the horse to continue. When it comes to donkeys it’s about listening. The evolution of the species over thousands of years has been one of learning and adapting. If a donkey is unsure you will know because it will pause to give time to ponder and to process. Over time, ignoring unknowns were to a donkey’s peril. No pushing or pulling will convince the animal to move until it has processed the unfamiliar. And here’s where the hard part of a donkey’s story comes in.

It is this part that brings one to tears in reading through literature of the past where a relationship with a donkey was involved. There are hundreds of examples of how the hubris of mankind has lead to the suffering of animals, the donkey being one study. It then is a clear link to see how the cruelty toward one animal is a metaphor for the cruelty towards all of nature that humankind has imposed. I read the poet Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes and of his 120-mile, 12-day trek with a donkey and how he loaded his small donkey, Modestine, with a two hundred and fifty pound pack and then was taught that only punishment would motivate a donkey to move against its wishes, or its capabilities. Frankly I have to skim past these stories because the heartbreak as a result of the historic ignorance is hard to get over: Perhaps it is this that has earned the donkey its traits of quiet humility and unflinching under the worst of punishment and cruelty. The donkey tells us that we too can survive the worst of challenges to eventually continue on with life; while severe challenges become part of our personal story, they are not who we are. Again it is perhaps this is what I am feeling when I say that like a lightning rod, I am holding onto the reins of another era. Yet it is the present era that I am walking in with an attempt to connect and listen and learn. I want to apologize on behalf of the world, to ask forgiveness of the animals. At least that is one prayer that I have gained. And this is where and how I feel the hope for a better place. Let nature be our guide. It means quieting the noise of the world in our own personal space in order to be able to hear. At least that is what my moments in current days are telling me. Thunder knows that the music of the silent notes are there to behold. Watch him as he guides his ears, his angel wings.

I have personal hope that the suffering and upheaval in the world at present will lead us into a renewed enlightenment. I am an optimist and the reading of history can tell like a graph chart noting how upheaval and awareness have rolled through the ages like the swells and troughs of open sea. I think if we take time to give attention to our natural surrounds, they will tell us what we need to hear; for me, it’s one more reason to hold tight to the reins of Thunder.