My Million-Dollar Donkey Read online

  We continued buying things like tools and tractors and furniture and rugs for a home we had yet to build. We had gotten rid of our two sensible cars and now had four gas guzzling vehicles, if you counted Mark’s work truck and an old dump truck he bought from a friend. Mark insisted these things were necessary to set up the quaint vision of simplicity we dreamed of, a life where he would putter in a workshop and I would putter in the kitchen or at my writing desk. But as more and more tangible goods arrived, each one demanding space, care, and upkeep, the truly meaningful experiences—such as a vacation to forge togetherness or to expand our world awareness—slipped further away. I continued to introduce heart to heart talks with my husband, airing my concerns and voicing my desperate longing for more togetherness. Mark insisted the time for us would come later, after we had finally arrived at our romanticized country life where picnic dinners were served under blooming trees and the birds sang and our sweet donkey brayed to serenade our happiness as we strolled our 50 acres and slept in a log cabin mansion.

  “Maybe we should cut our losses and sell this land, forget building such a grand dream house. We could buy a cabin that is already finished like we originally planned,” I said, knowing he found my endless commentary on the issue tiresome but unable to keep my strong feelings to myself. “We decided to retire and move to the country so we’d stop striving, relax. We agreed we wanted to have time for family and each other.”

  “We will. When I’m done.”

  He was a man on a mission, having a ball as a builder working on an impressive project, thanks to a huge bank account available to feed his creative instincts. I was just a woman waiting for his obsession to end, dreaming the same tired dreams I had dreamt before our retirement. I didn’t really care where we lived or how. I could have been happy in Florida, in Georgia or on the moon. The reason I wanted us to embrace simplicity was to forge a life with less distractions. If we had less to do, less to care for, and less to strive over, we’d start focusing on our relationship as a couple and on our family. God, how I missed my family . . . even when they were in the same room with me.

  “You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.”

  —Henry David Thoreau

  WILD ENTERTAINMENT

  Our world was filled with wildlife now, and rather than feel threatened or concerned by all the new creatures crossing our path, I was enchanted.

  There was a hole in the tree by the front gate leading into our fifty acres. Sitting in the gnarly indentation at the crest of the trunk lived an owl with beautifully patterned wings and an expressive face. I started referring to him as our family owl, and got a tremendous kick out of the inquisitive pair of eyes glowing in the dark that greeted everyone who came to visit.

  One day I spied an animal running across the road. I first thought I’d seen a mangy dog but the ears were long, the hair shaggy, and the contours of the animal’s frame didn’t seem proportionate. This dog was simply too thin, with oddly muscular thighs and a long snout, like Wile E. Coyote from the Roadrunner cartoons. Ah, so this is what a coyote looks like, I thought, watching him run with his tail tucked tight between his legs across the highway.

  Once I spied four deer running along the fence inside our pasture. How’d they get trapped inside? I wondered. My mind reeled with excitement as I imagined feeding my new pet deer. But when I stepped out of the car, they raced across the field and with one mighty leap, cleared the fence and disappeared into the woods again. Oh, yeah. Deer soar.

  We once saw a baby skunk in the pasture and though our actions may not have been wise, we all ran out to get a closer look. The scared creature hissed, we screamed, and then laughed ourselves silly because we were so sure we’d be victims of a stink bomb if we didn’t skedaddle.

  We watched blue jays build a nest in the corner of our porch. We hung hummingbird feeders outside the window to catch glimpses of the tiny creatures flitting about. I stood on the hood of my car to get a better look at the wild turkeys waddling across our gravel road. I even scattered corn about to keep them hanging around. People told me that bears were serious pests, but I didn’t care. I prayed for one, like a little kid wishing for a temperature of 102 just so she could stay home sick from school.

  One day, I heard a loud thunk against the glass door. A bird had flown into the porch, rammed into the windowpane, and fallen to the ground dead. This was the fourth bird to hit our cabin in a month.

  I’ve always lived by the “I don’t do dead things” rule. I firmly believe a man’s job is to attend to gross or unpleasant dead creatures, so if the cat dragged a dead mole onto our porch, I’d put a bowl over the poor creature and Mark was left with the task of removing the carcass when he got home. No one wants to come home to a “honey-do list” that includes rotting carcasses, but I couldn’t face the death of innocents as he could. Anyway, because of my rule, the day I found the little dead sparrow, I put a bowl over it.

  The influx of suicidal birds was a puzzle. I stepped outside to study the cabin from a winged creature’s perspective. The windows were very dark, and as such, should have been obvious to an animal flying about.

  Why now? I wondered. Is there suddenly an overpopulation of songbirds? Are so many birds taking to the sky that finding a safe flight path is difficult? Or are the birds eating something that makes them loco, like catnip causes felines to go crazy? Perhaps they’re flying high (and I don’t mean altitude) because some organic neighbor is growing weed (and I don’t mean dandelions) which they can’t resist eating (dude). Then again, perhaps there is a sudden onslaught of bird blindness, or an effect of wind and air pressure affecting the wildlife’s equilibrium. Could global warming be the cause?

  Later that week, a fifth bird hit the cabin door. I went to investigate with my trusty bowl in hand, but instead of a dead bird, I found a sparrow lying stunned in the corner of the porch. I bent down and picked him up.

  “Boy, I wish you could tell me what’s going on,” I said.

  They say a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and I can tell you now, that’s absolutely true. I adore birds. I love to hear them sing and watch them zip through the sky and land on a bush right next to me. But years of bird watching couldn’t compare to the thrill of holding this delicate, wild creature in my hand. The little sparrow felt weightless, yet as soft and warm as a toddler’s hand. He looked up at me and blinked with resignation. Caught.

  I stroked his feathers and held my palm open. After a moment, he abruptly shot into the sky. He was alive and free, one of the lucky ones, but then, so was I. Holding that bird was paramount to having a private audience with nature, a moment of intimate communion with an elusive, glorious element we usually must admire from afar. I was touched deeply, reminded of the true beauty and grace in the world.

  In August, there was such a glut of butterflies in the area that dozens got trapped inside the porch. I saved them when I could, but sometimes, they’d beat themselves to death against the screen long before I could perform a needed rescue. They say if you touch a butterfly’s wings, they can’t always fly afterwards, so my dead-things bowl became a transport to lead them to freedom safely.

  One day, as we were eating dinner, I noticed a wayward butterfly frantically flying against the screen. I excused myself from the table to help the creature out, but upon close inspection realized the butterfly was instead a hummingbird. I was delighted to have the opportunity to save the bird, especially since my dogs were eyeing the fairy-like creature as if it were a flying Reese’s peanut butter cup. I shooed the dogs away and cupped my hand around the tiny bird, so frantic to escape that his bitty beak got caught in the web of the screen. I pulled him off like removing a dart from the bull’s eye of a dartboard.

  Holding such a miniscule bird was like catching a lightning bug. I opened my hand a small bit to peek at a brilliant little scar
let head. His ultra-delicate wings beat quickly against my palm feeling like an Eskimo kiss. After pointing out the miracle of this bird to my curious kids, and spewing romantic theory about the connection we were making with nature, I stepped outside, opened my hand, and let the little guy free. The entire episode was brief but glorious.

  Life in the country was filled with these “trivial miracles.” In the middle of taking a bite of lasagna, I found myself holding a hummingbird. How often did things like that happen in the hubbub of suburbia? Then again, miracles can and do happen everywhere in the world. The trick is noticing them. The beauty of the world had always been at my fingertips, but living at a slower pace was what inspired me to pause long enough to observe and reflect upon life’s daily gifts.

  Like the fact that the sky was ink black in areas where the city’s glow didn’t reach, causing the stars to strike the senses like pin pricks of pleasure, or that the absence of traffic noise never meant silence, but a mixed melody of wind, birds, and rustling leaves as soothing as a distant waterfall.

  Life’s volume had been turned up, and everything, from the feel of my daughter’s hand to the hum of honeybees on the blackberry bushes, suddenly held my attention.

  The gentle caress that simple experiences leave on the soul should have been enough. But true happiness demands a state of balance and I was realizing that for everything gained, something was also lost. I was enchanted by the quaint harmony of life in nature, but the absence of other things, such as intellectual stimulus and brushing up against people with intriguing life experiences, was sorely missed. I longed for the swell of inspiration that accompanies meaningful work.

  I didn’t forget that all the frantic spinning of wheels that we did while living in the city made for a miserable existence, but who would have guessed that too much leisure and a drastic withdrawal from contemporary society would feel equally out of balance?

  Even with the world brimming with texture and awareness, hummingbirds and butterflies and stars touching my heart daily, I couldn’t seem to shake my feelings of alienation and deprivation. I was savoring the world alone, when what I wanted most was to share the experience. My husband was busy building a cabin, then a house, then a workshop, with plans for a barn if money held out. His attention was consumed with shopping and delegating construction chores. He cared more about Ronnie’s opinion and companionship than mine, choosing again and again to engage in projects for this man’s benefit rather than our family’s long term stability. My only friends were a girl who couldn’t read and a donkey. I loved them both, but I loved and needed my best friend for life, Mark, much more.

  To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

  —Henry David Thoreau

  GOAT ECONOMICS

  Herculean effort was required to clean up the endless weeds and downed trees on 50 untamed acres. We now had power machinery at our disposal, but still, we faced a daunting, endless task. What were we to do in those areas where we learned the tractor had no footing after the heavy machine sank into the muddy ground near the creek, forcing us to call Ronnie to bring his backhoe to drag us out?

  “Now, I’m not claiming to know everything, ‘cause I only have ‘bout a sixth grade education, but seems to me you ought to employ a bit of nature to assist the job. Buy a goat,” Ronnie said. “Goats eat everything donkeys and horses don’t.”

  The idea that a goat would magically clean up our weeds like one of those automatic pool cleaners everyone had in Florida sounded mighty convenient. So we decided to buy a goat.

  The problem was goats are not for sale at the local pet store. None on eBay either. I tried the classifieds. No goats. Clearly we would have to go the country route to get information, so we started asking around. Sure enough, in one day I learned that anyone looking for a goat simply had to go visit the goat lady. No name, just a title: the goat lady. When you spoke the name in these here parts, everyone knew just whom you were talking about, like Cher, or Prince.

  With a vague idea of where the goat lady lived but no idea what the goat lady looked like, we set off to purchase a weed eater au naturel. The kids might have enjoyed the adventure, but if we brought them with us to a farm that looked like the equivalent of a goat pound, we might come home with a dozen goats, so we decided this first shopping trip would best be done while they were in school. After an hour of aimless driving, we seemed no closer to stumbling upon a goat farm than we were to stumbling upon a skyscraper. We pulled into a driveway to ask a local farmer for directions.

  “We’re looking for a farm that sells goats. Do you happen to know where that might be?” I asked.

  The man nodded slowly, took off his hat and scratched his head. “Let’s see,” he said. He nodded again and slowly put his hat back on. He sighed, looked off into the distance, and winced at the sun. For all we knew, he might have been thinking about the goat lady, the weather, or how amusing sending some city slickers on a wild goose chase would be if he wanted to pretend he knew where the goat lady lived. The man spent a good eight minutes thinking and nodding and scratching. Clearly, he couldn’t answer our question. Why wouldn’t he just admit he had no clue?

  Wanting to treat our new neighbors with the same respect and patience they were affording us, we didn’t feel we could drive off until the man said something, but after those eight long minutes of watching him scratch his head we mumbled that we appreciated his time, but perhaps we’d drive a little farther.

  He held up a hand as if to say, “wait.”

  We waited.

  Finally, he leaned into our window and gave us directions with specifics, like “You turn right at a big barn with a blue door, and then go down yonder some ways until you see a field with eight cows. Turn left on the gravel road, but not the one with the mailbox that looks like a John Deere tractor; wait for the next one with a dried cow skeleton on the fence. Stone’s throw down that road you turn left again and the goat lady’s place will be on your right after a small pond, which was a great fishing hole before the geese found it and ate every darn catfish. Least, that’s where I recall the place is.”

  “Do you happen to know the address?”

  He spat in the dirt. “There’ll be goats.”

  We thanked him and drove on.

  In the country, people take their time thinking, speaking, warming up to strangers. Patience is not just a virtue but a necessity if you want to build rapport with your mountain neighbors. When that man searched his mind for the directions, it was like Googling on a computer with a dial-up connection. It just took a while for the entire answer to come to him.

  Still, the pace required to get an answer agitated me to no end. Efficiency was a firmly-ingrained attitude and a hard habit to break. On one level I understood that slowing down allowed a person to live more mindfully, but I also knew there was an opportunity cost for moving at a mellow pace. Dragging out the goat buying experience meant less time for other things, and I’m not talking about high achievement projects; I’m talking about what I longed for most: holding hands and watching the sun set, time for contemplation, intimacy, and more in-depth interaction with the man and children I loved.

  We arrived at the woman’s farm to the sight of a hundred goats lumbering up a sloped pasture to greet us. I scurried out of my car and leaned on the fence so the curious goats could nibble at my jacket and sniff my hands. The goat lady came out looking like a traditional farmwoman with a warm smile and gently graying hair. I don’t know what I was expecting, someone with horns or a goatee perhaps, but this woman looked more reminiscent of Mrs. Claus than some mystical keeper of goats.

  We explained we were shopping for a pet goat as I gestured to the crowd of animals at the fence. “I see you have plenty to choose from.”

  “Not exactly. These are
all breeding stock for next season. Unavailable.”

  My face fell.

  “What did you expect, showing up at the end of the goat season like this?” she said.

  I nudged Mark’s side with my elbow. “Gee, honey, we forgot to keep track of the goat season again, silly us.”

  “Do you have any goats for sale?” Mark asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” We followed her to a corner of the pasture where the last of her salable stock, four young male goats, quietly grazed. “Two of these boys are already selected to be slaughtered Monday,” she explained with neither remorse nor callousness. Hearing this was paramount to going to the pound and being told that the dog kissing your hand was due to be euthanized the next day. I crouched down to pat the horny head of a death-sentenced goat, thinking he had the very best personality of the lot.

  “I really like this one. Can’t you simply substitute an alternate goat and let me take him home?”

  “People are very particular about what they eat. If they care enough to drive out here to hand-pick their meat, I’m honor bound to deliver.”

  Since we had only two animals to select from, we picked the next best goat. We felt quite charitable considering the animal would no doubt have become goat burger by the end of the week if we hadn’t come along, so we considered adopting the last goat as well. The goat lady insisted he didn’t have a “pet personality” and was better left for meat, so trusting her experience and goat expertise, we closed our eyes to his dismal fate and decided to wait for spring to get a companion goat. We christened our new goat “Freckles” because of the cute, brown speckles on his coat.