There’s the second one (in front)! I’m still reeling from the experience I had Monday, when I was able to sit down and be a part of this scene. There’s so much that’s right about this, I hardly know where to start. First, that it happened at all. Second, that it happened to me: a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and let’s think years, not minutes. Validation of the highest order.
Be that as it may, it’s such a privilege, both to see the bighorn ewes and also feel I was accepted in their presence, two miles down a lonely trail with no one else around for miles. The quality of this experience can’t be conveyed in words. I hope you have a similar story to remember when the collective comes to call and tries to stuff you in a box.
(And people wonder why I don’t bother with TV. It is to laugh.)
John Hamilton Farr lives at 7,000 feet in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it, John is “a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” This JHFARR.COM site is the master writing archive. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on .png)
They look more like goats than sheep. Are there Mountain Goats?
I know. 🙂 No idea why bighorn sheep are “sheep.” There is such a thing as mountain goats, but not around here that I’m aware of.
A nice experience, and nice animals, far from the madding crowd and all that. But why does it constitute validation in your eyes? Why is this a sight to take with you to the happy hunting ground? And are the only choices really between this experience and sitting in front of a television? –In the end we’re all animals, and I have a hard time understanding why I ought to privilege this particular animal as against a tarantula, a snapping turtle or (gasp!) a human being. Wouldn’t it be a bit boring to spend much time in the company of any wordless beast? Words are the way we human beings define, create and flourish. We don’t simply reduce things to words, we find ways of making words sing and tell. They could probably tell us a bit about these critters, but that’s a story that would soon be over. I could imagine a brief song or poem. But the story of us humans is the real one – a story inexhaustible and never over and fraught with the tragic, the sublime, the silly and the poignant – beyond the reach of even the most intelligent mountain goat.
Sorry, but the devil in me had to say it. However, I do like your photos, John, and also the accompanying thoughts.
“Box” is not a coffin. Nature isn’t “nice.” Validation of my life to be here now and know this.
I like it. Well said.
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