by Jon Katz
Chapter Eight
COLD MOUNTAIN I THINK I HADNT REALLY LIVED A FULL AND MEANINGFUL LIFE until those January mornings when my backyard thermometer registered twenty below zero and the wind chill was far worse-and I had to take a donkeys temperature. Rectally. To my mind, my time at Bedlam Farm with the dogs was, like the geologic periods of the earth, broken up into distinct eras: preparing the farm, training the dogs, coming to terms with Homer, experiencing a magnificent autumn. That was the nice part. Then came life on Cold Mountain. Winter opened early and dramatically with a thirty-inch snowfall the first week of December. By January, it was common to see readings of minus twenty degrees in early morning as I headed out through growing layers of snow and ice to do my barn chores. The cold was relentless, draining, paralyzing. Even a half hour outside left me flushed and exhausted. My weather service radio channel-which Id suddenly begun listening to as faithfully as any soap fan glued to a breathless drama-was issuing increasingly urgent warnings about extreme cold and frostbite. By the third or fourth snowstorm, grizzled locals stopped clucking about Flatlander sissies and started great rolling conversations about the gripping cold that had come upon us like some plague from Canada. Septic systems froze and pipes burst as the frost burrowed deeper and deeper into the ground. Tree limbs cracked and fell. Roads and driveways were coated with ice and slick snow, despite the plow trucks working day and night. Cars ditched and batteries failed and there was an epidemic of fender benders. Furnaces broke down. Toes and fingers hurt. Noses ran. It hurt to breathe sometimes. In the morning, when I slogged out to visit the animals, the sheeps fleece was ice-crusted. Carol and Fannys eyelids and nostrils were sometimes frosted over, and I had to carefully brush them off until the sun got higher in the sky. Evenings seemed almost Siberian to me in their bleakness-a black shroud seemed to settle over everything at four P.M. The silence was deep, loud. As the winter descended into a brutal cycle of cold and storm, my retiring farmer friend Carr dropped by one sub-zero morning to offer some advice. Be careful out there, young fella, he cautioned. Ive been alone on a farm with animals in a winter like this. It can change a man. I loved the line, mostly because I could practically hear Clint Eastwood saying it. But Carr was right again: it could change a man. It altered perspective, changed focus, clarified what was important. Maybe the severe winter, unusual even in a region accustomed to bad winters, had something to do with Carol getting seriously ill. I discovered her lying in the barn one morning at the height of the Arctic freeze, wheezing piteously, trying to give me her morning bray. It was the first time Id seen her lying down, especially when I was carrying a bucket of her favorite oats. Donkeys, like dogs, are known best by the people who see them every day. You can sense when something is off, and something was seriously off with Carol. Dr. Alderink from the Granville veterinary practice arrived a few hours later in her pickup with Tyler, her coon hound, riding shotgun. Ready for anything in her boots, overalls, and knit cap, the vet gave Carol the once over, checking her eyes, taking her temperature, listening to her lungs, examining her droppings. Carol, whats wrong with you? Dr. A. mused, prodding and poking. Since it wasnt immediately clear what the trouble was, she decided to treat the most likely problems, prescribing a series of aggressive treatments for everything from a bacterial infection to sore hooves and the dread wasting disease called foundering. If Carol didnt perk up, shed try to zero in on a more precise diagnosis. The vet left me with wrappings, syringes, pills, and powders, plus instructions on how to use all of the above. If she had any doubts about my ability to minister to Carol, she didnt let on. I had plenty. I wanted to run alongside her truck and yell Wait! as it scooted out of the driveway. How could someone who months earlier was living mostly in suburban New Jersey possibly change the wrappings on a donkeys hooves? Or take her temperature with a rectal thermometer? Perhaps Dr. Amanda knew before I did that there was no choice. My farm, my animals; my responsibility. I reviewed Anthonys Three Steps: take your head out of your ass, calm down, pay attention. Though lately I had taken to adding a Fourth Step: If all else fails, call Anthony. That night, I gave Carol her injections, wrapped her hooves, and took her temperature. She bucked and balked, whinnied and tried to run for it, but I persevered, calmly and with plenty of cookies. Poor Carol. The cold and her illness were bad enough; my amateur treatments would probably make her even more uncomfortable. Over the next few days, her condition worsened. She was lying down all the time, eating sporadically, wheezing continually. Dr. Amanda came by every day or so, but there wasnt much more to prescribe. All we could do was wait and see. Anthony also began coming by more often, as he always did when trouble erupted. He summoned his father-in-law, Dean Hanks, and his brother-in-law, Darrow, from Big Green Farm in Salem, one of the largest and best known dairy farms in Washington County; they also took to stopping by. Nobody said anything, but I knew why they were now regular visitors. First, theyd be a great help in case Carol needed surgery or some intervention and needed to be restrained. These guys were the size of oak trees. Second, if Carol didnt make it, they could help haul her body away. I couldnt bury her on the farm with the ground frozen hard, but they had a bigger working farm where large animals were commonly disposed of. It was probably five or six days after I began treating her that Carol decided shed had enough. That evening, she did what she always did when I reached for the thermometer-she tried to bolt. Even cookie bribery couldnt settle her down this time, though. I couldnt manage to close the barn door, either, held open by piles of rock-solid ice. I brought Rose back to assist, and she lay down in front of Carol-just as the donkey made her break. At least, probably because of the dog, Carol hesitated long enough for me to get my arms around her neck. But though she slowed down, I couldnt completely stop her, and we wound up doing a tap dance up the slope, me holding on with one arm and struggling to put a leather halter on her with the other, all so that I could stick a thermometer up her butt. Its okay, Carol, I was calling as she dragged me along. Its for your own good. Even Anthonys code didnt quite cover this. I was grateful for the darkness, so my neighbors and the Hanks boys couldnt witness this spectacle. In a few minutes I did manage to stop her; it helped that she was weaker than usual. I took my glove off to open the thermometer case and pull a syringe of medicine from my back pocket. It must have been then that two of my fingers got frostbitten. Id heard the weather predictions and Id pulled on layer after layer of clothing, but there was no way to manipulate syringes, halters, and medications with gloves (I learned about glove liners only later). The cold was numbing, the wind savage, but they didnt feel all that different than on previous nights. Anyway, I was focused on Carols medications. After my gloves were off for about ten minutes-much too long-the fingers on my right hand began to ache and burn. But then, so did my nose, my face, damn near everything. I finished up with Carol, squirted an antibacterial down her throat, took her back to the barn, stuck my throbbing hand into a glove and into my pocket and ran for the house. Inside, I peeled off my outer clothing and saw that the tips of two fingers were a ghostly gray. I filled a pot with warm water, stuck them in. Although the pain was acute, the discoloration wasnt deep and I could move my fingers, so I wasnt too worried. Anyway, Id have to wait until morning for the nearest clinic to open. (A new doctor had set up practice in Salem, happily.) At the clinic, I got some salve and ointments and a lecture on the stupidity of taking gloves off in this kind of weather-though when I explained about my sick donkey, the doctor and nurse stopped chiding and grew more sympathetic. But I grasped that bare skin cant be exposed in such weather for that long. My fingers would be cold sensitive and in some pain every winter for the rest of my life, and the doctor warned that if I exposed them to the cold that way again, Id suffer a worse fate. He also surprised me by suggesting, after an exam, that I might be suffering from hypothermia, too. The fatigue, drowsiness, and other symptoms Id mentioned indicated a body that wasnt able to keep itself warm. In a way, the diagnosis came as a relief. I was so tired so often, Id been quietly afraid tha
t something was seriously wrong. For the past two or three weeks, Id been nodding off by late afternoon. More liquids, more rest, shorter stretches outside, the doc advised. I hired Anthony to feed the animals for the following week. It seemed so much easier for him: he zipped by early in the morning, Arthur in tow; vaulted over the fence; finished in fifteen minutes what it took me an hour or two to accomplish. The temptation to keep him at it until about May was great, but the feed and vet bills were piling up, and I was committed to caring for the animals myself. Still, the frostbite was a reminder that I was navigating a strange land, still finding my way. I had learned at my cabin in past years not to take deep winter lightly. But there, bitter cold merely meant bringing in more firewood, taking shorter walks with the dogs. At the farm, my tasks were more demanding, and there was no withdrawing. So after a weeks respite, I resumed trudging out three or four times a day to feed and water the animals and check on the barn. And I kept giving Carol her medications, changing her hoof bandages, taking her temperature. Outside on winter mornings the smoke curled from every chimney in the hamlet, from the old mill houses down the hill to the white farmhouses off in the distance. There were wispy trails rising from my place, too, thanks to the woodstove I kept going all night to warm the far side of the house. The oil furnace chugged along all day and night as well. The creaky old house held up well, but there were some nights no heating system could keep up. In the kitchen, I could see my breath. The olive oil and peanut butter froze in the cabinet near the back wall, as did the dishwashing liquid by the sink. At night, struggling to stay awake long enough to read, I sat in the living room swathed in blankets. RUNNING A FARM CHANGES ONES VIEW OF ANIMALS AND, TO some extent, of life. Hours and days are shaped by rituals, the satisfying sense of knowing everyone is well cared for, the need to take action-and never a simple action, somehow-when theyre not. For most of the farmers around me, animals were not pets but commodities, and vet bills could mean the difference between survival and failure. Competing with giant farm conglomerates, these men and women fought to cope with skyrocketing feed and fuel costs, the quixotic and unpredictable nature of animals, the grueling physical work. In America, the story of the little guy standing up to the big corporation is so painfully familiar nobody really wants to hear it anymore. The little guy always loses, and many of the farmers around Hebron know they are doomed. Their sons and daughters dont want to live such difficult lives, and it seems that every bureaucratic decision and economic shift stacks the deck against them even more. Which is never more on their minds than in a winter like this. I stopped by the variety store one afternoon when Pete Handley and Stan Bates, two weary dairy farmers from North Hebron, were commiserating there over coffee. Theyd been wrestling for weeks with burst pipes, frozen oil lines in tractors and trucks, manure piles that couldnt be shoveled, punishing oil and electric bills. Every degree down the thermometer is a nail in the coffin, Pete said quietly. The cold took its toll at Bedlam Farm, too, though the consequences were less dire. Later in January, I noticed one of my ewes wandering off alone-an alarming sign in sheep, who are not given to individual exploration. I came out one bone-chilling morning and saw her alone in the pasture, wandering in circles, strips of wool hanging from her side. When I went to investigate, I saw that her flesh was ripped and exposed. Id heard that coyotes, made desperate by the cold and the unyielding ice pack, were getting more aggressive; Id seen their tracks around the pasture. Perhaps the ewe, sick or weakened by the weather, had wandered off by herself and been attacked. It was hard to find a large-animal vet available; they were all out tending to distressed animals. I left messages at various offices, describing the ewes disorientation and her wounds, asking what to do. Her odd behavior was also affecting Rose, who was leaving the flock behind to chase her. I worried that my puppy was getting too aroused, becoming more of a hunter than a herder as she pursued the stricken ewe around the pasture. It was a bad situation for both of them. The vet who eventually called back in the afternoon sounded harried, even frantic. It would be a day, even two, before he or anybody else in his practice could get to the farm, he said. Horses and cows were suffering from the cold all over the county, and they, worth so much more to their owners, took priority. Meanwhile, the sheep might die from the cold or from infection. And to be honest, he added, vets and their hypodermics werent always the most humane way to euthanize a sick sheep. We might have to stab them six or seven times before we find a vein. It isnt always pretty. Do what you think best. The forecast was calling for temperatures of minus fifteen or below that night. I gave the ewe a penicillin shot to try to ward off infection and brought her into a stall in the barn, but she refused to eat. This was so unusual that I called a friend, a sheep farmer in nearby Argyle, who was even more blunt than the vet. If youre asking me what the humane thing is, I would definitely say shoot her. To have a vet do it with a needle is no less stressful and sometimes takes a lot longer. If you do it right, it will be quick and painless. Doing it right was the issue. Id gone thirty years since basic training without firing or even holding a gun; now I was contemplating my second execution in a couple of months. I could call Anthony, who would handle it if I asked, yet that bothered me. Did I really want somebody else doing the dirty work? If anybody was going to shoot one of my farm animals, shouldnt it be me? Was it more humane to use a syringe than a bullet? Was it even right to drag a vet out here at the expense of some other animal that needed help and pile further bills on top of what Id already spent, and was still spending, on Carol? The cold was horrendous, and the ewe was still refusing food and water. In spring, even in a milder winter, there might be other options. But it was clear that she was suffering. She might even have something contagious that could endanger the rest of the flock, or she could attract predators who would attack the others. I had to respond. Anthony was matter-of-fact. Ill be over first thing in the morning, he said when I called with the news. You have to do what you have to do, whats right for the farm. Because I did, in fact, know what I had to do, I took Rose and Orson out into the pasture early the next morning to herd the healthy sheep into the training pen. I locked the flock in, along with a bale of hay Id dragged from the barn on a childrens sled. The cold was stinging, and my damaged fingers ached dully. I took the dogs into the house, and came back outside with my rifle. I went through Anthonys safety checklist, making sure the chamber was empty and the safety was on, pointing the rifle up and away from buildings, property, other animals. I shooed Fanny into the barn, where she ran behind Carol, still lying listlessly on the straw. Then I put a crook on the ewes neck and guided her outside, far enough behind the barn for safety. She looked rheumy and weak and her wounds were still oozing. She barely protested when I straddled her back and placed the rifle barrel at the base of her skull. I loaded the clip, slid a round into the chamber, clicked the safety off. I fired five or six shots in rapid succession. Blood spurted all over my gun, boots, and jeans. The ewe dropped to the snowy ground, twitched for a second, and then lay still. I stood numbly and watched. Darrow Hanks drove into the driveway a few minutes later; probably Anthony had dispatched him. Whats up? he said quietly, as if he didnt know. He took in the scene and, saying nothing else, hopped over the fence. Hed brought a strand of baling wire, with which he tied the ewes front and rear legs together and lifted her off the ground, where her blood was already beginning to freeze in the snow. He carried the carcass to his pickup and hoisted it into the truck bed. I had to shoot her, I mumbled, following slowly. She was sick and cold, all chewed up, and the donkey is sick, too . . . I know, Darrow said. Ive done it fifty times. Its part of it all. Before he climbed into the truck cab, he turned back to me. This is what running a farm is like, he said. It happens. All the time. I got the message. This wasnt a drama or crisis, but the very nature of raising animals. No tears were going to be shed hereabouts for sick livestock. The farm fantasy was revealing its painful underside. I didnt have the money, or the desire, to hire people to do all the jobs-the happy or the miserable ones-that
had to be done. I had to make decisions. I was going to stand or fall on my own two increasingly sore feet. Not long after Darrow drove off, Anthony himself came roaring up. He seemed surprised that I had done the shooting myself. I would have helped you, he said, prepared to spare me something he figured I couldnt handle. But because of him, I could. I know its tough, but Im proud of you, he said. It was my sheep, I said. But I was a bit of a wreck. I didnt bring sheep to the farm to kill them. I had grazed with that sheep a couple of dozen times. I understood death was part of life on a farm, but it still felt lousy. Anthony said nothing, just grabbed a shovel and spread fresh snow over the blood. THIS WAS THE ESSENCE OF LIFE ON THE FARM-UPROAR AND confusion, continuously, unpredictably. Surprises and setbacks, assaults and challenges werent the exceptions but the rule. The quicker you accepted that, the sooner you got to steady ground. Still, the ferocity of winter made daily life a struggle. I was exhausted from tending to Carol, checking on her every few hours. She was hanging in there, but despite the medicines I administered, the wrapped and rewrapped hooves, she still wasnt herself. I had also fallen several times on the snow and ice, twisting my bad ankle painfully, twice briefly losing consciousness. By now I was hobbling like an ancient man and my chronic bronchitis had erupted with a fury. Paula insisted that I call her every night before going to sleep, so she could be sure I wasnt lying outside, slowly freezing to death beyond anyones earshot. If you dont want to deal with it, go live somewhere else, Anthony pointed out in his usual blunt style one night while I was whining on the phone about the cold. Nobody forced you to buy a farm in upstate New York, so take it seriously. I went to the Salem Agway and bought ski masks to protect my face, insulated nerdy hats with earflaps. I ordered thermal socks online, and liners for my gloves, so that when I took off the outer gloves Id still have some protection. I put pots of water on the woodstove for moisture. Paula, up for a weeks visit in February, brought a tub of heavy-duty moisturizer and I slathered all my extremities with gels and ointments. I changed my animal-feeding times, so that I ventured outside an hour or two later in the morning, when the cold was slightly less brutal. And I broke up the chores-tote hay at eight, fill the water tub at ten, put out feed at two. If it was ten below-and it often was-I didnt stay out for more than ten minutes at a stretch. I drank pots of tea and gallons of water. I kept the woodstove roaring day and night. I refused to yield on the herding lessons, though: each dog, twenty minutes each, one in late morning, the other in the afternoon, every day, no matter what. Rose seemed unaffected by the cold. She scampered around the pasture as if it were April. But Orson was hobbling as the ice stung his paws and caked up between his toes. Standing out by the training pen, swathed and frozen, was a test of faith for me. We walked the sheep to the training pen every morning, then worked on directionals-come bye, and away to me. Sometimes the wind roared so loudly the dogs couldnt hear me. Sometimes I couldnt see them even on the other side of the pen, as sleet blurred my glasses. But Rose never wavered in her interest and enthusiasm, and I was determined not to waver in mine. Keeping faith, like conquering impatience and soothing anger, had become an important goal. To see what the dogs and I could accomplish together, that wasnt negotiable. THE OTHER ANIMALS HAD THEIR OWN COPING MECHANISMS. Even though the artesian well kept flowing behind the barn, it was quickly surrounded by vast globs of impenetrable ice, so I kept a big tub of water by the barn, stuck an electric de-icer in it, and changed the water daily. Carol and Fanny rarely left the barn these days, so I dumped some hay there for them and closed off one side to protect them from the wind. Carol was hanging on, not worse, not better; at least I could try to spare her the most frigid gales. The sheep climbed to the top of the pasture and huddled together for warmth. They moved less, it seemed, perhaps to conserve energy. I put out extra hay, corn, and feed. I worried about the sheep. Why wouldnt they seek shelter in the barn? To my farmer neighbors, like Carr, this was more misplaced Flatlander sentimentality. They dont know its cold, he said, and they dont care. Theyve been living without shelter for thousands of years. They would come into the barn if they needed to, Dr. Alderink agreed. They never did, not once. Carr could afford to be philosophical. He was about to escape to Florida for a couple of months to share a trailer his daughter had rented for the winter. Hed be playing with his grandkids, sitting out on a lawn chair in the sun, perhaps mulling the knee replacements made necessary by years of milking at all hours. He seemed more resigned to the trip than eager to leave. He confided to me once that hed never planned to retire-Farming is a way of life, he said. But, as he put it, his knees and bank account were giving out at about the same time. Everybody else was still wrestling with the winter. Road crews kept salting and sanding, their trucks grinding and roaring constantly. Plumbers were in high demand. Schools closed. Only Anthony seemed unaffected, shuffling over ice and snow with Ida in one arm, puppy Arthur chugging behind. He hiked, tracked, puttered, snowmobiled. Like a border collie, he hated to be still, and always preferred to be outside, looking for work. Only once or twice did he mutter about the wicked cold. The weather affected me differently. Before winter came, writing was my full-time job. Now it seemed on some days a struggle to get any writing done at all; farming had taken over. Sheep needed hay; dogs needed walking and herding practice; donkeys needed medicine. It was relentless. I could only imagine what Carrs much-longer days had been like. The original snow from early December had hardened like concrete on the ground, buried under several more feet from more recent storms. The National Weather Service announced that December and January had brought the most snow and the longest period of below-freezing temperatures in nearly thirty years. The outdoors had gone still, songbirds and hawks-even crows-vanishing. The deer and coyotes were growing desperate; I saw tracks everywhere around the barns. When the dogs and I went out at night, they tensed and barked at things I couldnt see or hear. We saw foxes and a few squirrels; otherwise it seemed as if all life had simply disappeared, gone south with Carr. Everything became progressively harder. Yet I loved the solitude of the farm, the ritual of the chores, the herding with the dogs, the point in the day when we were all spent and the dogs had been out for their final walk, and I could pull off my boots and hole up with a good book until I fell asleep, which never took long. Exhausted by the grueling routine, the dogs were sometimes so tired they didnt notice that Id gone upstairs to bed. But whenever I woke up-at five or six or seven A.M.-the two of them were in bed alongside me, dozing peacefully on a heavy quilt in a farmhouse at the top of Cold Mountain. I WAS GRATEFUL FOR THE LOVE AND COMPANIONSHIP OF DOGS. But I never better understood how much I needed humans. Fortunately for me, there were some excellent ones around. Ray and Joanne Smith met me every Tuesday at the Central House in Salem for steak and a slice of caramel apple pie. We chatted about the cold, their sheep and mine, our working dogs, and the whole strange experience of being refugees from the New York suburbs with new lives wed come to love. Even before winter hit, Ray and Joanne later conceded, theyd had doubts about whether I would last here. But they were one of the reasons I had, so far. One or the other of them checked in almost daily. Joanne provided a stream of advice on sheep care, along with names and numbers of everyone from farriers and vets to M.D.s for humans. In fact, she was the reason I was no longer dodging Nesbitt. Online, she located a 4-H family in Massachusetts who kept Tunis sheep and had a high tolerance for rams-Its just their nature to get touchy, the father told me sweetly-and whod come to collect Nesbitt in the family pickup in November. You better be grateful to Joanne, I hissed as Nesbitt was led out of my pasture and my life. Otherwise youd be stew. I resisted the impulse to slug him one last time. Joanne and Ray had that subtle gift of good friends-they knew when I needed a call, steered me in the right direction when I was doing something dumb, encouraged me when I was struggling. Their calls and our dinners anchored me. I was beginning to see that some of the real power of dogs, perhaps unappreciated, isnt just in their comforting us when were alone, but in helping us to be less alone. Friends
like Ray and Joanne are not common, and I wouldnt have had them in my life if not for our dogs. Neither would I have had Anthony. Our friendship had solidified during our battles about what kind of ride-along dog to get, and deep winter had brought new reasons to feel grateful for it. Nevertheless, by mid-January, I was a mess. My fingers ached with frostbite, my knees rebelled at all the trudging and toting, my ankle was in perpetual turmoil from slipping on ice. My back throbbed from hours of dragging firewood into the house and hauling bales of hay and bandaging hooves. My skin was so dry it was flaking off, and bronchitis had me coughing and rasping. If the winter taught me anything, it was to accept that I was getting older. Yes, it was a brutal winter, taking a toll on everybody. But it would have affected me differently even a few years earlier. There were limits to what I could take now. The morning chores so wearied me that I was falling asleep at the computer at noon. I was popping anti-inflammatory pills like popcorn. My conceit-that I was no gentleman farmer, that the dogs and I could do this alone-was the epitome of hubris. Yet I couldnt let it go. I am not a brave or courageous person, but I am a willful one. The only way I was going to leave the farm this winter was in a hearse, I told myself. I finish what I start. One morning, awake at five A.M., I threw on a pair of sweatpants and a jacket and let the dogs out. It was profoundly discouraging to feel so achy and spent even before the sun had risen. The sun was unlikely to show itself that bleak morning, anyway; the valley was shrouded in yet another layer of new snow, topped with a veneer of icy rain. The thermometer said minus fifteen. I dreaded shoveling and wading through the mess to carry out extra feed and hay. I had to muck out the barn, where the donkeys dumped all night, and put water into the tub by the barn. When Orson and Rose came rushing back in, snow-covered from charging around the giant drifts that surrounded the house like a Civil War fortress, I made a sudden judgment call. Sorry guys, I said, but Im sleeping in for a while. I turned up the heat and crawled back into bed. It was my lowest point; I was wearing out. As great working dogs do, mine entered the spirit of the moment, hopping onto the foot of the bed, sleeping quietly alongside me. I think I must have had a fever that morning; I simply crashed. I heard Rose growl a few times, was vaguely aware that Orson had gone downstairs to investigate something, but I paid no attention. I woke up at eight-thirty in a rush of guilt and alarm. When people ask about the single most powerful feeling in owning a farm, I always say its the responsibility of caring for so many utterly dependent creatures. If I dont haul feed and hay, they dont eat. If I dont drag the hose out of the basement and across to the barn, they dont drink. I hustled out of bed and pulled on my thermal socks, long underwear, two layers of shirts, a neck warmer, a hat over a ski mask, gloves and liners, and thermal boots supposed to protect feet at forty below and likely to get a chance to prove it any day. I must have looked like a country version of the Pillsbury Dough Boy. I could barely climb down the stairs in all those clothes. I was hacking and sneezing and already limping, and I hadnt even left the house. When I stepped out the back door, I was stunned. Paths had been shoveled everywhere-around the door, around my truck, along the back of the house to the barns and the pasture gates, even to the bird feeders. The hay feeder was filled with hay. The feed trough held corn and feed and the sheep were happily chowing down. The donkeys oats were in their buckets and Carol and Fanny were crunching away. The water tub was already filled to the brim. Lord, I said to the dogs. This is a miracle. I have never needed a kindness more. I am a lucky man with a wonderful family who loves his work, but I have not been as fortunate, or perhaps as worthy, when it comes to friendship. I find it hard to talk to strangers. I do not expect help to materialize when I most need it. I dont believe people will extend themselves on my behalf. Im not good at asking for help, anyway, or at accepting it. But Ray and Joanne had breached that wall, and Anthony just leaped right over it. Holly told me later that Anthony got up at five that morning to plow driveways for several relatives. Jon has got to be in trouble, buried in all this, he told her, then headed over to save my life. The gift was more meaningful than he knew. It was great to walk on the path without falling or twisting my leg, but it was the morale boost that meant the most. There was somebody out there who cared about me enough to do this. I laughed and whistled. Even the dogs picked up on my mood, tearing up and down the newly dug paths. I thought that even with so much winter still ahead, Id turned a corner. With a friend like that nearby, I would be all right.
