Of Cows and Gratitude

It’s the season of gratitude again – time to give thanks for all the good things we’ve been blessed with. Everyone’s list will be different, but mine, for example, includes: health, food, home, family. Or to sum it up in one word: Life.

Gratitude for being alive. For being here. I like the way some families ask each member around the table to say one thing they’re thankful for during the past year. I always suggest that, and it’s almost always vetoed.

It is revealing, of course. That’s why I like the idea. Either the other family members and friends will be honest in their answer; or they will speak a platitude. Both responses tell you a lot.

A good way to expand what you’re thankful for is to take a drive around the county roads of our area. I seem to be doing that a lot lately, running errands.

The scrumptious clarity of air and light we enjoyed this week almost required me to slow down on those drives and breathe. Kept my windows open so I could feel the lightness of clean air on my skin.

Light collaborates with sharp, deep shadow to write its poems this time of year. Sends the silhouette of your car travelling along the verge and fence line of a neighboring farm.

Smaller birds on electrical wires startle as you and that silhouette approach. A hawk, staying put, regards you with disdain.

How piercing the light can be around 4:30 p.m., but the shadows make sunglasses too dark. All that improves if you’re traveling with the sun behind you where you can see the sweep of land and sky, with a modest house and barn artfully placed.

The sky, then, begins to turn shades of rose and lavender, deepening into dark blue as the sun moves toward setting. The fields are pale, now, in places—grasses the color of wheat.

Cows graze. They’re always grazing this time of day, moving slowly around their pasture. A few are near the fence and there’s always one who sticks her head through.

They look at me if I slow. One herd yesterday had big calves near the fence with seriously horned mommas who took a warning step closer to me when I slowed.

Alert cows aside, there’s an almost perfect peace that settles across our land in evening, as though the Earth itself is exhaling.

The thought comes to me that the Sun, who is engine of our growing, may be felt by the Earth as a stressful boss. Its light may feel like a summons to get cracking and produce. So that at sunset the Earth can let out a sigh and relax for the space of one night.

Haven’t you breathed in its relief at dusk, the sweet green exhalation of a million leaves that silently envelopes you?

Someone recently reminded me that we rarely think about the Earth, how everything that allows you and me to be alive comes from it. All we’ve done is adapt, and tweak. We don’t generate. We turn our ingenuity toward the invention of ideas and objects that make life easier and allow us the solace of not thinking too deeply.

Maybe what we should be giving thanks for this year and every year is the fact of the ground our crops grow from, the air we breathe, the water we cannot exist without. Maybe we should be taking better care of it, our Earth.

Readers can contact Hale at bfhale2017@gmail.com Her new book, This Familiar Heart: An Improbable Love Story, is available at the Fayette County Record office and bookstores, on and offline, everywhere.