How I Do

The question that’s currently inundating my inbox is the one I’ve received the most over the past few years, and while I’ve partially addressed it in my book and in some interviews, I am going to try to tackle it here, fully. And it is: “How did you take the leap of faith?/ How did you make such a drastic change with your life?/ How did you swing it financially?/ How did you DO it?”

This was a hard post to write. The answer is multifaceted and it’s a tricky question for me to answer because so much of it is tied up in who I am ~ my past, my self, my personality. But the bottom line, and the truth of it, is that I practiced.

I have practiced leaving and going and trusting and doing and taking risks and making things work on my own (and my own terms) for years. Decades. First on a small scale, then gradually increasing in scope and degree of commitment required. For as long as I can remember, I have pushed myself outside my comfort zone. I like to test myself. I still do this, all the time.

Meanwhile, I was learning to pay attention to my intuition and to trust it. I remember so many times when I would be given direct information in my head and I would ignore it and then life would prove that I was really, really dumb to have ignored that information.

This happened enough times that I finally said, OK, I don’t understand this and can’t explain it but I know I must always pay attention to that voice. And now I confidently make major decisions by tapping into that part of myself and paying attention to the information it gives me. I hold logic in very high esteem but if intuition says “yes” or “no” and logic says the opposite, I go with intuition. And I’ve never been sorry.

I believe wholly and absolutely that everyone is capable of having a strong and trustworthy relationship with their intuition, but it’s something that’s been forgotten or ignored or dismissed by our society. It, too, takes practice to become proficient, just like any skill. And I believe it is a skill, not a gift.

So there’s A) Practice and B) Trusting my intuition. C) is Failure.

Failure is really not as bad as it’s made out to be. I have failed so many times. SO MANY TIMES. Some have been minor, some major. But I think we’ve been conditioned to believe that failing is The Most Horrible Thing Ever and in reality, it’s more akin to skinning your knee. Or even getting a compound fracture. Sure, it hurts in the moment and you have to work harder to recover, just as your body must work a bit harder repairing a skinned knee or broken bone. But then, as is true for scar tissue, you’re stronger in that spot. I happen to learn best from failing. I would rather fail than not try. And sometimes I don’t fail at all. I fly.

Somewhere in this, somehow, I need to say that I don’t do things that I think are stupid. I do things that other people think are stupid, but based on practice, intuition, what I know of myself, and what I know I’m willing to risk or sacrifice, my choices never seem stupid to me. The mother of my best friend in high school had a saying, “be wild and crazy, not stupid and dangerous.” What I’ve learned is that you are the only one who knows where the line between the two lies for you.

As for the financial aspect, for me, it, too, goes back to practice and intuition and trust. When I moved to Wyoming, I did not have very much money and I did not have a job lined up. I knew that moving here was the Right Thing (and this was full-on intuition: I had not even been to this town before. My ride across the Bighorns was two hours north of here. I rented a house sight unseen, over the internet, from New York City.) Anyway, since I knew this was Right, I knew I would make something happen, work-wise, because I had to. Because I had done it in the past. Because I believe when you are doing what is right for you, in the truest sense of the word, things conspire to help you.

That said, I am A-OK with a low standard of living. I have a $1500 truck. No car payments. I have catastrophic health insurance with a $7000 deductible. Low monthly payments and I don’t go to the doctor. When I moved here, I didn’t have internet service or long distance (and I still don’t have a cell phone). I went to the library to use the internet and in doing so, I saved a bunch of money and made friends. I know what I need and I know what I don’t need and that helps me in my decisions.

So…. where does one start? Practice! Give yourself a day and just start walking. See where you end up. Take breaks when you need to on the side of the road. In a strange cafe. See what you see or who you meet. Take water, pen and paper, trail mix and your cell phone so you can call a friend to pick you up at the end of the day. The commitment level is low but the exploration quotient is high! Who knows what might change in that one day.

As for intuition, I don’t really know how to explain practicing that skill, so if anyone out there has suggestions, please please leave your ideas in the comment section. I know it is intrinsically linked with awareness. So maybe start with making lists: What do you want? What are you willing to sacrifice? What do you refuse to give up? What are you willing to risk? What, to you, is the worst thing that can happen (know thine enemy, so to speak)? Define these things. This kind of awareness brings power. One thing I learned on my Vespa trip is that confidence keeps a woman safe. Take that a step further and you have self-awareness. You have that, you have real power.

So. This is what my path has been and continues to be. “Practice” is probably the most boring and undesired answer. But that has been my truth. And while magical serendipitous experiences or profound epiphanies are incredibly awesome and can transform one’s perspective or physical reality in a moment, I believe practice and diligence are just as important. In playing the piano, one must first learn scales. And after mastering the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata, you still practice your scales. Said another way: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

no camera available

Sometimes I don’t have a camera & I just try to memorize the moment:

Pulling into the driveway and seeing Daisy standing over Frisco, Frisco lying in the grass suckling her teat. Drinking from Daisy whilst lying down. Yeesh.

Charlie going absolutely nuts for the fringe surrounding a hole in the knee of Mike’s jeans. Obsessive nibbling. It looked like it tickled.

Frisco falling asleep with his head on my chest (drooling on my shirt, even) as I lay against his chest. If Escher did farm scenes, this would be it.

The smell of marjoram.

What didn’t you take a picture of today?

my new favorite place to write
is in my cast iron tub
under the leaves
under the sunset
under the moon and stars
submerged in heat
feeling the breeze above the waterline
lavender wisps in the mist
melting, smiling,
after days of digging
digging
shoveling
raking
pounding
carrying
loading rocks
and
unloading rocks
and
moving rocks
and
moving them again….
(a fantastic project I soon shall share!)
but right now the heat
the breeze
I melt.

The view from my tub ~

Wherein Daisy (Hopefully) Gets Knocked Up

It’s time for Daisy to get pregnant again! Frisco is five months old and is still “on the teat,” so to speak, and I am still milking ~ but this has nothing to do with Daisy getting pregnant again. In fact, if you notice the cycles of deer in the wild, you will know this is the way it works ~ deer have their fawns the first of June, nurse them through breeding season (November) when they become pregnant with another, kick their fawn off the teat the following spring when the new grass begins to grow, to give their bodies time to dry off and prepare colostrum for their new fawn, which is born at the beginning of June and the cycle continues. So, the fact that Daisy is actively raising a calf while forming another inside is normal and natural.

The only thing that is not totally natural is the timing. I am hoping to get Daisy bred now, instead of in the fall as the deer and elk do, so that she will calve the first of March, just before Mike’s cows do (cows have a gestation of roughly nine months). This way, Daisy will be able to provide colostrum and fresh milk should any of Mike’s cows have twins or abandon their babies. And for now, Mike calves in the early spring like the rest of the ranchers around here.

Daisy cycles every twenty-or-so days but there is just a tiny window of opportunity when she is READY to be impregnated. We are doing artificial insemination because, quite simply, there are no dairy bulls around here. And with AI, you can pick any breed of bull you fancy. Since I am hoping for a girl-calf this time, and since, according to both Charlie and myself, there is no such thing as too much cream, I chose sperm from a strapping Jersey bull. Daisy’s first calf was a heifer calf from a Jersey bull; her second calf is Frisco, via a Holstein bull. This will be Daisy’s third pregnancy, if it takes.

The key sign that Daisy is ready to be AI’ed is that she will stand for a steer (castrated male) as he mounts her. There are other signs. More nebulous signs. There is also a hormone one can give a cow to induce cycling but we’re going au natural. I should have been watching Daisy and taking notes since Frisco’s birth, tracking her cycles over the last few months, but that would have entailed planning ahead, and, well, I’m still learning how to be good at such sensible stuff. Therefore, I’ve been watching her obsessively ~ because this is my first time at this rodeo and because the man from whom I bought Daisy did mention that it was somewhat difficult to get her bred.

And so, after two weeks of watching Daisy, I saw on Saturday morning that she was standing, kind of, while being mounted by a steer. OK, it was Frisco. Banish your ewww thoughts. She was standing but kind of walking away so it wasn’t the exact stand I was on the lookout for, but it was very close. Her time was close. But I wasn’t sure how close. And it was Saturday morning and I knew I had my own very small window of time in which to reach my vet before Monday (Monday, which would surely ~ or at least perhaps? ~ be too late), as his office closed at noon on Saturday for the weekend.

My vet has been on standby for nearly a month and on Saturday morning I couldn’t get ahold of him. After a series of technical glitches far too boring to detail here but which felt, at the time, like one tragedy after another, I finally tracked him down on his cell phone late in the afternoon. By that point, I had crossed the threshold into panic and started blurting out everything, saying eight things at once, making no sense whatsoever, and he interrupted me and said, in his calm, singsong voice, “Do youuu know where I ammm right now?”

I wish you could hear his voice. It’s like the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. He IS the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. “No…” I answered, tentatively. “I’m in my rrrazberry patch,” he said. “Would you like some raspberries?”

I love raspberries, almost more than life, and so I momentarily ditched all thoughts of Daisy and my zealous blather became all about raspberries. “Alllright!” he said, “I’ll bring you some raspberry starts when I come to do Miss Daisy. I’ll see you tomorrow at eight.” Click.

OK, Caterpillar, whatever you say.

Eight to the Caterpillar means nine but I went down to the corrals at 7:30 to wait for him. I brushed Daisy from head to toe. I made her a fertility adornment which she wore for the procedure: three long blades of new green grass braided together and secured to her topnotch with a pink hair elastic. I paced around the corrals. And then it was time.

The entire procedure took less than five minutes. The vet took a thin straw of semen out of a huge tank filled with dry ice, warmed it in his armpit to get the swimmers swimming, and then gently threaded the straw through Daisy’s open cervix and set the swimmers free.

Daisy stood calmly, and that was that! I, however, was a wreck. I was hovering around while it was being done and after Daisy ate her fertility adornment and wandered off, and the vet left, I went home and drank warm milk in hopes of settling down. I was absolutely wound, and so very anxious. But this is just my cow. If she doesn’t end up pregnant with this try, we will try again, and eventually, I am certain, it will take. I simply cannot imagine enduring the tension and unknowingness and hope and chance that so many women must face each month in their own quest to get pregnant.

My heart goes out to those of you who are in the midst of living this yourselves.