Five in the afternoon, and time to feed the donkeys. Pause the Schubert piano sonatas. Puffy baby blue clouds hover about the Sandias a few miles east. Clouds of nasty black flies buzz around a manure pile or two inside the donkey shed, more unpleasant than the slight threat of rain. Out come the three big rubber hay bowls to the place I love to feed the donkeys in the slanting afternoon sun -- right up by the fence separating their property from the back patio of the house. In goes some fragrant green hay, oat, fescue, a touch of alfalfa. Donkey noses are deliciously buried in the stuff as I clean out the shed and grab the hose to refill their half empty stock tank.
I’ve just finished reading Andy Merrifield’s The Wisdom of Donkeys and I’m feeling that finally somebody is truly catching The Meaning of Life on the same wavelength as those of us who’ve loved donkeys a while. Yes, peace, endurance, uncomplainingness. Yes to the pleasure of another good day. Yes, to the sight of another glorious sunset. Yes to the pleasure of a bowl of fragrant green hay! Yes to the primal bray, which like the primal scream, has the power to -- immediately or eventually -- cleanse away your layers of socialized reactions which hide you and bring into visible being who you really are, your true self. You can live with that showing to the sun, just the same way that donkeys do.
Six o’clock and the clouds are navy blue above. Wind goes from 0 to 40 mph in about one minute flat and crashes from the front patio indicate that a couple of bonsai have once again been toppled. Unusual amount of wind for this time of year, lately. No time to deal with that before a few stray muddy raindrops splat upon the earth “Here come our six daily raindrops,” I think. Then, “No, maybe 17, no 25 -- oops a hundred.” Schubert is thundering harmoniously along. Time to get veggies out of the microwave when
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a huge roaring sound gives me to understand that there’s no longer a point in counting raindrops. We may need Noah for what’s going on out there, Sheets, buckets, lakes of water hurl from the sky with force enough to blow what falls a few feet back up before it settles on the ground for good. Veggies by candlelight, followed by a good thirty minutes of drenching. White balls of hail occasionally fly by. There is no seeing beyond the first few feet outside the doors and windows.
Seven o’clock and the worst is over. A pool of water has collected inside the low front doorstep, so out come the old towels... Behind the house a busy hummingbird is buzzing through large, dripping mulberry leaves, repeatedly returning to a twiggy perch to preen himself, then off for another shower. Clever little bird! Schubert’s piano is now dancing. Donkeys gradually emerge from the shelter of their shed, gleaming white noses out of the gloom first, then dainty front hooves, gradually the entire cautious beast. They stand carefully on the highest patch of earth around, pointedly ignoring the mashed hay leftovers around the three rubber bowls now serving as water containers. I retrieve the toppled bonsai and replace their lost earth with what little bonsai soil I have on hand.
Seven thirty and Gigi, the Empress of Everything, leads Jasper and Ambrose over the high spots, avoiding flooded areas, to the very back of their property. Beneath the neighbor’s overhanging cottonwood boughs she snuffles around on the soaking ground and I think, oh no, Gigi, don’t do it! Your beautiful recently brushed, soft, pink coat! No, no, dear, don’t..... Too late, she is down, rolling ecstatically in fresh muck. From side to side, little white tummy exposed to the sky with her small hooves tucked in. When she arises, ten minutes later, she is no longer soft and pink. The also recently brushed Jasper and Ambrose choose, in turn, the exact spot where Gigi rolled, to do the same...
Eight o’clock and they’re lined up along the backyard fence once again, gazing into the house as I sit here, wearing smug, self satisfied expressions as they make a cool snack of various bits of mulberry branches and leaves now scattered all over the ground by the storm. It will take about a week to brush the mud balls out of that fur!
Eight-fifteen and escalating small sonic booms from the yard behind us indicate that neighbor kids are warming up for the Fourth of July. Not as impressive as the thunder booms that went through earlier, but definitely louder, in lower registers, than fireworks of years past. And the soft blue sky, streaked with high purple clouds and higher white cottony swirls, fills with bursts of man-made color. The fresh, clean scent in the clear air gradually changes to the acridness of burning powder. The donkeys retreat to their high ground again, stand with their butts together, keeping an eye out in all directions that way. Whatever comes, they are ready... And Schubert finally runs out of sonatas.
Above, before the deluge, is Oso, with the reclining donkeys way out behind him.
