I have been looking this evening, past my television, out the window toward the Cheyenne River and Little Corral Draw. The buffalo are over there on the winter pasture, and I was looking for them to come across Zebell Table or along the draw toward the river. I had seen them earlier in the day, up on the Table, and was hoping to see them amble down to the River, but now darkness is setting in and that takes care of my leisurely vigil. Their appearance on Zebell Table reminds me of my next, fast approaching ranch job–checking and repairing the fence on all of the summer pastures.
But fixing fence for the most part is something I rather enjoy. It takes me out to the places I haven’t been for awhile. I am usually alone and have the opportunity to be away from noises that I don’t create. It gives me a chance to watch the birth, bloom, and growth of Spring with the subtle greening of plants and grasses, the return of birds from their winter residencies, the shyness of deer and antelope as they prepare to sequester themselves for the birth of their young. And I watch the buffalo go about their business as the young mature and begin to take their changing places within the social structure of the herd, and giving way to make ready for the still-to-come new arrivals.
And one person, alone, along a fence, working quietly, paying attention to the job at hand, presents little or no cause for concern to the animals at hand, whether that be deer, rabbits, birds, or buffalo, which makes fixing fence an ideal time also to observe the surrounding life. Woodpeckers and Flickers, looking for insects hammer the trees with their rapid-fire beaks, birds of prey begin their territorial squabbles and mating display flights; the does: rabbits, deer, and antelope begin quietly to slip away into their birthing hideaways; buffalo cows become a little irritable with their last year calves, requiring them to make room for the little ones yet to come.
I have never seen the birth of a buffalo calf. Usually the cow sequesters herself with a small entourage, perhaps another near-to-giving-birth cow, their yearling calves and perhaps their two-year olds. They kind of hide out together and later return to the main herd as if to introduce their new, red-gold calves to the extended family, in which they find their niche and take their place.
I realize that what I am about to say constitutes a “keen grasp of the obvious,” but I will take that leap. Everything about the social structure of the buffalo herd is a strategy for survival of the herd: the way they go to water in a file rather than en masse, the way they form up when they move as a group, the way they break up into smaller groups in times of drought and dearth, the way the calving extends usually from April to October; so the calves are not all the same size and age, the shyness of the cow with her new calf and the rapidity with which that new calf gains steadiness on its feet and its ability to go for miles with it’s mother at an unbelievable speed and stamina for a newly born.
And I am often asked how a retired professor of literature becomes a ranch hand. I haven’t changed anything. I still try to teach the poetry of life.
“…Nor is their singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.”
(W.B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”)
I will go now and fix my fence.