Will the goats be okay? The weather alert had me on high alert. High winds. Negative twenty to negative forty five wind chill. We have had goats for two years and even though this forecast should have been called business as usual in northern Vermont, we haven't seen this kind of weather since well before we got them.
To be safe, I set my alarm for 3am so I could sneak out of the house to check on the goats and the other farm animals. I have seen sheep and alpaca and chickens and ducks make it through night after night of weather like this in the past so I wasn't too worried about them; the goats and the geese were untried but geese are too mean and fat and full of goose down for me to worry about; goats are not hardy like the other animals.
I somehow spilled chamomile tea in my coat pocket, into one of my mittens after coming in from four hours of hard farm work fortifying the animals and shelters for the cold wind. My five year old said, "Mom, when you mess up, you mess up big." Soggy mittens are not a good match for this weather, but at 3 am, I pulled on the still soggy mitten all the same. The wind was only dipping to negative 20 tonight. It wouldn't hit negative 45 until tomorrow night. I used to walk miles in negative twenty so I didn't worry about cocooning my face in wool scarves or one soggy mitten.
I haven't gone on middle of the night animal checks since before the pandemic. For a moment I wondered how wise it was to sneak into the darkness in temperatures that could kill me before anyone would wake up and know I was missing. It was a long walk to the animals. Down a steep hill. Through open wind filled ground. Luckily, my husband woke as I was sneaking out. "I should be gone for only a few minutes.", which he knew meant, please look for me if I don't come back.
All three of us had been outside until after 9pm. Trying to make the goats as cozy as possible in their goat shed that had been built to be well ventilated for lung health when it was built as a giant chicken/goose/duck coop. We were buttoning it up as well as we could and were lucky the weather was mild and the snow was lit by moonlight. It was the kind of winter night I was used to by now. In the 20s. A mild almost warm breeze kicking up as the evening wore on. So warm that after four hours in it we were all as warm as when we first walked out into it.
Before I left the house, I could see 3am was a different world. The french doors at the back of the house were so thickly patterned in ice I could not see through them. When I opened one of them, it made a strange grinding sound. Like even the wood was struggling with the temperature drop.
Then I stepped outside.
And I remembered what the weather alert had left out. I remembered why my first response to seeing deep cold in the forecast was "Finally." I remembered why keeping farm animals as pets even though I am a chronically ill middle aged mom is not nearly as dumb as it sounds.
I felt elation.
The warm, moist, cloudy months of mild winter had been wearing on my mood. Rationally, I was grateful. No worries for the animals. Low heat costs. My son could safely play outside. I will take easy. I need easy. My pandemic wounds haven't quite scarred over yet.
But then I closed the door behind me and stepped out into a different world.
How can words describe something most people have never seen? The world of my deepest peace. The world I love more than all of the other worlds. The world that taught me to stand still. To marvel. To drink in profound surreal beauty. A world I had not seen in years. I was awestruck both by the splendor and the remembering. Yes you. Oh how I missed you! How the waxing gibbous moon blazed brightly in a cloudless sky. How the world was lit from below, a blanket of light, snow reflecting moonlight reflecting sunlight.
I stepped into my cathedral, onto the familiar snow packed path winding past the sleeping garden. Oh holy wind, even the path was transformed. Filled in with snow sculpted and blown. How I missed even this. Snow is not one thing. No no. It changes completely depending on how cold it is. And in just a few hours it had taken a new form. Fine and dry and light, reflecting the wind as surely as it reflected the moon.
Onward I walked. Forgetting to be frightened of the cold, of the night. The ducks and geese broke the spell of silence, honking quacking loudly to announce my coming. As I started down the hill, for a moment the wind gusted so strongly it filled my mouth until I couldn't breathe. Yes! I remember this! I love this, I thought as I spun away from the wind to inhale, to exhale. I remember this dance.
I tossed more hay to the alpaca and sheep. And then I tried to get into the goat paddock, remembering why in years gone past I used bungees instead of tying the gates closed. I removed my mittens and each moment my finger grazed metal it instantly began to fuse with it. Oh yes, I remember this, too.
The goats were fine of course. Snuggled into heaps of hay and fresh bedding. Cuddling in small piles.
Chippy, the most furiously annoying goat we own, popped up when he saw me. He was still shy of a year, fuzzy and light brown like a teddy bear, and obsessed with biting on fingers and legs and being wherever you are by trying to occupy the same exact space as your body. It's like he got a little extra goat mojo. He jumps higher. Escapes easier. Bites harder. Is even more obsessed with human companionship. Everything I find endearing about goats he just takes too far. He tramples the other goats to get to me as I walk through the shed checking on everybody. Then he follows me outside. Into the wind.
When I sneak back into the house, after kicking off my boots, hanging my coat, and laying my wet mitten in front of the heater, I am too alive, too awake to sleep. I come here to write a long winded love song to the wind and the snow and the moonlight. Reflecting on sunlight reflecting on the surface of a dark and crater filled moon reflecting on snow, on my shiny winter coat, on the gleaming white feathers of geese. There is something in this reflection. The kind that spills out in words. The kind that spills out in light. It feels alive and holy. Imbued with presence. As if the cold and the wind and the snow and the silence in this little hollow ringed by hills is a bowl full of the divine.
