The Paddock

Threads of geese in flight seemingly drift across an even sky. The wind wants my hat to lift just to see it fly. Red fox is on the run, its pace brisk along the trail that crosses my path. I watch it go, can never get enough of the full warmth of colour of their coats; about 30 metres away Fox comes to a sudden halt, its gaze focused on the drainage cut that follows alongside the trail; he/she now in the hunter’s poise, motionless, hunched, focus centred; from that frozen pose, as if launched from a springboard it pounces and dives down into the ditch. 

Beaubien, Conrad. Bloomfield Marsh. Watercolour on paper. 2022.

There’s nothing I can see for brief moments until fox surfaces out of a sea of deep dry grasses with prey in his mouth, too far away to tell - mouse, mole, a muskrat perhaps? Foxes apparently are not carnivores and are actually omnivores; for sure, the absence of berries and fruit in the wild during winter calls for a varied diet. Fox takes the time to chomp his meal down with gusto before turning and bounding away, regaining its sprint as when I first spotted him. A red tail is the last evidence to be seen as once more it vanishes into layered brush.  Having taken that pause, the view that waits is that of wide open plain of the Bloomfield marsh, the rise of field beyond mostly windswept of cover and where the stubble from last year’s crop pokes defiantly from silent earth. 

I look forward to my visits here, to the shelter of the lower paddock where Thunder and his pals Joe and Micah hang out. I say hang out but am not sure if Thunder and his donkey brother Joe would actually feel remorse if the 1600 pound Fiord horse Micah didn’t occupy the same real estate. Animals require company just as we humans do but the size differential here between horse and donkey means donkeys get bumped out of the way when Micah is coming through. I think the horse simply insinuates that he’s in charge and is quite immune to the jostling and complaints from his paddock mates. Thunder’s response in all of this is passive, non engagement in a push and shove. He lowers his ears to show he’s not happy with being taken as a lesser being however he passively makes way; meanwhile Joe’s pissed off stance means he’ll offer Micah a snarl, a show of teeth, a nose bump and also Joe has been known to render a mule kick as he raises two hind legs to deliver a solid strike to the horse’s ribs whose reaction on the face of it is not even to notice. 

It’s the earthiness, the muck and manure that cling to my boots, the bramble of hawthorns that surround the paddock that grasps realness of life. The on-the-surface chaotic arrangement of nature defies its organized web in a profound co-dependent way. Something brought to my attention recently is that of the role that donkeys play in arid, desert like conditions. In the portion of the Mojave Desert that is in California and also in the dry plains of Arizona, recent observations using photography traps that record mostly unseen activity in the wild have shown how donkeys and wild horses are capable of digging wells with front legs to find water. Their high sense of smell can detect where water is present below the surface and they can excavate to a depth of six feet; uncovering a source then becomes an oasis for badgers, toads and for raptors like red tail hawks; a draw for orioles and mule deer and bighorn sheep. The loose ground around the watering places builds a soil base with the presence of manure; that in turn allows willow and cottonwoods to germinate. The study refers to donkeys, in similar terms to beavers as being “ecosystem engineers”, in this case engineers in fur coats. 

The paddock experience for me from the time I herald the donkeys from a distance, to being greeted at the gate and where I go through a body search by the animals of every pocket in my parka, a close-up examination of my hands and anywhere else they figure I may be concealing treats like carrots or the like is not dissimilar in many ways to the process of going through airport security except in the case of the paddock gate-check, thank God I don’t have to take my boots off for screening. 

With only the effects of nature around, every part of me – smell, hear, taste, see and touch – become finely tuned to a reality experienced as a meditation and that the paddock, like the water wells of the desert becomes an oasis of a true inner quiet in a chaotic world.

-Published in the Wellington Times, March 10, 2022