Writing as À Cheval
Healing Montana
My life work depended on determining the relationship between the visible and invisible.
The World is Round
Chapter 1
Over the Pyrénées
All pilgrims travel alone, until all become one.
I duck under my backpack, snug her tight, and step under the granite archway of my hostel onto the cobbled street of St Jean Pied de Port, France. I am on my Way with concordant others, a pilgrimage over the Pyrénées to Santiago, a five-hundred-mile stroll across northern Iberia—original landbridge from Africa to Europe, pathway of civilization.
“Are ye ready?”
“Born ready.”
“And where might that’ve been?
“Born in Montana. And you?”
“Ireland.”
“Lots of Irishmen walking the Camino.”
“Seeking turns our world, ye know. The human condition is one of searching.”
Walls unplumbed by time fade upwards into daybreak fog. Darkness is slow to fade. Sun struggles to light up our lives. Napoleon’s route has opened for the first time this year, four days after Easter, which fell on April Fools 2018 Anno Domino. We’ll be the first pilgrims sanctioned to walk the panoramic Way, while it is rumored others snuck over yesterday.
“A pilgrim you’ve become, me friend,” Ireland declares, seven steps out the door.
“The last cowboy,” I reply.
“A resurrected man.”
“Horseless. Le pèlerin.”
“And by tonight?”
“El perigrino.”
“You speak French y Spanish?”
“Hardly. Not my tongues.”
“I speak a bit, when I have to.”
“Irish for you, is it?”
“’Tis. I’ve stories to tell all the way to Santiago if you’re keen on craic!”
“I walk to listen.”
“Walking to heal, are ye?”
“I suppose, nothing specific. But yes, stirring up a life of healing ahead now that you mention it.”
“Ridding yourself of a life left behind?”
“It that a scythe you’re swinging there?”
“My staff.” Kenny Ireland waves his staff skyward, lost King of Celts.
“The rugged phase of my life ended a while back, before wifi. I’ve thought that time out, lived it through. My children are happy and grown, married or soon to be. The next generation on its way.”
“Time heals.”
“Time renews.”
“I seek renewal me self.”
“I’m here more to get in touch with people of this world, all the world.”
“They’re all here. Euros learning to live life, lives robbed by time and screens.”
“I learned living life well from my children, before screens. Connor and Nina taught me what is important—tripled life’s happiness. I’ve little to walk for but gratitude.”
“You’re blessed, blessed, me friend. Grandkids yet?”
“I sense a grandchild on the way.”
“I’ve recently been split from me wife. She kept me kids, our kids. Get to see them all I want, though.”
“I am so, so sorry.”
“Me too, sorry about the sot I became.”
“You’re supporting her and the kids, aren’t you?”
“In Ireland, single mothers go on welfare, not one mother unkept. I was spending all our coin on drink. She cut me off, threw me out. Life is more stable for her and our kids now, ‘t’is.”
“You are walking it off, are you?”
“I be.”
“And drinking?”
“Sober one week. Walking instead of drinking, you know, looking to forgive and be forgiven, I am.”
“One forgives to be forgiven.”
“I need to forgive the nuns who strapped me.”
“What nuns?”
“Boarding school nuns, Irish Catholic nuns.” Kenny Ireland casts his eyes downward, reflective pain.
“Lo siento.”
Kenny marches ahead, leaving me on my own, freeing me to be myself for a spell. Bienvenue, bienvenidos. Primavera deluxe. Day of joy, day of sun. I walk and breathe. Radiance, after a week of reported sleet and snow a radiant heat envelops the land, landscape absorbed by pilgrims, vital sun seeking altitude after a long low winter. Spring, a fluxing season, the Pyrenean World an emerald, Her Pyrenean Ibex, el bucardo, extinto, extinct, gone in 2001.
Yellow-headed vultures circle and land and perch and watch.
The vapors of living envelop the world, early spring, the first day full of spring. Into the sun I climb. Sheep bleat and greet. Dogs pad silent through dewy fields of grass, keeping an eye and nose on their guardian’s world. The dew point crystallizes their exhalations. I am behind others, a bigger wave of pilgrims gone ahead, earlier risers. Enchanment slows my pace. Animalia. A miracle. Un milagro.
Basque pastoralia shepherds los peregrinos as Border Collies shepherd sheep. A tender stroll, a relaxed way. Grazing domesticates. Pecking chickens needing no order. Vernal, the roadside pastureland soft, springtime Camino. Flowering blooms, a feeling of lightness of being, the aroma of birth and rebirth, endorphins of exhilaration. Mystical insight apparent to me, as others don’t look twice watching the road, looking for arrows, blind to nature. Deaf.
Smells lift me. Grass and trees. The bell cow grazes. Her bell tolls the history of domestication, each sweep of her tongue a clang, each clan a message to her shepherd all is well, and where. Pastured cattle, tended grazers, tended gently, content as cousins to my Montana bovine friends, red Basque cattle foraging the Pyrenees as black Angus graze the Rockies. Cows graze to human shoes and boots tromping skyward, peaceful sounds to their ears, human passage, group survival, the sugar that attracted them, safety in numbers—mankind’s hypnotizing cadence.
My world moves as I move through her. If I worship a god, She is nature and Her domesticates. Movement, healer of beast and man alike, healer of mind and body. Happy cows gazing and moving. The motion tonic. Strolling. Exhilarating footsteps. Joy. Felice. Sheep and horses walk and graze happy. Dogs trot. Cats stalk.
Humans walk. Loads shuffle, muscles pump. Hearts jump. One million steps ahead, sunlight upon us, stepping into life, real life, climbing under birds soaring over the Pyrenees. The mystical yonder beyond. Removed from America, astride Iberia, landbridge from Africa. Real time. Human time. Sustenance, silent bonding, walking, moving. Together and apart. Alone and one. Folding inward and outward. Tribal formations, subconscious gathering of souls sharing the burdens of travel by foot, waves of pilgrims, magically connected. Big souls. Irish souls so large.
Story of My Life
Chapter 2
“So what might this pilgrimage be about for you, Montana?” Efa asks, an Irish lass I befriended last night.
“Gratefulness.”
“There must be more than that.”
“Forgiveness, I suppose same as your countryman. Perhaps some animal foregiveness at this stage.”
“Animal forgiveness. You’ve lived an animal life, have ye?”
“I have.”
“The best sort of life, a life not lived much these days.”
“If one must have a reason to journey, animalia is mine.”
“Animalia?”
“From the Latin animalis: having breath.”
“Yes! Anima is breath. Anima is life. Animalia. I like animalia as your reason to walk, a veterinary journey to breath your veterinary life through.”
“A reconciliation of sorts, I suppose.”
“A realization of what all happened. A sifting.”
“That’s it.”
“Craic happens. And here we have an animalia pilgrimage.”
“Sacrilegious, I know.”
“Well yes, my goodness, we’re speaking The Lord here. The Church believes animals have no Lord, no souls, or so they taught me in Catholic school.”
“I heard. My mother raised me Catholic.”
“Well, then you know animals have no soul.”
“But animals do have soul. Animals share the same lord as my lord, not a Catholic Lord.”
The road creeps upward. I take the high road, Napoleon’s Route. Others march the lesser Valley route, through Valcarlos. I become winded. The path is steep. To my surprise, I overtake a group ahead of me, and talk resumes.
“You’ve walked before?” I ask.
“Six caminos.”
“Is Camino walking what it’s cracked up to be?”
“Depends on what ye be walking towards.”
“Forgiveness.”
“Time will tell.”
“Time always tells.”
“Not always.”
“All time has told me is ‘I told ye so’.”
“I don’t believe in time.”
“Not a religious Camino for you, then?”
“I exorcised my wolf in my first novel,” I say.
“An animal Camino you’re on, i’n’it?” Ireland exclaims.
“Nine lives, eight lost, one to go,” I play. “¡El bucardo es extinto!” I exclaim.
“The ibex is extinct?”
“Yes. 2001, gone forever.”
“2001? El bucardo’s extinction could not be stopped in this, the 21st century?”
“No.”
“Never heard o’ anyone doing an animal Camino. You must’ve arrived with some sort of spiritual intent?”
“Other than gratefulness and forgiveness, no,” I declare.
“To atone, perhaps.”
“If you wish,” I comply.
“Atone now rather than later to make room for goodness in your life,” Ireland insists.
“I’m blessed by goodness as it is, my children grown and happy. Gratefulness, I step to be grateful. To have my life sated au natural.”
“You’re just salting cod, pilgrim, preserving your time on earth.”
“I’m with you, Montana,” Ireland says. “Grateful as can be, wonderful children, save me not being wit’ ‘em. My hope is to learn to forgive, to flush salt out of me wounds. I’ll be a better father for me kids. I’ve had more ‘n enough salt.”
“I come from western Montana, a saltless land of amends.”
“Oy, Efa mentioned you were a novelist.”
“In Montana, yes. Here I camino as le flâneur.”
“Le flâneur? An idler!”
“An idler with legs, then, if idler is what flâneur means. I walk to watch—a passionate spectator, le flâneur.”
“There’ll be no ax-grinding for you along the Way, then?”
“Goodness, no.”
“We’ll see halfway along.”
“Here for others, are ye?” Ireland snakes.
“If necessary. I’ve brought my black bag.”
“Black bag?”
“My horsedoctor kit.”
“Here to doctor horses, are ye?”
“In my fashion. To walk and to write. I doctor horses with words these days.”
“Keeping insanity at bay, you are,” Ireland asks.
“Writing eases pain.”
“Whatever it takes.”
“My plan C.”
“C for Camino,” Swede remarks.
“Walking strong to write strong,” I counter.
“A fine reason to march.”
“If ye be searching for a god—or in your case, yearning for one but don’t quite know it—spinning yarn is the way to go,” Ireland affirms.
“If I did worship a god, may Savior would be a She,” I clarify.
“Men are Gods, women; Goddesses,” Swede proclaims.
“No evidence of either,” I say
“No evidence?”.
“None I’ve seen. Norse or otherwise,” I add.
“You’ve not seen North Sea weather.”
“I’ve seen famine.”
“And you’ve not seen Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged horse.”
“Yes, I have.”
“Rocky Mountain wrath is likewise fearsome.”
“Gods punishing men.”
“No evidence there is not a god,” Ireland puts in.
“Mass starvation, WWI, WWII, the Troubles. Where was your God?”
“You have us there.”
“Qur’an say there is God.”
“Bible say.”
“Book of the Dead, no say.”
“All religion seems based on a fear of death,” I say.
“Fables of life everlasting,” Swede pines.
“Eternal non-being.”
“Being is this, now.”
“And Jesus?”
“A prophet, human as any.”
“A healer, soother, provider.”
“A storyteller, pray tell.”
“No immaculate conception, no resurrection; a man same as you or I,” Swede says. “I’ve read The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, you know.”
Ireland waves his spear, his staff. “Jaysus, son of God. ‘Tis blasphemy to call Jaysus hu-man.”
---U Man, u man--- echoes off the butte we walk under.
“Blasphemy’s a crime in Ireland, is it not?” Swede invites. “If you don’t believe God is up there stringing you along; jail is church for you, eh Ireland?”
“They’ll lock you up in Dublin for calling Jaysus a man, they will.”
“The blending of church and state.”
“Franco’s Catholics.”
“We’ll be voting our blasphemy law out, next election.”
“Separating state from church at long last,” Swede adds. “Kids will be happier.”
“England gone, Rome next. We Irish need shepherds no more, we on our own.”
“And what of God?”
“’God is the silence of the Universe and man is the cry that gives meaning to that Silence,’ Jose Saramago.”
“We’re crying,” Ireland puts in.
“The Being affliction. We defy silence. Life is defying silence before us.”
“Silence is the cause, not the affliction.”
“Man is the affliction.”
“Man is afflicted.”
“Affected by silence.”
“Poverty afflictions. Human afflictions. Burdened souls, my drinking affliction,” Ireland cries.
“What’s your affliction, Montana?” Swede asks.
“Trying to get inside the truth,” I smile.
“That would be looking for a god, me friend, your cry in the Silence. Religious through and true, you are.”
“God appears to be the problem, the world problem, Islam and Christianity exchanging barbarities. Religion has brought few people together.”
“If I thought there was a god who’d help animals, I’d be searching high and low, believe me,” I add.
“Animals in Sweden have found their God, and it is our people.”
“I seek a God that makes us larger and more loving toward animals,” I howl.
“I’m here to have a word with God about nuns,” Ireland shouts into Silence.
“Not an Animalia Camino for you, then?” I query.
“Spiritual, for sure.”
“As in religious?”
“Both.”
“I am here for the panorama,” Swede says. “Look, see! There is my God.” The sculpted, tall blond man waves his arm across Pyrenees distant.
“Are you open to persuasion about Jaysus being son of God, Montana?”
“Fanciful notions aside,” I answer.
“Salt of the sea, we’re simply water constructed about sea salt,” Swede puts in.
“And to the sea our salt shall return.”
Half a kilometer in, the heat of humanity builds inside. My anxious muscles have metabolized their glycogen. My muscles flame. I do not want lactic acid to burn my muscles or my mind, stirred as I am in pursuit of meaning. I remove my woolen cap to cool my blood. After my son was born, a pediatrician who’d made sure he hadn’t gotten too much anesthetic during his mother’s cesarean, handed him to me out of the surgery suite. ‘He’s been in a warm spot a long time,’ Dr V explained. As I held my boy in my arms, the pediatrician fashioned a little cap for him out of surgical stockinet. “We don’t want his beautiful head cooling him off too much.” My son Connor looked me in the eyes as the doctor pulled the impromptu cap over his new little head, a completeness of living, a feeling rare and special.
Remarkable, those things one remembers—my son’s eyes gazing into mine, head as a radiator cooling life, a life warmed by the good doctor. I drink a pint of water to flush the lactate away. I rest, listening to sounds rather than words, opening my ears beyond talk, beyond humanity, whetting my awareness of pilgrimage air, setting myself up to see if a god exists, as Ireland and a large portion of humanity suggest, or once suggested. In an earlier age; communing with god was every pilgrim’s aspiration, to insure life after death, a heaven to coddle them forever and ever. These pilgrims are more concerned with past lives than future. I see. I look. I observe. I cogitate, muse, and meditate.
Pilgrims’ footfalls drum a human song, rejuvenated industry of mankind—one pair of feet cobbling upon another upon another, walking into redemption. Two pilgrims walk barefoot, silent footprints. Judge not, lest ye be judged. Cooled, rested, and flushed, I join them on their march to Santiago, five hundred miles yonder.
“I suppose knowledge depends on our awareness of changing from one level of perception to another,” Swede says.
“I am wrought with animal perception.”
“Animal intuition, you mean.”
“I intuit, yes.”
“You will ascend beyond animal intuition this journey.”
“Or into it,” I say, before I walk alone, again.
All pilgrims alone, all one.
Chapter 2
Raised by Horses
“Last night, you claimed to be raised by horses,” Efa walks me down to state.
“Well, yes, but I am here to become human,” I rejoin.
“I feel as if I was raised by horses like you,” she adds, striding tandem, thumbing her shoulder straps, her little finger talking at me, assisting her delicate Irish lips, pale pink and perfect. “Your life story enlightened me, as if it’s possible to be raised by animals.” Efa bunked above me in the pilgrim hostel last night. We whispered story of life talk until lights-out, giggling and sighing about our unknown journey ahead before falling into fitful sleeps, prelude to a journey of above and below nights.
“I mingled with our family horses early in life feeling as much a part of their herd as my human family. Horses my family pastured, bred, and raised.”
“They offered you a separate reality.”
“Indeed they did.”
“You walk with a horse’s awareness.”
“How’s that?”
“Forward seeing. You pay attention.”
“I try.”
“No. You do pay attention. Nothing escapes you, birds, rodents, amphibians, you see all life.”
“I pay a price. Human things escape me. I need guidance on that.”
“With your eyes, you’ll find clairvoyance.”
“A mystic linking of visible to the invisible.”
“Telepathy as taught by horses.”
“A scenic construct.”
“Eye art.”
“Kinetic empathy.”
“Unspoken intentional referentials.”
“To see what you say. Without words.”
“Sign language.”
“Fingerless, though.”
“Nothing new what so ever, a gesture-language ancient as horses’ merger with humans. Art evolved and refined to medical diagnosis in my veterinary hands. How to see a horse to know the horse.”
“Rather than blood tests and x-rays, you utilize your senses to diagnose and practice medicine?”
“Layered sensations to arrive at accurate conclusions.”
“And in the moment, no less.”
“Sooner diagnosed, sooner treated, sooner healed.”
“Others require digital imagery, endoscopy, and MRIs.”
“I’m seldom fooled by numbers or pictures.”
“Your combined perceptions add dimension to insight.”
“So it seems.”
“And you learnt these things as a child from horses themselves.”
“My sixth sense to picture invisible happenings was taught to me by horses, as well as dogs, wolves, coyotes, and cats.”
“From observing these creatures movements, you are able link visible to invisible?”
“Precisely. Kinetic discernment, key to my intuit life, key and lock.”
“Lock?”
“Chained, I’m chained to animal life to which I can’t break free.”
“If you walk long enough, you’ll free yourself.”
“I’m walking.”
A greening world surrounds us. We walk upon a road, a quiet road with seldom a vehicle, a paved road with shoulders soft with baby grass. Behind us below, the besieged town can be seen surrounded by stone walls and embattlements, church spires reaching high, history of this Camino de Santiago, blood, war, and Jesus apostle James.
“So, you made your living watching horses.”
“In spells. At times.”
“Some jobs didn’t last long for you?”
“I watched too close, too easily I could spot gimpers. My mother commented on that during one of my regulatory stints to California. Couldn’t believe I had a job sitting on the fence watching horses. Said that’s what I did half my childhood. She’d kept an eye on me after all in my life with horses. I lost a few of those fence-sitting jobs.”
“You watched too close, did ye?”
“I did. They thought perhaps they’d hired a blind eye, but that wasn’t the case.”
“You peeled horses with your deadeye.”
“Indeed. I had an intuit’s sense of which joints, tendons, bones, or muscles might be inflamed based on a watching a horse’s gait.”
“An eye for gimpers.
“Cripples seldom got by me. God knows they tried, but tried was it. I took those horses out before their weakened bones had a chance to break down in a race. One of many animal-helper jobs my eyes cost me. When you represent animals, you alienate people. When they can, people get rid of you. I made racing safer, they got rid of me.”
“Dystocia, twisted guts and bladder stones–you see those from the outside, as well?”
“I can, but I finger those troubles, rectal palpation, an invisible but tangible see.”
“You do your veterinary dance with fingers, as well as eyes?”
“Dangerous feels, at times. Lucky to be here I am. As many hind legs I’ve stood behind, a miracle.”
“If only you’d honed similar finesse with women.”
“If only.”
“Helping animals, at your peril.”
“What do horses suffer most in Ireland?”
“Suppressed emotions, same as their horsefolk. Getting squeezed in a bit on the island, we are.”
“I can sense behavioral need as well as I can sense anything inside a horse.”
“That is seeing fairly deep, pilgrim.”
“Superficial seeing, really. Easier to see that than many lameness’.”
“You will have much to picture on this journey.”
“Translations fail me when it comes to humans.”
“Let pictures paint your thoughts.”
“Paint me a thought.”
“Can you smell fear like a horse smells fear?”
“You don’t smell of fear.”
“But I am afraid.”
“In this moment, you’re not. The polish of your new beginning belies fear.”
“I’ve simply been reborn.”
“A reincarnation, perhaps.”
“My inner Buddha.”
Seekers waver under their backpacks, walking sticks falter, poles skip, scallop shells ting. Free-swinging arms propel some, elbowing air through Euskal Herria. Older pilgrims bring themselves forward with canes. All walk with halos, an electromagnetic effect of atmospheric mist—spirits at play guiding our way.
Chapter 3
Risen
Blessed with spontaneous camaraderie, I pause to breathe and absorb human engagement that breaks me out of myself generating friendships with humans, of all creatures. I step out of my backpack to even straps and adjust my load, trying to achieve a tight and balanced fit. Others hurry ahead, while sauntering keeps me collected, where I belong. I stretch and savor this French atmosphere. I remove my shoes to bend my toes and torque my metatarsals. I stretch and flex my ankles before I snug up my socks. These feet must transport me across Spain. I am determined to keep them cool and dry. Rubbed and blistered by time, I seek avoidance of friction on this journey.
Shoes adjusted, laces snug, backpack fine-tuned, I restring myself to pace down the cobblestone incline. I pass the office where I received my initial ink stamp along with instructions on how to stay alive hiking over the Pyrenees. ‘Stay right at the border, otherwise impassable snow drifts will stop you from reaching Roncesvalles and you will have to spend the night in the forest.’ From St Jean to Finisterre, stamps will record my way, and with each stamp; verbal guidance—my digital life replaced and indelible ink, my kinetic life with spoken words
I step inside the Romanesque church to say good-bye, to whom I know not, my mother perhaps. Fragrant with beeswax scent of last night’s Mass, the nave is empty save a flickering flame encased in red glass atop the sacristy, said to signify the presence of Christ, consecrated hosts not yet consumed. I kneel to recite the memorare, asking Virgin for a safe trip—please keep everyone back home safe, my children and cats, our dog and horses.
I step back outside and move to rio Nive and wait at the foot of Roncevaux Pass—le Pied de Port—to ponder flowing water. Brazilian Juliana, whom I dined with last evening after our Catholic benediction, stops and stands beside me, remaining silent. Anxious others parade past. It is a rare comfort to hold still with a fellow pilgrim to watch water flow—silent fellowships carried to Santiago.
“Lethe’s river.” Juliana speaks, christening the stream. “River of forgetting.”
“You’ve arrived to forget?” I query.
“To be free and on my Way.”
“May your burdens be dispelled,” I reply.
The poetess grabs at her left hand to toss a tiny object into the flow—a ring twisted from her finger, I believe.
“Gone.”
The shiny thing disappears in spring flow.
“Burdens well borne become light,” I tell her.
She twirls away to push on alone. Morning light collects about her as she ambles on. She turns and gives me a smile that doubles world happiness.
We received the pilgrim blessing last night with three others in a town harboring one hundred pèlerins and peregrinos. Religion is not reason modern pilgrims have gathered in St Jean Peid de Port. It is something else. Ushered to the altar by a local parishioner at the end of Mass, Juliana and I and three other pilgrims stood before three priests and two nuns to receive our benediction, as many clerics as supplicants. We five stood before heaven’s liaisons and declared our origins: ‘Ireland, Dansk, Sveirge, Brasilia, Montana…’
Juliana and I bowed our heads and closed our eyes to receive our blessing. “Pause often to give thanks on your Way,” we are advised in French, then English, and in the end; Portuguese. “Absorb light along the Way.”
“It is not a race,” a withered priest whispered.
Bestowed with hearing in tongues, anointed by touch and prayer, Juliana and I opened our eyes, surprised to find them fixed on one another. Sun had escaped westward clouds to enliven stained glass windows refracting above. Tinted radiance lit Juliana’s shoulders, flaming her flaxen hair. For a moment, she sported wings.
I smile, enthralled by art and time and sun and Juliana.
We look up to leaded glass, windows to heavens above.
Blood spills from the sacrificial lamb into a chalice, not red blood, but lilac, a deceased architect at work with dust and time.
Atop his white horse, St Jacques slays helpless Moors, a mistake then as now, their blood red as roses, Jesus versus Mohammed.
Ascension, an immaculate conception; a conflagration.
Together and apart, Juliana and I begin our pilgrimage to the apostle of war’s bones. In the shadow of the dome above, winged angels smile upon us. In guardian angels we trust. Gods? Not sure. Yet.
“Everyday, expect reparation along the Way.”
Juliana and I hug at the peace offering. ‘Peace be with you,’ I whisper in her ear. ‘Peace,’ she answers in Portuguese, which I hear as English.
After all had departed, I lit a candle for my mother above. I lit two more for my two children living happily across the sea. In afterglow emptiness, my flames struggled to take form. The wicks smoked and folded before drawing up enough wax to catch and glow. In time, three incantations of life burned bright, flames consecrating atmosphere. Religion did not bring me here, but Juliana, and now these flames reaching upward catch my attention, something beyond thermodynamics.
Leaving the stone cold vestibule, I dip my finger in the holy water—a childhood ritual. As I splash my face, signing a cross, a pang of grief for my Catholic mother two-years-passed shot through my palm, spiking me as to a cross. I close my eyes to ease the pain and have a brief vision: my mother kneels behind me, a priest elevates a chalice I filled with wine before me, a vision from my altar boy past. Wine to blood. In a moment, my mother and I are—once again—together in the miniature chapel in the Catholic hospital where I was born. My mother, the priest, and I. I kneel on marble between two humans, my intermediaries to Jesus. Time is lightening. Life, a flash.
I open my eyes. I attended daily Mass with my mother for weeks each year, years on end, years seeming never to end, back life was everlasting.
Chapter 4
A Clearing Mist
Last night’s worship renders a day large with life. Sun teases daybreak, bleaching the fog. The classic route beckons. A ray of sunshine breaks through—portent of replenishment. Upon the bridge alone, I dance a jig I danced as a kid whenever excitement overtook me, an impromptu skip and spin—kinetic expressions of joy, a youthful dance few other children could match, moves even my horses admired at a distance. Oh, to be young and innocent again. Our family foals taught me this bop of joy, their jumping and skipping around their dams during the second week of life, disguised survival moves to employ as needed later in life, happy-to-be-alive moves.
Feeling fine, moving fine, I stop and contemplate rio Nive in early light.
Lethe’s River.
‘Let those unwelcome memories go, send them downstream never to return,’ I hear someone say, my guardian angel, or perhaps an echo from Brazil. I retrieve a rock I have brought from Montana stored in a special pouch in my backpack. I rub the worry stone one last time and kiss added weight goodbye, unpleasant memories down Lethe’s, gone. I glance upriver. Night has vaporized. Daylight summons.
On I march. I stroll past cafés that welcome like-minded pilgrims the world over. Les pèlerins spill out of stone buildings, spinning. Hearts gallop, lungs breathe, souls quiver in anticipation. Minds fizz.
The bell tower of the church catches first light, a bell anxious to ring. Blood pulsing, legs pushing to Santiago de Compostela.
Ireland sits at a street table vaping, stirring his espresso in a cloud of smoke, a genie waiting for me, no more eager to be on than I. Scent of fresh-baked bread laces Basque air. I sit with him to enjoy my rebirth.
“Five hundred miles beyond,” I wave my hand to the west, “that butafumiero incense smolders and sifts, cleansing those who have journeyed long and hard.”
“A horseless crusader, you are, Montana” Ireland replies, blowing another hurricane of vapor out his lungs, a reverse genie of sorts.
“I am that.”
“Horses wait for ye. On ahead, they graze.”
“A prophet, are you?”
“For some I be, yes.” More vapor.
“Didn’t see you at Mass last evening.”
“No, twasn’t there. Not I.”
“You missed the pilgrim’s blessing.”
“Not the first blessin’ I’ve missed, me friend. Not the last.”
“I’ve no objection to anyone’s lack of religion. I’ve accumulated little myself.”
“Be that what it may, I am religious, just not in a church-going Catholic way. I had quite enough o’ that as a youngin’, none of it good.”
Beyond Catholicism, we walk together for a spell. Daybreak brings more light each minute, our pilgrimage coming clear. No traffic, a village quiet but for footfalls and walking sticks that chatter and skid. Pilgrims look up, they look down—glancing at one another, leaving town. They walk muted. Lady pilgrims smile as they spot yellow arrows ahead, pointing The Way. Immersed in long-anticipated reality, we walk into our twilight zones.
The journey flattens before rolling upward into the wilderness of the soul. Everyone catches their breath as bright-painted homes give way to farms with gardens surrounded by pastures populated with domesticates. I hike into the pastoral, astonished and grateful for humane husbandry—animals grazing in peace, nipping spring grass. I relax in their presence, relieved to be greeted on my way by animals, not my expectation. Sheep baa and move in unison through morning sun. Beyond them, cows graze connected, having shared their milk. A cat tightropes a fence, balanced under her monkey-business tail. Agriculture is not the word for this. Here, I find a partnering of land with animals, husbandry, a word with meaning in Euskadi, a word lost in American agriculture. Sheepdog patrols, keeping vixen at bay. After decades of trying to heal Montana, I arrive to witness domesticates at peace with humans.
“Delivered here by god, you are,” Ireland contends.
“Destined by animalia,” I counter. “Animal god is my god.”
“What do they call you back home, Montana?” Ireland asks.
“Cheval,” I answer. “Call me Cheval, À Cheval,” I rib, spouting my nom de plume.
“Horse, that’d be, à cheval is French for horseback.”
“Riding the Pyrenees.”
“They call me Sam, Sam McCraic. Farrier.”
“To horses and humans.”
“Onward.”
“Upward.”
“Sustreya.”
“Ultreia.”
We struggle, a steep climb southerly and westward. Through Iberian animalia we step—land too steep to plow, yet a garden in every backyard, and a greenhouse in every front. They have the wholesome food concept honed here in France, delightful pastoralists. Happy critters, a wilderness for domesticates—uncrowded, untethered, sated nutritionally and behaviorally, animal conditions I admire.
Invisible is visible, and there is little amiss. I see happy animal souls. I reconnect with Kingdom animalia. With and without purpose, I stroll up the north slope of the Pyrénées—grazing, resting, sunning—moving with others, dépendent on others. I shift my corbata gait to high gear, driving into steepness.
Upwards we ambulate, Efa, Sam, Juliana, and I amidst a hundred others, motion our agenda, ambulation our salvation to health and happiness. Movement, movement with feeling and purpose. Heartier foreigners overtake us, haddock-chewing Swedes, Alpen Italians seasoned by Dolomites. We struggle to communicate with words, inarticulate in others’ tongues this early in our purification. We convey and connect via kinetic empathy, primal exchanges at play. Looks tell the tale—gaits, postures, lips, eyes, hands, carriage, walking sticks, swinging arms. Bearing themselves onward and upward, pilgrims spell out the story of their life in movement, underpinnings of their human condition for all to see.
“You’re here for something to do, you say?”
“Just another adventure for me,” claims the Dane.
“No emptiness in your soul?”
“None I’ll admit to,” he grimaces.
“Nothing needing filled or emptied?”
“Nope,” he limps.
“Nothing needing healed?”
“Not outright.”
“Escaping Scandinavian darkness?”
“That would be it,” he answers, a hitch in his gait.
“So, you have come for a light of sorts, then.”
“I’m no Christian.”
“A Hans Christian Andersen,” Ireland puts in.
“Playing chess with death, he is.” Swede puts in his oar.
“Simply air and exercise, for me,” Dane insists.
“Rarefied air, an Urtzi sky.”
“N’est-ce pas?”
“Not your usual air.”
“Breeze of relief.”
Dane stops to read his GPS watch. He wants to know where he is.
“Where are we?” Sam asks.
“Who are we?” intones Swede.
“Atop the Iberian cordillera.”
“High atop,” Dane remarks.
Wheels disappear from our landscape altogether. Watches don’t have wheels anymore, you know. Time goes vertical, no more spinning. All afoot, all moving—cattle and people, earth pilots, their sheep and sheepdogs—high-shouldered cats and fetlock-feathered horses and pilgrims.
Roosters crow. Delighted animals, enchanting domesticates. Wild birds fly—larks and starlings low to the ground, vultures soaring high. Underfoot, rodents and carnivores sense our earthly transit; ground squirrels tunnel, fox burrow deep to sleep by day, voles—blind and busy—make their earthbound way.
“Reflecting your animal condition from afar, are ye?” Efa wants to know.
“It shows in my walk, does it?”
“Entranced by livestock, you are. Your eyes, your stance when you take pause in your journey to see and know sheep, of all species.”
“Connecting—that’s what I do with animals present.”
“Awareness.”
“Discernment.”
“Sheep speak to you, Montana. You are a marionette of beasts.”
“Why, thank you. Happy sheep, yes, sheep with tails spin me right. Bastards in America are still chopping tails off their sheep, dogs, and Budweiser Clydesdales. American animal brutality drives me mad, and with our uneducated masses cheering on such brutality.”
“Be happy here, my friend. The Iberian cordillera is a land of wholesome animalism… until we approach Pamplona.”
“Goats sharing their milk, grass to cheese.”
“Mmmnn… Bountiful use of resources.”
“Smallness of farms.”
“Domestic diversity.”
“Pastoral Ireland, likewise.”
“America, not so much, not anymore. Confinement farming is the rule, money a game to subjugate animals into max production. Pastoral as this would be an exception, but a few outposts remain. For some, a return, but economics can be tough for small producers. I was lucky to experience American pastoral before corporate agriculture wrung out homesteader sons and daughters. Sensitive husbandry is not prevalent in America like here, although we have a resurgence in kindness.”
“I sense you push kindness-to-animals along.”
“All I ask is their needs be fulfilled.”
“Of course, one would need to know their needs.”
“Exactly. Education. Range cattle and horses have right-living lives.”
“Not a feedlot life?”
“Anything but.”
“Free range, native range.”
“For many, but stabled pigs, horses, and milk cows live constrained lives, unlike these happy creatures great and small.” I wave my arm over the landscape.
“Are you blessing the animals, Montana?”
“I give them my blessing, yes.”
“Animals yours to behold.”
“With the right feet, we find what we need.”
Atop the terrain pèlerins (soon to be peregrinos), voyageurs, Brazilians, ambulants, Irishmen, bohémiens, Scandinavians, domesticates, and I walk; pedestrians all—souls strewn across earth, gathered in a pathos of distance. Everyone is far away from home.
“Physical exertion expands the soul.”
“Emotional release.”
“Emergence from self.”
“Ethos.”
“The human condition.”
“A fine condition, today.”
“Tribal.”
“Ancient.”
“Group survival.”
“Herd.”
“We’ve become herd.”
“A journey to see within.”
“To know oneself.”
“Seeking moral direction.”
“An ancient pursuit.”
“A world built on the backs of domestic animals,” I put in. “Refreshing, happy animals tended by ethical people.”
“Your Camino logos.”
“A walk through a land of human/animal partnerships unmentioned by guidebooks.”
“You’ll have to write that book, Horsedoctor.”
“Camino Goes Animal.”
“I see where you are going.”
“The moral character of people is measured not by their relationship to god, but by their relationship to their domesticates.”
“Nietzsche didn’t say that.”
“Gandhi did, I think.”
“French farmers of the Mahatma order.”
“Ethical farmers.”
“Basque.”
“Divinely ordered.”
“Subsidized by their government.”
“To maintain creative order.”
“Love these French pastoralists.”
“All those paintings in the Louvre reflected here.”
“Bullfighting ahead.”
“Spain and Hemingway.”
With one million steps to Santiago de Compostela, my feet feel the heat five thousand steps in, blistered and toughened they will become. After cooling and drying my toes, I resume my hike to the relics of St James to view his statue, to hug concrete molded in his image, shined and oiled by hands of pilgrims through time.
“El Apostlé waits for you.”
“Empty your mind.”
“Carry your load.”
“So… there is a god?”
“Why would so many walk if there was not?”
“Look inside yourself and see.”
“Absorb light.”
“Reflect light.”
“Shine light.”
“Transcend darkness. Back in the day, pilgrims walked under a field of stars by night to avoid robbers and thieves.”
“Les pèlerins following the Milky Way, la compostela.”
“Field of stars, an inverted world.”
“We are not the first to have walked this route.”
“Nor the last.”
“Perhaps the least.”
“Least religious.”
“It’s only day one.”
“Bipeds have been hiking about this cordillera for 800 millennia. Yonder, on the southern slope of the Pyrenees, archeologists unearthed physical evidence dated 800,000 years past, hominids living in foothills and sleeping in caves.”
“This Iberian Peninsula is land bridge from Africa to Europe.”
“When did bipeds become human?”
“When they began burying their dead.”
“When was that?”
“Deep as mankind can dig.”
“After speech; before writing.”
“Hominids became humans when the meaning of life became understood as death,”
“Language was needed for that understanding.”
Beauty cloaks the cordillera, kaleidoscopic blooms, nascent smell of sprouting grass, a walk cushioned by meadow, breezes born of snowmelt, trickling water, a sanguine spring.
Chapter 5
Hooves of the Horses
“Destiny brought you here, then?” I ask Ireland.
“Horseshoeing is my destiny, nailing metal to horse hooves, that’s me.”
“Dances with hooves.”
“Horses as sport.”
“Flat racers and steeplechasers. Bloodhorses.”
“You know all; clairvoyant as Efa warned.”
“We are all horses, today.”
“What breed of horse, ye be here?”
“Flâneur, like I said. Feathered-fetlocks and all.” I point to my gators, and shake my foot at him.
“People on the Camino will listen to you, American writer and all.”
“How does everyone know I’m American, sight unseen?”
“Language. Your language gives you plumb away.”
“Others know I’m USA before hearing a word I say.”
“Your gestures, your demeanor.”
“His American ‘je nais se quois’,” a passing Basque throws in.
“La corbata gait,” Swede refines.
“Corbata—what the craic?” Ireland requires translation.
“His forward gait, his earthward leaning. Corbata.” Swede knows his art, English and, Spanish, a man of tongues and time.
“His smile,” Juliana sneaks in.
“A caged smile.” Swede paddles in for more: “Corbata is a Spanish word that describes that poised rearing stance of a horse—forelegs elevated and flexed—ridden by a man in a work of Renaissance Art.” Swede bends forward as a horse, his pack the saddle and rider. He rears his torso and poises, flexing his arms in demonstration. “The mount is bridled by rider, contained yet restrained—a virile combination of horse and rider,” he explains. “Horse at the ready per rider’s request.”
“Horses and humans.”
“Montana ready.”
“A pilgrim reining horses,” Ireland adds.
“Horses reining him, over him.”
“From where in Montana do you hail?” Swede wants to know.
“From Bozeman, micropolitan Montana.”
“We heard Montana has become a land of micropolitans.”
“Missoula, Bozeman, Kalispell, Big Sky.”
“I envision Montana as a land of horses.”
“Those horses raised me.”
Striding ahead to turn around and walk backwards, Swede gauges my gait. “You sport a bow in your legs.”
“My learning curve.”
“Legs grown about the ribs of running horses.”
“Horses tip and curve him still,” Ireland adds
“Cheval, you are,” Swede concludes.
“A horseless hippie,” Ireland says.
“A wordmonger, he claims,” Efa adds
“A fish,” Juliana thinks.
“As I teenager, I lived atop a horse, days past.”
“A cowboy, were ye?”
“One of the last, it seemed. Day after day, weeks on end, ten, twelve hours a day, all summer long cowpokin’ horseback; a crew of men, boys, and horses.”
“A Lonesome Dove, eh?” Efa insinuates.
“Ah, yes, one melts into horses when contact is constant,” Ireland says.
“An opportunity few have anymore.”
“You were blessed.”
“You animate as horse,” Swede says. “That dance of yours.”
“And your psyche, likewise horse-shaped,” Efa insists.
“Horse altogether,” Ireland concludes
“They’ve shaped your movement, your gait,” Swede tells me.
“His mind,” Efa adds.
“His awareness, as well. He walks ready.”
“Yes, I once rode a horse named Stay Ready. Taught me alert.”
“Not the only 24/7 on the planet.”
“Thoroughbreds raised you?”
“Appendix Quarter Horses, they were. Later I trained and rode Appaloosa crosses as a Rankin hand.”
“Spotted horses.”
“And now he walks horseless.”
“He rides words, the horseless headman!”
“Horses and words, that’s it.”
“A shoer and a poet, me self,” Ireland declares.
“That nailing cadence, your tapping hammer.”
“Your brogue.”
“Hammerin’ out words, for sure. Writing and horsing go together, married they are.”
“Writing and horses.”
“Until horseless carriages came along, civilization was all writing and horses.”
“Progress, they said,” Swede adds.
“Tolstoy wrote invisible from visible, Strider was his story.”
“Bowed legs, stringing words.”
“We shall string through horses.”
“Soon. Unshod horses.”
“Wild.”
“Re-wilded.”
“Some collared, I saw.”
“As are we.”
“Horses they rode?”
“Ridden no longer. Family groups. Foals, mares, and stallions. Bachelor clans. You shall see, my cavalier.”
Together and apart, pilgrims ebb and flow. I stroll alone, as is tradition. Snowy Pyrénées scarp the south, spired white spearing blue. Breathing envelops me as clouds float peaks distant, mirroring my mind. Time inclines to whiteness. Life haloes me. Exertion galvanizes my mind. I fall into spells of varied oxygenation, endorphin highs.
Time becomes the road I walk, vultures my guardians, radical and radiant, yellow-headed—portentous. Unexpected wings whistle by, a close look at me, an outright inspection. No precipitation in the clouds, vertigo of contemplation, endorphin high, emotions shift and flow, rise and dissipate.
Fences disappear altogether. Horses graze unaffected. No more wire. High mountain plains, a panoramic view, horse terrain all round. Pyrenean grasslands, open views. Primavera, alfresca, scent of sun. Water seeping, grass greening.
Horses, and then more horses talk to me.
“Distance is magical, distance to widen your soul.”
“Widen is not le mot juste.”
“There may be another word, a better word.”
“A change of color, perhaps.”
“Color of relief.”
“White.”
“Distance blooms the soul.”
“An unburdening.”
“Purification.”
“Space to atone.”
“All souls alone.
“All one.”
In brilliant light, I’m led past white horses… horses whitened by glare of sun. I continue toward James the Greater’s bones, Jesus’ cousin. Saint James’ mother was Mary’s sis, reported to be a hardhearted mother unlike our blue Virgin. Agnostic and Buddhist and all as I had become in my Montana life, my encounter with Jesus would come as some surprise.
“Forgiveness,” my Leprechaun sings, a voice out of nowhere.
“Toward forgiveness,” I respond.
“I hike to forgive the Catholic Church, to forgive the nuns that beat me.”
“They need forgiven, deprived as they too, were.”
“Yes, to free myself, I must forgive them. I’ve tried to forgive everyone, but I can’t forgive those quirty nuns.”
“I forgave my father. He beat me some. I forgave my wife who tried to take my children away. I believe she’s forgiven me.”
“You’ll never know.”
“No one will ever know what another thinks, especially a past lover.”
“All sorts of unknown forgivens and unforgivens.”
“Remains of love will sprinkle your life.”
“Feeling unforgiven is symptomatic evidence you need a god, some god, any god.”
“Nature.”
“Nature? Whom else can forgive you if not a god?” Ireland asks. “Nature offers no forgiveness.”
“Not true. Animals forgive me time and again.”
“If it is human forgiveness you seek; You are forgiven.”
“Nature forgives me on the animals’ behalf.”
“Nature does not care, mountains do not care.”
“Mountains do care. Look at this. Rivers care. Nature serves as my god, anonymous, ubiquitous, caring and forgiving.”
“Brutal, wilderness is brutal.”
“If you don’t know Her.”
“The Montana wilderness has washed you clean, then?”
“Washed me, yes—clean; no.”
“Perhaps for you, doctor, a more human god is necessary for forgiveness’.”
“A god in my image, say?”
“Perhaps you should become your own god.”
“Some have suggested that was the problem.”
“Look within.”
“Horses have taught me to look without.”
“See. You need to become more human, less horse. God resides within. Look within.”
“It is all most anyone does anymore, it seems, trying to find themselves behind a screen.”
Sam Ireland hoists his walking stick, and poises as Olympus throwing a javelin. He pumps it back and forth. “Distance delivers,” he proclaims. He matches my corbata stride for stride, bowlegged himself, animated.
“You must be seeking reconciliation for something, Sam?”
“Known to drink a bit.”
“And smoke.”
“That as well, wretched habits, both.”
“Your wife sent you.”
“Me wife left me. Took me kids.”
“What inside your soul is burdened?”
“Whatever it is drinking relieves.”
“If you seek reconciliation, forgive those nuns and your drinking days ‘ll be done.”
“Are some walking not seeking reconciliation?”
“Previously reconciled, perhaps. The Dane, maybe.”
“You?”
“Unreconciled.”
“Look at the bright side.”
“Yes, my animal life was blessed. Seemed I had a guide, a guardian angel, some help from elsewhere. In my hands, animals healed.”
“With my hammer, horses ran easy, perfectly shod they were, each hoof tailored to a leg, each leg tailored to the other three, all four tailored to the horse, my savior on earth. Not that I didn’t take some bad swings.”
“I took some bad swings, myself. Needles were my hammer, needles and scalpels.”
“Missed clinches.”
“Shoes thrown.”
“For lack of a nail, the shoe was lost.”
“We lost the war.”
“We nearly lost the horse.”
“Expected human schisms.”
“Chasms.”
“To see light, we’re drug through darkness.”
…
Legions of walkers forth. Pilgrims together and apart, becoming the Way, a moveable feast—procession of souls—a worldly cadence.
Upwards, les pèlerins ascend into nirvana.
“Walking the stairway to forgiveness, we are,” Ireland says.
“Forsaken, we walk,” the Dane puts in.
“The lord was absent up north, was he?”
“Never saw him. Not once.”
…
A group steps by us led by a Euskadi. The Native displays the Camino through his ancient homeland, preserved from invaders of all casts to this day. A shepherd’s staff replaces his weapon as he walks his clients over battles past. Ancient fields of bloodshed and pursuit are flushed by snow and rain this fine day, a peaceful day along Compostela Way.
Walkers of no faith, many faiths, the Catholic faith, any faith. Believers and disbelievers, former believers, future believers, agnostics, and atheists. Buddhists. Hindi. Jains. Faithful and secular join the march, one hundred humans heaving upward, insatiate seekers all. Pilgrimage to the bones of St James, a walk to rub a pillar, to absorb wisdom from stone.
“Animals stand in judgment at the gates of your heaven, you said.” Efa wants to hear the story of my life.
“They graze in judgment. Look at them.” I point out wild horses yonder.
“An interesting conceit.”
“Not for an animalist.”
“¿Un animalista, esta usted?”
“Sí, yo soy un animalista.”
“¿Y el novelista?”
“Igualmente.”
“Animals make you human.”
“Domestic animals.”
“And wild, hunted animals.”
“Two haunt me. I killed a coyote and badger for no reason.”
“Older people taught you to kill.”
“True enough, but again, I should have done better by them. Breaks my heart I took their lives, to this day.”
“You learnt. You stopped killing, you stopped hunting, didn’t you.”
“I did, Yes.”
“Expounding your sins in this life will minimize the need for afterlife explanations.”
“Thanks for hearing my confession.”
“Horses will ask you questions, interrogate you at the gate to heaven?”
“Who knows. Animals are as feasible as anyone standing in judgment in my experience. Mute lives allowed to expound, that’s my heaven.”
“After death would be a good time to hear what they have to say.”
“True enough.”
“You understand their language.”
“They will want me to hear them out.”
“And they; you.”
“I know that dance.”
“We’ll all have explaining to do, anyone who’s lived with animals will have explaining to do. One tries to do right by animals, but we all sin, every one of us. Those seeking forgiveness will be forgiven. San Anton waits ahead, he waits to forgive. He’ll expect your arrival.”
“I healed the overwhelming majority of my patients, time and again.”
“I can see you have.”
“Lucky that way, I was. Guided.”
“Born to heal, you were.”
“Grateful to have been taught by both man and animal. Regret I didn’t do better by some.”
“A born healer.”
“A taught healer, born to learn.”
“Taught by animals and man alike, a layered education.”
“Art before science.”
“Wasn’t always enough.”
“Did you learn? In the development in your art, Montana, did you learn?”
“Did I ever.”
“Practice they call it in Ireland, veterinary practice. What’d it be they call it in ‘merica?”
“Practice, all the same.”
“You know the craic of the word?”
“Crystal.”
“Humans error.”
“I learnt who I could help and who I couldn’t. Still can’t get over not helping some.”
“You cannot help them all.”
“The Virgin knows I tried.”
“The Virgin of Biakorri?”
“Patron saint of shepherds.”
“People, you doctor people, too, I see. I saw you drain and wrap those blisters on the Californians back at Orrison.”
“Helped a few people, practice a bit of human medicine on the side.”
“What else, Montana?”
“Gained a reputation for training dogs and horses. Cats as well, I train cats.”
“More…”
“Provided pro bono services for underprivileged folks. Ended up treating them and their dogs and goats. Famous for doing free vetwork, I provided Medicaid for animals.”
“And your children?”
“Raised my kids practicing veterinary medicine through the storm of divorce, happy and healthy they are these days.”
“Not an easy task, my friend, I know.”
“A rugged road it was for my kids and I, for all involved, mother and grandparents, included, family, but not the family I had wished for, two decades of discord. Animals carried us through, dogs and horses. Two cats. In animal-sensitive fashion, I lost two regulatory jobs, and later, a teaching job. That wasn’t good for my kids, the financial strain and moving about were significant.”
“Forgiven?”
“Yes, I trust my children have forgiven me.”
“Built up your inner man, did it?”
“My bitter man.”
“Walk it off.”
“Real doctors walk among us.”
“Yes. They bear bigger crosses. Human death and suffering.”
“German doctors.”
“Several.”
“WWII babes.”
“Late-life walkabouts making sense of it all.”
“A lot of walking.”
“Lives passed in a flash.”
The sky goes platinum to cobalt as mist sublimates altogether, exhalations of earth dissipated by sun. Life opens—a Pyrenean sky for which I have long pined. Not as blue as the Montana sky, no, but the distance—igualmente.
Sun heats this world. Springtime domesticates graze, nipping the tastiest grass of the year. Sheepdog trots the fields, patrolling. Cat basks in sun, whiskers trolling for rodents scampering, and birds careless. Snowcapped peaks, inscrutable prairie garland. I gain altitude a step at a time. A flowering Camino. Climbing upwards in sun, los Pirineos ignite.
¡Mire!
Sun pulls me upright. Grateful to have hiked the M so many times above Bozeman, I climb with adequate wind. Endurance sustains my cadence, steep steps to Santiago. Expected steps. My corbata gait driving. Magic steps, steps walking in the present, weeks of walking ahead, past behind on another continent.
Caminando.
Pèlerins upward.
Roncevaux Pass
…
“Veterinarians are real doctors in Ireland, very real,” Sam declares.
“Ethical are they?”
“Honorable.”
“As farrier, you’d know.”
“My trainers worked with honorable vets. The Irish are horse-sensitive players, bettors won’t have it any other way.”
“Glad to hear somewhere there is honor among horsemen.”
“Clean racing, it is.”
“No doping?”
“Nearly none. Simply too sober a lot. Honor is the best policy to retain one’s license, and one’s clients, be you trainer or vet.”
“Cheaters have been weeded out, have they?”
“Banned and dishonored for life. No second chances. We like running ‘em clean, really like it. The horses stay on their feet that way, no broken legs.”
“A low tolerance for animal abuse in Ireland.”
“Very low, especially by veterinarians, held to high ethical standards.”
“Not so in America. Veterinarians are held to doping, a drug culture they’ve engendered, gaslighting the illusion that horses need drugs to race.”
“We’ve heard. We know drugs cripple horses, all and any drugs. The more they get, the more crippled they become, the sooner.”
“Easy money for croaker vets, a hard life for the medicated horses. Doped horses get lame and sick, a vicious cycle generating more vet income, joint and muscle injections, infectious disease treatments. All seasoned track vets facilitate doping to the degree they can get away with. There is no art to the medicine they practice, save their doping gaffs.”
“Vets paid to dope?” Ireland can’t believe it.
“Paid big. Hop and block services rendered. Millionaires.”
“Blockers? They’ll numb a leg?”
“Hoof, joint, leg. Anything they can get away with blocking, they do. Horrid minds they have, engrained in the racetrack vet profession by their predecessors. We horsedoctors used to meet once a year to trade doping secrets, a society of miscreants.”
“In Ireland, vets stay as far away from doping and numbing as possible. If something shouldn’t be administered within a week of a race, they’ll wait two weeks. Veterinarians in Eire don’t need pre-race money to make a decent a living. Few millionaires, but most all drive nice vehicles.”
“I’ve given up trying to make them ethical in America.”
“You tried? How?”
“Uncovered their doping charade for the New York Times.”
“That didn’t do it?”
“Not at all. Unlike Europe, American veterinarians wouldn’t come on board, as they were doing all the doping. They legalized doping at the expense of the horses. They are classless people, as are many trainers. They will dope to the hilt to win the next race, not caring if drugs cripple a horse, break their leg, or kill a jockey. Broken legs and dead jockeys do not faze these people. They know drugs break legs, their raceday Lasix and day-before Bute, but they just keep on injecting.”
“That’s too bad. I can’t imagine industry survival all doped up like that.”
“It is fading, no more horseracing in Montana.”
“These horses graze happy.”
“This is something, falling into wild horses. I wasn’t expecting a horseshoer or horses. I thought I was escaping racehorses and doping and all my failures trying to heal that industry, and here I am submerged in happy horses.”
“No escape from animalia for true horsemen.”
“Animals plot our journey, wild and domestic.”
“There is a God.”
“For me, that would be a collective animal spirit.”
“You are religious.”
“Holy Spirit guides you. I am guided by horses, sheep and cattle on this Way, can’t you see…”
“Virgin of Biakorri guides you this Way, patron saint of sheep and shepherds.”
“Sheep take me to her, sheep and horses.”
“She waits ahead. See her silhouette on the skyline.” Sam points his staff her way. “Patron saint of horsedoctor you, my man.”
“Her image is embedded in me, it is true. As a child sitting in the front row of parish, the porcelain statue of the Virgin stood, tender lips smiling.”
“Parish?”
“The Catholic Church, our parish. Catholics isolated themselves from the Protestant others. Protestants had their divisions; Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Dutch Reformed, all in a town of 2000 souls. My church had the best statue of Mary, far and away.”
“Virgin of Biakorri, far and away. Look!”
“As a Catholic child, I did not fancy male gods.”
“Didn’t like the idea of a male god?”
“My gods are women.”
“I wonder why.”
“Males were tough on animals, ungodlike people, even my father at times. On a wide scale, men I encountered lacked sensitivity to animals, a macho post-WWII hardness.”
“Biblical teachings and wars don’t favor animals.”
“Or women.”
“Or Gypsies.”
“Above the Conrad altar, crafted from tiny colored tiles, the sliced neck of the sacrificial lamb spilled blood into a chalice, selfsame sacrificial lamb displayed on the St Jean church windows.”
“Sacrificial lambs, slaughtered people.”
“Religion. Religion leads to indelicacies with animals.”
“Men should know better, my god.”
“Am I to understand you have sinned?”
“Yes.”
“Sinning against animals as you were taught by adults.”
“Taught, yes. I was born sensitive to animals, as were my children. My kids taught me true human nature is kindness to animals. Thank god they came into my life to clarify my brainwashing.”
“To believe animals have souls is religious.”
“Conrad’s monsignor—in the presence of my altar-boy friends—scolded me for my father’s use of crosses over buried pets in his veterinary graveyard. ‘Do you think those dogs and cats have souls?’ he chided. ‘Animals have no souls,’ he scolded.”
“On what authority did he declare this?”
“Authority of the Catholic Church.”
“I prefer this French animal authority, content and fulfilled domesticates, enriched sheep, cattle grazing free together, dogs shepherding along.”
“I believe these farmers are subsidized by French and Basque governments.”
“Corporate farmers and ranchers in America, likewise. I’d rather see small famers subsidized rather than large. Look at this animal happiness, which translates to health. Wholesome nutrition all around, man and beast.”
I walk, I breathe. I sense invisible happiness via visible sheens. Another dog engaged with communal purpose patrols sheared sheep, naked but for her accompaniment. No threat of wolf, thanks to her. She works unsupervised, on her own, astute, wolf staved off to snowier reaches, beyond guns of shepherds, guns remnant from the Spanish Civil War, from Basque insurrections. Wolves have long been unwelcome in these pastoral parts, but it is said they wander higher reaches east. El bucardo es extinto, ibex gone from the face of earth forever.
The shepherd knows pilgrims are harmless. She pays little attention to benign wanderers who do not threaten her band of long-tailed sheep. Europeans adore their livestock. Economy is secondary to animal welfare. They shine with human care.
‘Diogi’ watches me eye her sheep. She is aware of my interest. Knowing I am kind to sheep, she gives me a wag, one tail wag. I watch her sheep move, connected. Diogi watches her sheep move. She watches me watch them move. Sheep remain calm with me looking on, Diogi’s preference, a flock calm and grazing, baa-ing little. She eyes me, gives another wag, her assent of my benevolence, her intentional referential. Diogi is a knower. She senses I know sheep—my body talk—a speaker of animalia.
I stop to breathe. Diogi welcomes my pause, her eyes soft. We connect for a moment more, before she trots on concerned with bigger threats than I. She gazes upslope, eyeing mountains wolves are rumored to roam, re-welcomed wolves, protected. I nod at her and move on, regarding her duty, and she; mine.
Chapter 6
El bucardo es extinto.
Bienvenue, bienvenidos. Primavera deluxe. Day of joy, day of sun. I walk and wait and breathe. Radiance, after a week of reported sleet and snow a radiant heat envelops the land, landscape absorbed by pilgrims, vital sun at altitude, fluxing season, the Pyrenean world an emerald, the Pyrenean Ibex, el bucardo, extinto, extinct, gone in 2001.
Yellow-headed vultures circle and land and perch and watch.
The vapors of living envelop the world, early spring, the first day full of spring. Into the sun I climb. Sheep bleat and greet. Dogs pad silent through dewy fields of grass, keeping an eye and nose on their guardian’s world. The dew point crystallizes their exhalations.
The countryside shepherds los peregrinos as the Border Collies shepherd sheep. A tender stroll, a relaxed way. Vernal, the roadside pastureland soft, spring on the Camino. Flowering blooms, a feeling of the lightness of being, the aroma of birth and rebirth, endorphins of exhilaration.
The bell cow grazes. Her bell tolls the history of domestication, each sweep of her tongue a clang. Pastured cattle, grazers, cousins to my Montana bovine friends foraging the Pyrenees as the Rockies. The cows graze to the marching of human shoes and boots, music to their ears, mankind’s hypnotizing cadence.
Movement, healer of beast and man alike, healer of mind and body. Happy cows gazing and moving. The motion tonic. Exhilarating footsteps. Joy. Felice. Sheep and horses walk and graze happy. Real time. Sustenance, silent bonding, walking, moving. Folding inward and outward. Tribal formations, subconscious gathering of souls sharing the burdens of travel by foot, waves of pilgrims, magically connected, descending at long last. A tender stroll, a relaxed way. Vernal, the roadside pastureland soft, spring on the Camino. The Irish bogtrotters have left me behind. Flowering blooms, a feeling of the lightness of being, the aroma of birth and rebirth, endorphins of exhilaration.
“On the wild side of the Pyrenees.”
“Birds and bees guide our Way.”
“Ah, yes, tremble and trill of life.”
“Such a buzz. Footsteps of pilgrims mixing with hoofsteps of sheep.”
“Perfect place to review a life that could have been better lived.”
…
“Recapitulation leads to reconciliation.”
“Did the best I could with what I had. Could have done better.”
“Little reconciliation in that, pity, more like.”
“Pity, pity the Irish soul.”
“Pity all souls.”
“A pitiful life lived, some of it.”
“Not alone, there.”
“You could have been more stable and steady with your practice, with your personal affairs, I sense. With the affairs of family.”
“Indeed.”
“We
Sid Gustafson DVM
www.sidgustafson.com
Sent from my iPad
Dr Gustafson graduated from Washington State University as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine in 1979. He is a practicing veterinarian, animal welfare journalist, equine behavior educator, and novelist. The application of behavioral science to the husbandry of horses enhances optimal health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity. Behavioral, social, locomotory, and nutritional strategies enhance the prosperity, vigor, and health of stabled horses. Sid offers veterinary care, training, husbandry, and conditioning from the horse's perspective to achieve willing and winning equine partnerships with humans.
