Sunday, June 6, 2010

Somethin' Gotcher Goat

Hello readers. I’m sorry to have abandoned my Wild Wakefield Blogspot for so many months. What can I say? I got housing-outsourced to Chelsea for the winter where there was just not that much to snack on. I perched (and froze) in a beautiful riverfront what-should-be-a-3-season chateau/cottage as caretaker, binged on high-speed internet, and played with the neighbors’ baby. That’s about it, unless you count the four and a half month battle with the H1N1 or some other kind of arctic bonanza virus that is still tweaking at me from the corners of my immune system. Oh, and I also got paid really decent cash to drive a few Chelsea kids around and fry them up some veggie dogs a couple times a week. Not a bad gig. Overall, I would not report any significant advancements of body, mind, spirit or career. But I did survive another Canadian winter, and if you grew up somewhere else, that counts as an accomplishment.

Not two days back in range of the ‘field, and I’ve already slept in my car twice, sat outside the closed library to check my email, skinny-dipped behind the General Store at 5am, jammed Cajun with Claude and Nathan, had a massive 48 hour asthma attack, chased goats out of my neighbor’s living room, and noticed an oily scum on the surface of Brown Lake. The changes that attempt to wring the funk factor out of our village are increasing: the wages and number of affordable, healthy living options are not. But the thing about change is that as it closes some doors, cuts down some forests, re-routes some wildlife corridors, and expropriates some properties, it also creates some new entryways, opportunities and areas for exploration. At least that’s how the goats see it when a crucial barricade is suddenly left open by a forgetful human. They do not hesitate to leap inside, party it up, and shit all over the place. While I scrub away at hippy dirt and feverishly attempt to vanquish allergic smells from my small apartment on the upper level, the goats are rockin’ out to 60’s vinyl and mixing up groovy desserts that are raw, vegan, and organic. They make me feel uptight and conventional, an experience I certainly am hard pressed to have anywhere else.

The fireflies are back early this year, lighting up fresh sprigs of poison ivy along the roadsides. Its dry and the river is lower than I’ve seen in a long time, but the lake is high because the beavers downstream have been busy. Oil is spewing into the Gulf of Mexico while web surfing has never been faster. Elsewhere, sudden sinkholes appear, Apple launches their IPad, and people stand in line to buy them. I move slowly into Hippy Summer Camp and sleep on a yoga mat, because I do not have a bed, and do hot flashes and night sweats while wading through a delayed and exaggerated bout of PMS—post moving syndrome. Life seems full of increasingly extreme paradoxes, and we all might be going to hell on earth. Or this could be heaven. Its hard to know. To the goats, a broken window presents not problem but opportunity. Not that I completely agree, but I’m just sayin’, I’d pull that window shut next time if I were you.

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