In the effort to tell a whole story, to see it whole and clear, I have had to imagine more than I have known. The most insistent and formidable concern of agriculture, wherever it is taken seriously, is the distinct individuality of every farm, every field on every farm, every farm family, and every creature on every farm. To farm is to be placed absolutely.
Wendell Berry
The deer carcass that the dog’s beating nose had found, was decomposing without being eaten by either predators or scavengers. Strange. As most are aware, in a balanced system, this creature should have been eaten clean.
The old farmstead, once sited for development before the fall, had soil exposed to the sky for the first time, and in other areas the grasses had been buried under yards of clay. These actions have scattered the animals that once occupied these lands since the last tenants left, nearly a decade past. A couple of centuries of human survival, and the natural movements of wind, worm, and wildlife had disappeared to make room for multiple homes designed to repel the same. Or perhaps not.
Both dogs’ attention split between scent and intuition. It was if they, and later himself also, became aware of the ghosts that inhabited these lands. In the natural areas yet to be disturbed by machine, the sensation of the lives of the past seemed unusually apparent. He would have most likely overlooked these experiences, and even the strange voices, had it not been for his canine companions. They observe the natural world on a different level, one that he has, over many years, learned to trust.
djs
