I was out walking with Tillie last night and when we reached the end of the road I could see a flock of sheep coming off the dune on the edge of the big gulch. The light was just starting to turn golden and I turned the stroller around and pushed my girl home as quickly as I could. Once there, I dropped her in Robbie’s arms, grabbed my camera and ran out to meet the sheepherder. I promised myself I would grab a couple photos of sheep this spring and I DID IT!!! It might seem like a simple enough thing to do but when you have a new baby, as some of you might know or remember, it takes a particular alignment of the stars to do…well…pretty much anything. Ha!
Anyway, I made it out in time to catch a few photos of this herd and I hope one more outfit rolls through in the next few days so I can pick up my camera again. Photographing the sheepherders is truly one of my passion projects, the sight never fails to delight my soul and bring me a sense of peace.
I fell in love with this quintessentially southern Idahoan sight on a trip Robbie and I took fourteen years ago in our 1971 VW van (you might remember that van if you’ve been here a while). On that trip I saw this river valley for the first time and was so struck by the rugged, volcanic beauty of the place that I prophesied we would live here one day. On that trip we saw a sheepherder with his animals between Gooding and Fairfield and I exclaimed with wonder as we passed by. It was beautiful. It’s still so beautiful. I have to pinch myself sometimes to make sure I’m really living here, doing what I’m doing, making, growing, creating, becoming myself more by the moment, the day, the year.
Last night we opened the bedroom windows and fell asleep to the pastoral sound of a few hundred sheep muttering and milling about in the night, a lullaby that is punctuated by the occasional warning bark of the livestock guardian dogs keeping watch. It’s wonderful to fall asleep to such gentle noise while sirens are screaming in the city. I’m so thankful we experience this quietude and centering each spring. This aliveness and awareness of ancient patterns anchored by the seasons, by the tilt of the axis of our beautiful planet and our orbit around the glorious sun. Springtime is a time for elevated hearts, for rising, for worship and celebration.
Turn your faces and hearts to the sun.
I had these wonderful words shared with me today and I think I’ll affix them to these images in this post for you to enjoy:
“A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of the earth, for the labours of men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference among the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and kindly acquaintance with all neighbors, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood.”
{George Eliot}
This is beautiful, Jillian – the pastoral setting and the soulful poetic words from you and George. I have loved sheep all my life. My late husband and I had planned to raise some, but cancer changed our plans. His parents were shepherds/farmers so he too had a deep love for these peaceful creatures of God.
So beautiful!! We have a small farm as our neighbor behind us, and today the sheep are out in the closest pasture. The pasture was newly planted early in the spring, and it is just now a riot of almost neon green – glorious!! To see the sheep and cattle let into it today was such a joy. I wanted to hop the fence and frolic with them! I used to be an autumn girl, but as I age I am becoming a springtime girl.
What do you think….might our favorite season always be the one that we are in? But I love your transitioning from autumn to spring. A secret about the seasons: they are dear friends who hold hands and wish each other well, so they will not be jealous if your allegiance shifts seasonally or annually or by decade…the months are one big happy family : -) Sweet wishes.
Here is a comment for your earlier journal: Off the Bench. As I cannot find a way to comment there. The photo of Matilda bundled up with a lapful of eggs made me laugh out loud this morning. Her startled look! Thank you for wholesome, sweet laughter. Also, this sentence: “the steppe is wild with squalls and tyrannical winds which always make me feel wonderfully alive and wild and free,” is pure art. The winds have nearly blown me off the Ohio prairie this past winter–tyrannical, indeed; I feel all I do is pick up downed limbs from the yard!–but you gave me a comfort about them and a feeling of camaraderie, too. A gift. About this entry: THANK YOU for such lovely sheep photos! Every neighborhood should have sheep, if only for therapy. What is their great grace? You captured it. My favorites: the black sheep photo to me transcends the rest, because the other sheep are watching him/you on the alert and he is in alert perfect pose while the Pyr snoozes completely unconcerned like he knows your spirit and is not worried. Just so much personality in every figure there, even in the unseen photographer. Other favorites: the shepherd and the moon. These are all beautiful. Thank you, dear soul.
I hope we can have all the animals we want in the new earth. And our loved ones back. Drat cancer! And I mean far worse than those polite words.