Monterey Bay, Monterey, California
When I was a child, my grandparents showed the family a silent, homemade film of my grandfather on his ranch in Wyoming. He was walking towards the barn, wearing his cowboy boots and hat and carrying a bucket with a big nipple that looked like a cow’s udder. He was feeding a fawn with distinct white spots, the skinny-legged wonder following my grandfather, cranking its neck and trying to get its mouth around the nipple. I can still hear my grandmother’s voice telling the story of the fawn losing its mother and Claude adopting the precious creature.
There are signs of humanity’s innate concern for the natural world, for living things, everywhere. They are often so ordinary that it’s easy to overlook them. Even in big cities, people grow flowers and herbs on patios and in community gardens, and they spend time and money feeding birds they will never touch, for the pure pleasure of seeing them. People travel great distances just to witness a sunrise, autumn leaves, migrating whales, or wildflowers. On the Monterey coast, people gather every evening to watch the sunset in virtual silence, and no one questions why.
Claude raised cattle; I helped him brand, and I’ll tell you the man carried the strong veneer demanded of someone who raised animals for butcher. He also didn’t hunt, which speaks volumes. The old film clip holds profound joy, sharing cow’s milk with a starving fawn, an old man in overalls taking over nature’s most intimate job, that of a mother. It tells a story of Claude’s big-hearted nature, one that seems incongruent to a cattle rancher. No matter how things seem, you can always find traces of humanity’s innate sensitivity to the natural world, and it gives me faith.
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