Day Three

Lauren has taken me on a tour to meet all the animals, which was wonderful, although I sadly do not yet remember each one’s name. I met both the sheep, both the pigs (one grown, one a baby, both caught in the wild), all four rabbits, the dog, plus the dog that’s visiting, and eighty gazillion chickens and roosters. Okay, maybe 40. I saw one of the friendly neighborhood geckos on the wall in the cabin. I’ve now heard the wild cow, mooing in the night, and heard about the three young bulls that were running around down in the orchard yesterday evening.

Over the past two days, we have had a huge scheme going on around here, including the construction of a corral complete with an electric fence. The story told to all the children was that we were going to catch those wild cows. And this may be true, in the near future, as a step in becoming self-sustainable. Today, however, two horses came to live with us. This, evidently, is 10 year old Lauren’s lifelong dream. She eats, sleeps, and dreams horses. She devours encyclopedic tomes about horses. She happened to be wearing a shirt today emblazoned with, “I love horses.” After she recovered her senses slightly, she was true to her wry humor, and cracked to her mom that, “Those sure are the strangest looking cows I’ve ever seen.” All afternoon, the horses’ neighs were echoed with a call from across the field: “That’s my horse!” So, now, Mahalo and Ahu are the newest residents at the guava orchard. Ahu, five years old, is the mother to three year old Mahalo. As Lauren is happy to report, “Evidently my horse’s grandfather was a brilliant famous stallion, Three Bars. My Uncle Rod said so, and he sure knows a lot about horses, even more than me, so if he says so, I bet it’s true.” And I concur, especially since Uncle Rod won the Steeplechase in Europe a few years ago.

This morning I participated in the first group meeting of our stay here. Taken with a measure of humor and flexibility, it was quite interesting. A bit run on, and possibly not completely on topic, but definitely a telling portrait of the current group dynamics. I’m rolling with it, going with the flow, and breathing deeply.