HUMAN PASTURE BESTIAL BORDER
The first morning, gold, baked the dew out of english lawns, trim grass uniform from spruce to spruce the valley wide. No hay while the sun shines. No rakes, no pitchforks, not a single peasant to turn it. Portaloos remember others long the lane, bright playtime colours the smell of pee singing summer ballads of yesterday.
The wide open space invites us up from the highway, far enough to be out of ear, near enough to get us here – here where we put ourselves out to pasture. Here, away. Away from the centripetal pull of capital, away from the suffering, a way in the mountains: the mountain our non-city, our non-work, our non-change-non-scorched-non-new -non-future.
Warmer climbs call the trees still higher, so the herds still follow, unsteady hooves by the truckload, to hold back the thorns and bramble, the first green shoot of unknown sapling. Maintain the meadow, tidy, restrain the forest, creeping. Forest yonder, yes, but also space for rest, and an electric fence between them.
Wider horizons for the cattle too then, a broader border vacation, fresh air and sweet grass – and bells in case you wander. A foal gallops wildly through the middle of them, mane glinting. Ever more horses atop the mountain with nothing to pull but tourists, disclose who the pasture is calling. Natural capital. Nature services. Cold beers, no warm milk, called for. The fatigue loosens, and I’m struck how each and every one of us mammals responds in our own way to this temporary opening of space – no longer nouns but verbs – unique expressions of being.
So here we all are, beast and bovine at the border, a little freer at the edge of our enclosure. The edges themselves become the meeting points, here where we can make as if they don’t exist for a few days, at the end of the road, where the road continues, a cow’s eyelash between one side and the other. She looks me in the eye. She knows exactly where the border is and she rubs her backside against it, against the perimeter of power.
A flag flutters in the afternoon breeze, then hangs humid under revolving stars, their wheeling divided by the straight lines of satellites keeling – keeping watch, keeping track – tracing the invisible grid of a cage, keening.
The next morning everything was supposed to be the same, that had been the promise. But the mountain had proved to be no less the future than the city, a nostalgic postcard filter on our insta feed – a mountain where we all played on different planes, summer hierarchies of mixed mobility, before it was time to descend back down to our stables. All we’d wanted was something stable.
The next morning was winter, and only some of us would come back to play at the border.
HUMAN PASTURE BESTIAL BORDER
The first morning, gold, baked the dew out of english lawns, trim grass uniform from spruce to spruce the valley wide. No hay while the sun shines. No rakes, no pitchforks, not a single peasant to turn it. Portaloos remember others long the lane, bright playtime colours the smell of pee singing summer ballads of yesterday.
The wide open space invites us up from the highway, far enough to be out of ear, near enough to get us here – here where we put ourselves out to pasture. Here, away. Away from the centripetal pull of capital, away from the suffering, a way in the mountains: the mountain our non-city, our non-work, our non-change-non-scorched-non-new -non-future.
Warmer climbs call the trees still higher, so the herds still follow, unsteady hooves by the truckload, to hold back the thorns and bramble, the first green shoot of unknown sapling. Maintain the meadow, tidy, restrain the forest, creeping. Forest yonder, yes, but also space for rest, and an electric fence between them.
Wider horizons for the cattle too then, a broader border vacation, fresh air and sweet grass – and bells in case you wander. A foal gallops wildly through the middle of them, mane glinting. Ever more horses atop the mountain with nothing to pull but tourists, disclose who the pasture is calling. Natural capital. Nature services. Cold beers, no warm milk, called for. The fatigue loosens, and I’m struck how each and every one of us mammals responds in our own way to this temporary opening of space – no longer nouns but verbs – unique expressions of being.
So here we all are, beast and bovine at the border, a little freer at the edge of our enclosure. The edges themselves become the meeting points, here where we can make as if they don’t exist for a few days, at the end of the road, where the road continues, a cow’s eyelash between one side and the other. She looks me in the eye. She knows exactly where the border is and she rubs her backside against it, against the perimeter of power.
A flag flutters in the afternoon breeze, then hangs humid under revolving stars, their wheeling divided by the straight lines of satellites keeling – keeping watch, keeping track – tracing the invisible grid of a cage, keening.
The next morning everything was supposed to be the same, that had been the promise. But the mountain had proved to be no less the future than the city, a nostalgic postcard filter on our insta feed – a mountain where we all played on different planes, summer hierarchies of mixed mobility, before it was time to descend back down to our stables. All we’d wanted was something stable.
The next morning was winter, and only some of us would come back to play at the border.