Waiting for water to boil for tea early this morning, the sunrise captured my attention as it came up bright and yellow in a clear space of sky below a stripe of dark grey cloud cover.  It’s light was making plain the frost on the winter green house panels, and a glow on the plants growing inside.  My eyes drifted from the winter greenhouse on to the round greenhouse, to check that the subtle steam trail from the overnight heater was evidencing proper workings in January.  Surprising movement caught my attention just beyond the greenhouse in the neighboring Savannah where our neighbor’s free range cattle graze.  New “children” on the “block” were frolicking in the snow.  Four little brown calves were running, kicking up white powder as their little hooves took hold while they pranced and ran and goaded each other into play.  Their mothers walked casually about, themselves very large and white.  The four little brown calves (when did they arrive?) bowed and jumped about, to and fro, running full speed here and there. Their little game caught on a bit with their mothers, who didn’t run, but kind of nudged each other’s foreheads in subtle large-cow playfulness.

It always strikes me as weird unexpected magic when I see the cattle running.  They don’t run often, at least not that I notice.  Once, a new herd to the field ran full force from corner to corner of the large open area, maybe outside for the first time in their lives.  The horses in our pasture at the time were terrified, and one jumped over and through the fence, to be discovered by a friendly neighbor, free, having galloped far across the fields.  This summer, the herd widened an opening in the fence near where I commune with them as I work.

They did this by rubbing their rears against a good spot in the fence for a little scratch.  Eventually, a very large girl was suddenly grazing a few feet from my greenhouse.  The grass over here was for a while distractingly delicious, until suddenly she realized she was on the “wrong” side of the fence and her herd had moved South towards their barn.  Having driven over to notify her farmer, I was keeping an eye on her and she started to run.  Now closer.  Then she figured out an opening in my only partial pasture fence line, and ran full speed to the North, out, turned the corner going South, went along the back of the pasture, through the harvested corn stalks, home.  The long way.

Meanwhile, over here this morning, as the little new cattle ran and jumped in the snow, the Huskies were digging in a snow drift and chasing each other back and forth in their large fenced yard area.   Similar worlds.