This is a story of two baby goats, born in the coldest winter I ever experienced. I always thought spring was the season for babies, but goats have a way of violating what I consider common sense. This particular herd of goats taught me some harsh truths of life. One of their traits was the habit of abandoning their babies. Under stressful conditions such as cold and hunger, the mother goat would save her skin by cutting off the milk supply to the baby. That’s assuming the mother even knew to feed her baby, which some first-time mothers didn’t. They simply ignored the little one, and it starved to death.
An unfortunate combination of extreme cold, a shortage of feed, inexperienced keepers, and sickly goats threatened to wipe out the new year’s births. In between anger and dismay at this failure of reality to match our hopes, a compatriot and I wound up with two semi-comatose baby goats in a makeshift pen of boxes under my desk. They were two little rag dolls collapsed from abandonment. Hard pressed to stay warm ourselves, we stoked up the wood stove and turned on the electric heater – an ancient metal box that rattled vigorously, but did little else despite the assuring glow of its orange “on” light.
You probably know the experiment where the baby monkeys denied affection by their mothers, died. Despite our attentive attempt to revive them, these two abandoned babies were headed for the same fate. The problem was one of language. We didn’t know goat language. We did not know how to call out to them and bring them back to this cold world – like in the movies, when the dying person walks down the tunnel of light, but hesitatingly turns back when they hear a loved one call their name.
“Think like a goat,” I thought. A goat stands in the cold all winter. It carries its clothing and shelter on its back, so in retrospect it makes sense that heat would not lure them from death’s door. Food was the answer. It makes sense now, but is still amazing. For a goat, a handful of dried corn rattling in a metal coffee can makes earthly music. I shook that can and a miracle occurred. Both babies cried out and struggled to their feet. They were too weak to open their eyes and blindly stumbled toward the noise. I don’t remember if we quickly crushed some corn or used milk formula, but I do remember them greedily eating their fill, then promptly collapsing again. And so it went the rest of the day. We would rattle the can and bring them to life. They would eat, then collapse. By the second day, they were eating regularly and beginning to regain their ability to irritate me. The deep quiet of the dead of winter was interrupted by the baahing, jumping, and gaseous disturbances of two lively ruminants with no need for eight hours of sleep.
In another day, they were back with the herd.
There is a point to this story, though I may be pulling it from the nether regions. These baby goats were listening to two worlds at once. They had one hoof, as it were, in this world and two or three in another.
When we were babies, our mothers called out to us.
We listened and became of this world. Eventually, we learned to call out to our self and create ever more ways to tie our mind to the earth. We talked to our self, translated the events in the world as having meaning for us, believed we caused things to happen, and saw signs and portents of our significance all around.
Today, you listen for the opportunity to strengthen your self. Your attention is upon other people’s reaction to you and threats to your safety. You look for the chance for love or sex, for financial gain, or to ridicule others. You listen for any feeling that stirs the waters of your self. You listen for these things like a dog cocks its head, or a robin bends to hear a worm tunneling underground.
All of this is the same as corn rattling in an empty can. If that is what you listen for, you will be dragged again and again into this world. But if you listen to what is unknown, in a direction you have not already ventured, you may hear what speaks to you of leaving. Listen inside, to what is not the sound of your own voice. Going within will reveal a black wall, a silence, and emptiness whose edges can be explored. Your task is to remember this and turn again and again to it throughout the day – to turn your ear from this world to another.
One of the baby goats died during the next spell of bitter cold. The other lived.