Rewriting our childhood

Following Hannah Hinchman's advice, I have begun to re-remember my childhood, recording my memories of the fields, streams, woods, and prairie land that surrounded my childhood home in rural southern Wisconsin. In between my nature memories from my Midwestern childhood, I am adding descriptions and reflections from my walks through the woods, fields, and marshes of the suburban New England town that is now my home.

I invite you to share your memories of nature from your childhood or your responses to nature as an adult in the comments.

Katy Z. Allen
January 21, 2012

Note: Unless otherwise credited, photos were taken by me.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Goats

I had goats. Why goats? Well, they were not too big, like cows or horses. My brother Tom already had sheep. They were not too small. They were mammals, unlike the chickens, which were not so very personable. And somehow they just appealed to my childhood spirit. And so my parents allowed me to have goats.


Sammy
Sam or Sammy, short for Samantha, was my favorite. She was a gentle soul, unlike Nannythanial Hornthorn (named by Tom), who was just plain mean. But still, I had soft feelings for her in my heart, as well, because she was, nevertheless, my goat.


My father wasn't happy about the goats for one simple reason. It was almost impossible to keep them confined, except by locking them in the barn, and after all, shouldn't they be outside, especially in summer, when there were so many nice yummy things to eat? Including, unfortunately for all of us, all my father's favorite plants. They jumped over fences. When tied to a chain that was attached to a stake driven into the ground, they pulled it out. And they munched on everything. Not just the grasses, but everything. I often gave up and let them run free, but this was dangerous territory, and I had to at least try to keep them out of my father's gardens and orchard. 


I desperately wanted to have one or another of my goats pull a goat-cart. Lying around the barnyard I had found an old set of wheels and an axle to attach the two. I tried fixing up a seat on it, but the engineering of it wasn't right, and it never worked - in the sense that it didn't stay together and move along as a cart should. The question of the goat being attached to it and being willing to pull it was a whole other question, and the answer to that one was also that the engineering, or the personality and training of the goats, just didn't work. I tried many times, but never fulfilled the visions in my mind.


The most famous goat story was about Scooter, Nannythanial Nornthorn's son, who was also inclined to be tough and mean. He was wandering the yard, and my mother was sitting in the dining room and saw him on the front porch. She watched him look in the window at the tall, impressive, flower-filled fuchsia plant that was happily growing inside the house. She saw him eyeing the plant, and at the same instant that she realized what was going to happen, it happened. Scooter wanted the fuchsia, and so he just jumped through the window into the house and started eating it, ignoring the broken glass around him and the blood streaming from his ear.


There are many more goat stories. But most of all, I just loved them, and loved knowing that they were - in as much as an animal can be - not my brothers' and not my parents', but mine.

Old MacDonald had a farm, e-i-e-i-o. And on his farm he had some goats, e-i-e-i-o. With a ma-maa here and a ma-maa there, here a ma, there a ma, everywhere a ma-maa.

I wait for Adonaimy whole being waits.  Psalm 130.5







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