Trauma Farm Read Free Page B

“Don’t just stand there like a pig shitting in the moonlight.” The stinging nettles rustled softly in the wind, and the dogs moved cautiously, sniffing at a trail into the forest. The insouciant pigs made me feel guilty for my silliness and bravado and panic. Beauty had slipped by in the night. I was grateful for not stumbling into a confrontation with such a sublime creature as a cougar.
    The next morning the only trace I could find was a large, perfect paw print beside a puddle on the back road.

    ASIDE FROM THE ODD thrilling encounter, the truth about darkness is that it’s gentler than daylight, when we, the most dangerous creatures on the planet, set in motion our endless slaughter of animals. But maybe I should not say that anymore—the multinational slaughterhouses now work around the clock.
    I feel safer in the saturated darkness of our farm than I do walking into a 7-Eleven store in an urban ghetto in Salt Lake City or Winnipeg and asking for directions while the neighbourhood kids size me up. The dark of the wilderness is a relatively safe country, which is why many animals prefer its embrace. At night, I occasionally shine my flashlight across our field. The green eyes of the sheep and maybe a nervous young buck will focus on me like a pattern of fireflies, accompanied by the nervous sigh of the horse. I love the music of the night. Then I feel guilty for disturbing them.

    WE HAVE BECOME LIGHT-LOVING urbanites, creatures of custom, acclimatized to our war on darkness, which accelerated with the invention of artificial light and our rapidly increasing technological achievements. After the gaslights, after the electric lamp, our fear of the night increased. What’s stranger still is that so many urbanites now sneer at the rural world. It’s Hicksville. Those of us who live outside the urban streets are an anachronism, quaint, irrelevant to the roaring train of civilization and its luminosity spreading like an erratic, feverish infection across the nights of the planet.
    A friend used to rent out his cabin. It was very beautiful, wall-to-wall windows overlooking a pond and the cedar forest beyond. Serene and private—a hundred yards down the driveway from his home. A Los Angeles couple rented it on a misty fall evening. They were delighted with the cabin, but later, about ten o’clock, there came a knock at the man’s door. Opening it, he saw the headlights of their car idling in his driveway. The woman was holding the key to the cabin. “I’m sorry. Your place is so lovely, but we come from Los Angeles and we’re not used to such darkness. We feel too insecure, so we’re leaving. We don’t want our money back, of course, but we just can’t stay.” She handed my bemused friend the keys and was gone. Later, he heard they’d stayed at a cheap motel in Ganges—the little town that supplies our island’s basic needs. There was more light there.

    DARKNESS CAN ALSO TEACH us about the way we look at the world. A decade ago a friend erected a full-size canvas teepee at the south corner of our upper pasture; then, being a typical islander, he took a few years to haul it down. So one evening, Sharon and I decided to try it out before he retrieved it. A night in a teepee sounded romantic. We collected a pile of bedding and cushions and a lantern, and hiked down. It was another moony night. All three cats followed us. Since they were domestic cats they didn’t appreciate the change in sleeping arrangements. This was too far from home. They cried out their displeasure, which led to some disciplinary adventures. The cat who had figured out complaining wasn’t going to do him any good slept on a heap of bedding at the other end of the teepee, while his two friends were terminally booted out. With that ruckus settled, we proceeded to cavort in the teepee, discovering that the flashlight made great shadows on the white canvas walls. We had a riot.
    It was only after we were settling into sleep that I began to