The bulk of my chores take place in the early morning and early evening, which is great luck, because those are the best times to be outside. The summer solstice is just over a month away, so dusk lingers a little longer at the edge of the western horizon every day, changing the sky from blue to gold, peach to lavender.
I carry bottles to lambs, refill water for sheep, rabbits and chickens as the kaleidoscope of colors slowly swirls above my head.
I am thankful our school gets out in mid-May, because bedtime keeps getting pushed back. Chores always seem to take longer than I think they will, and no matter how hard I try to start them earlier, I’m done later than I mean to be. I’ve got help. The kids come with me to help with bottles. Sometimes they continue a game from earlier in the day, sometimes they go their separate ways and my daughter stays with me, climbing up on the rusty, silver propane tank that sits beside the barn.
“This is the perfect view!” she tells me, perched atop the tank, pointing west.
Sitting on the tank, she is tall enough to see over the frilled crest of the trees, still bare of leaves, so she can watch the full light show swell then recede. I stand at the gate and look where she’s pointing. Across the new grass, a gaggle of lambs play a game of chase, testing out the strength of their growing legs. The air is soft and smells a little damp and very alive.
“This is as close to perfection as life gets,” I think.
I walk back to the house to fill my buckets again. Hauling water to the various creatures under my care makes up the bulk of my physical labor for the day. I’ve been working on final edits for my new book and therefore spending more time sitting in front of a computer screen than I’d prefer.
At the ranch, I never had to haul water because we have automatic waterers there, but here at the new place, I am the automatic waterer. I make several trips from the spigot by the house to the barn and shop, enjoying the stretch and pull of my underused muscles, reminding myself that some people have to join a gym to get this kind of workout.
And what about the water that appears clear and clean on demand — what a luxury! Perhaps it is the recent addition of ducklings to my menagerie and their incredible, unending love of water (as well as their ability to transform clean water to dirty water almost instantly) that makes me appreciate being able to turn a spigot and watch a miniature waterfall flow out into my bucket, the smooth arc crystalline and cool, catching shards of the sky’s bright colors. I twist the spigot off with a squeak, then trundle across the yard one last time to top off the sheep’s water tank.
“You better go inside and start bedtime stuff,” I tell my daughter as I pass, panting. “It’s getting late!” She slides off the tank and runs past, her bare feet skimming the soft tips of the grass.
“It doesn’t feel late!” she shouts.
For my last chore, I fill a small dish to take to the ducklings’ brooder. They’ve got a waterer to drink from, too, but this bowl makes a tiny pond for a bedtime bath. They scuttle over as soon as I set it down.
They are too young to swim unsupervised — we will have to wait until their waterproof grownup feathers come in for that — but that doesn’t mean they can’t belly flop over the bowl’s edge and start splashing and slurping, sending droplets of water flashing in a circle around the bowl.
Water is life. Every drop holds a history of the known world, of sustenance, a baptism into a constant reimagining of the same unending dance. I’m part of the dance. I can feel it. So are the ducks and my daughter. So is the light that’s fading at the edge of the world. And so are you.
