Wednesday, March 23, 2011

How to Grow a Sweater

Spring is springing.  As of 11:21pm this latest Sunday, it was officially sprung.  Everywhere you look, barren branches erupt with fuzzy growth, saturating winter’s bleak palette with vibrant new hues.  
I love spring.  I love the… springiness, the sponginess, and the spontaneity of it all.  While the chorus of bugs and birds grows fuller with each passing day, the scent of change wafts on the breeze behind a pleasantly pungent smell of freshly spread mulch.  How that smell will always take me back!
But before I know it, the appearance of fireflies will proclaim the coming of summer.  As the luminous insects traverse the treetops, the landscape will simply sparkle with all those blinking bugs.
When I was working outdoors, I had a front row seat to watch the full spectrum of seasonal transitions while we continue to circumscribe the sun.  For over three of those laps around the track, I was working on an alpaca farm in Maryland.  I was nothing short of immersed in the full cycle of seasons; the welfare of my ward depended on their adequate weather preparation.

During the summer months I’d be playing butler to their pampered royalty, as even the lowest pedigree among them was worth at least three times my car.  And because long ago, these guys evolved at such towering Andean elevations, they’re all a bit overdressed for our steamy mid-Atlantic summers.  Climate control was of the utmost importance for maintaining the value of our breeding stock.  So there I am, wielding a garden hose and thumbing the spray towards the herd.  The females clamored in competition with each other to be the first to get their soak on, their sassy assertions defined an otherwise subtle social hierarchy.  Whereas, when it came to the studs, they’d simply face away from me in an orderly line, lifting their tails, and patiently awaiting the keen stream of water meant to cool down their most precious assets.
 
While bug-spray seemed to do little to deter the throngs of insects mercilessly feasting on my own apparently delicious ankle meat, each of the alpacas got their very own all-natural-fly-repellent-soaked bandana to be tied around those lanky necks of theirs.  From afar, the triangles of colorful kerchiefs rather made them look like a gang of fluffy cartoon bandits.
And then there was that summer with the cicadas, 2004, I think.  Their lifeless exoskeletons carpeted the ground, while their surviving brethren swarmed the skies, clumsily colliding with anything and everything.  Inevitably, many a cicada’s fate was sealed within the tangled confines of an alpaca’s coat.  The alpacas kind of started looking like four-legged pine trees, complete with (occasionally buzzing) pinecones.
I knew it was officially summer once we had our Shearing Day, which usually popped up some time in mid-May, an intensive day where nearly a hundred of our wooly mammals awaited their annual hairdo.  Of course once they’ve trimmed off a good five-inches of fluff, only the ones with especially unique markings were even remotely recognizable.  If I hadn’t known any better, I doubt I’d even assume they were the same species, appearing so dramatically different in their skin-tight new outfits.  Suddenly Sin City was indistinguishable from Cezanne who looked identical to Hoobastank (actual names of existing alpacas).
          While the summer setting tacked on tons of extra tasks to attend to, winter’s list of chores tended to be more concise, it’s just everything took at least thrice as long to complete.  Simple routines became grueling demands: endlessly chipping away at tubs of water frozen solid, schlepping five-gallon buckets to and fro, from spigot to stall, and inevitably splashing the icy contents all over, me mostly.  Twice-daily feed runs and medication rounds were challenges of epic proportions when the vast,  sloping pastures were smothered in snow.
I’d be bundling up with an ambitious number of layers, but my second-hand outerwear and disintegrating boots were far from sufficient.  I think I just got used to not be able to feel my toes all day, just trusting that they’d still be there when I got home at night.  My winter gloves could’ve easily passed for oven mitts, which weren’t terribly helpful when clumsily attempting to paw open all the gate latches, many of which were frozen shut.
If I only knew then what I know now.  If you had asked me seven years ago, I would have probably guessed that “Gore-Tex” was some sort of group for special effects technicians with expertise in horror movie blood.  And at that time, I wasn’t about to invest too much in gear that would soon end up covered in alpaca spit, but I had no idea what I was missing, no idea how much you really get what you pay for, I just didn’t know any better.  I could have saved my feet from infinite hours of trudging around in the boggy swamps that I once called shoes.  But then again, a lesson learned the hard way is a lesson less forgotten.

         Spring was the best time of all to be on the farm.  Time to start peeling off the layers and zipping off the convertible pant legs.  Time to spare enjoying the wobbly frolic of new baby crias, as they klutzily chase the barn cats, and occasionally careen into fences.  Time to genuinely enjoy the infinite hours out in the fields, even if it was spent raking up all the alpacas’… discard piles.
However, it’s been a good many years since my work environment was one of open air.  I was quicker to get outside on my free time when I’d be thinking about it all shift.  That’s one of the best things about this season; spring is right outside my window like a big blooming billboard, constantly distracting and reminding me of what’s out there waiting for me.

Speaking of which, my dog Ringo approaches, with hope in his eyes.  He is, hands-down, the most effective reminder I’ve ever had to get out of the house and hit the dirt, regardless of the season.



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