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Charley
had doodled the word EAT since high school.
One day he just doodled it in a stylized way. with bold curvy capitols
and something clicked inside him. At
first he thought it was about hunger, which it was.
But as time went on the levels of the word in his print took on more
facets of meaning. Now, watching his donkey eat turned out to be one of the most
fascinating and diversionary aspects of his life. In fact, the whole process of
living with a donkey, a
bulldozer and on a small ranch became
a working world of fascination. Charley likes to describe the beauty of his property and his life-style
by saying that he "lives in a beautiful oil painting". Now a middle
aged man with a sizable piece of bottomland and a donkey, he leads the similarly
aged (in burro years) donkey out to
graze. Charley approaches Benji,
grabbing the soft cotton braided lead rope from its perch on the ponderosa
branch by the gate to the corral. Benji
has already brayed "FEED ME" loudly, the sound resounding and
echoing in the canyon, amplified by the cliffs that hover to the south.
With a familiar twist of the wrist and a thumb action on the fool-proof
hasp, then the release of the chain on the gate, then a somewhat harried action,
Benji lunges past the semi-opened gate, immediately beginning the process of
foraging for his own food. The
Mammoth donkey begins immediately to apply his tremendous eating talents.
He is highly absorbed in his eating, a process which also helps Charley keep the place clear of weeds and
overgrowth of all sorts. And, most
especially, Charley gets to get out
and pay attention to his own natural surroundings and himself . He does this
through and with Benji probably in much the same way animal tenders for countless generations have done. What
Benji eats out in this piece of paradise is of great fascination to Charley .
The huge variety of herbage in this shaded and watered valley is a
special feast. There is your basic
ragweed, which is edible most of the time, being especially good at its middle
growth stages. This weed is
definitely a staple, which is good news because it can also be a pesky item,
like tumbleweeds (which he also eats at certain times),growing prodigiously .
He eats it less as it grows older, only starting up again after the weed
has dried almost completely , ending the cycle.
The grasses are almost all of interest to him and he will eat them
continuously. The clovers are
treats. Items like Cota or Mormon
Tea and other exotic looking herbs are eaten more selectively, seeming to be
dependent on timing. Some items
like Snake Weed or Golden Rod or Burrs are of no interest whatsoever. Every day is different in terms of what is of special
interest . Some things must
taste better or be better for him or be of large enough quantity to be of
interest to him on one day when it wasn't the day before.
A weed that he passed by yesterday is all of a sudden of great interest
to his palate Charley
has even
(just once in all these years) seen him eat goat heads (the plant, not
the thorn). He has even seen him
eat cholla cactus, preferring the old dry stalks, but fully capable (believe it
or not) of eating a green healthy cholla cactus!
As they say, "truth is stranger than fiction."
Watching a burro calmly tackling a thistle and casually (albeit
carefully) absorbing it into his mouth, past his tender lips seems like some
sort of impossibility. Also, later in the fall,
dry cottonwood leaves are of great interest. Russian olive is a delight
to him at the right time as well as elm, willow and mountain mahogany.
The whole event puts Charley much more in touch with his surroundings,
the same nature that provides for himself, also.
The little things are fascinating, like watching Benji pull up some herb
by the roots by mistake and then just going on eating, letting the root part with the dirt get sheared off and then fall off the side of
the mouth, like some sort of mechanical sorting machine, never stopping the
munching action or waiting to eat more.
The man walks through the "oil painting" gradually acclimating
himself to what he is involved with. The level of the sun and the way the light plays on
everything is there to be seen. The
way the sunlight casts itself onto the cliffs above and the trees on the cliff
is dazzling. The wind is dancing
around the tall grass stalks and moving the branches and leaves in some cosmic
flutter. The birds are all around,
sometimes landing on Benji's back to pick around and often in small groups by
his head, waiting to glean some item that the beast has stirred or caused to
drop. The choosing of the location for the day is an exercise in land condition
awareness. There is a special chance for Charley
to find out how his emotions , his tolerance levels
are doing by watching his impatience grow sometimes with the slow
progress of the donkey as it grabs for what it wants.
If Charley is about to jerk his rope or starts to pull on him like a
donkey/man caricature, then he gets to realize that he is in need of some
anger control. He either vents his
anger, which he is not proud of, but
can be good therapy, or he makes the necessary corrections, or both, which
includes the added joys of slowing down, forgiving and most especially, getting
a little bit more into Benji's world, which is a real "trip".
The extraordinary ability for Benji to tie his rope and chain in knots is
another source of amusement that also tests Charlie's patience as well as
Benji's. The ability of the chain
to help wear down the ever-growing hoofs is a special side benefit.
The time lost in this whole process is made up for in the benefits to his
total health. What seems like an
absurd anachronism begins to look like a life saver and sanity saver and a
"gift". These
activities remind him of the saying, "The best drug is sobriety", for
Charley had experienced other states of mind and they just didn't work so well.
Yes, there were lots of wild and enchanted thoughts at first and it all
seemed too cool and inspired to be high with substances.
It seemed to be a great escape into euphoria.
One of the first clues that things weren't that good back then was that
when he went into the corral loaded, the donkey would avoid him like the plague;
steer clear of him. But what Charley liked equally was being with the bulldozer.
Like the lowly donkey used as a symbol of stubbornness and forlorn
pessimism and ugly drudgery, the "bulldozer" is used as the symbol of
environmental destruction. Charley knows better as he stands next to the largish hunk of
metal and tracks and yellow color and pulls the choke and it starts to crank.
Then he mounts the machine, stepping on the tracks and holding the bucket
level conduit, swinging himself onto the old seat that is filled with visible
springs in various states of dishevelment and prepares to move forward.
He smiles at the child that he has already assisted onto the level next
to the seat on the pillow he uses for such occasions. The child is very nervous, tentative and looking edgy and
ready to bail at any minute. She
knows she can't just jump because
the tracks below look like some sort of conveyor belt from hell. This guy has conned her into this place and has made
outrageous claims that she can just drive it today.
He scoots off the seat and lets her sit there, lower (and safer).
The machine is engaged by the hairy guy with the arms as he explains the
levers and odd other things. "If
you pull this one (he pulls it) it will turn right (and it turns very sharply
right). If you pull this
one (he pulls it) it will turn left.......
" "Now you
are pretty big and probably real strong and your legs are shorter (but strong)
so put your feet on the dash and use your legs for leverage (now she knows he's
nuts). There, that's good.
Now give the right one a good pull (which she
does). Good. See how
easy it is (and it sort of was). Now
we are going about 2 miles per hour, very slowly, so there is plenty of time to
think about your next move" So
that is how a 6 years old child drives a bulldozer.
And they operate the front bucket and it goes waaayy up in the
air. And they load up a load of
sand for some mud plaster down by the creek, past the donkey corral. Now after all that work the child tires of this as children
do, especially when they have done something special so she's ready to quit.
Well it just so happens that right there on the ground was the big old
green canoe that the "girls" had tried to ride in a low level flood a
few days ago and had not managed to get it all the way home yet.
So he says, "Hey do you want to ride in a boat?"
She shrugs. So he
says, "Well, get in the canoe right there."
"But it's on the ground."
"Watch this" He's
never done it before but it seemed perfectly ok and all, so he hitched the front
rope to the hitch on the crawler and said, "Hold on to your hat (which she
didn't have) and off they crawled on the sandy soil of the country road, him on
his favorite place to escape and her in the center of the boat
as it skidded creepingly behind with a somewhat awkwardly pleased
demeanor (like this is kind of fun and I really just drove a bulldozer
and worked the big bucket, but what is going on?)
Then they pull up to the spot where the canoe should go and unhitch it
and she gets off (out). "Did
you have fun?", said his wife, who was used to this sort of bulldozer/
blow- the- kid -away- with- how -easy -it is- to drive thing.
Charley is very pleased. He
takes satisfaction in this bulldozer therapy.
He has used the bulldozer on many occasions to show people how easy it is
to feel powerful in this way, driving heavy equipment and moving large objects
or being carried by such interesting beasts of burden.
He has used it for "differently abled" kids, doctors and
lawyers who need sometimes a little escape into a different reality, many young
children (including his own kids) and even a presidential candidates, which is a
different story. So these escapes into reality are special. They and the appreciation of the beauty around him is what he
really does. That is his
"business" as Thoreau stated years ago. The child is ready to go home and smiles, waves and yells,
"Thanks for the donkey ride too, Charley". |