Stagtine, 18. Agriculture’s Algorithm

Section 2, Chapter 2

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My sweat froze as it splashed upon the bark-colored snow and my stomach rippled across its recently frozen surface. The snow seemed to fall from the ground up, like sparkling springs that froze when seen. A thin, painted stillness that covered the colder grey of February. Big, fat clumps of frozen water rebelled against the devolving days, and pocketed the amassing snow into distant continents. A curled, grey-white land: the dalmatian of winter.

Fear mixed rudely with exhaustion and the mucky smells of the wet, winter paddock festered like moldy potpourri. I stood still, my feet locked in the mud and my stomach curled inside of its cavity. Morgan and I were at work too early, trying to calm down our bull, but it was cold and we were tired. The sun had not crested the eastern hills and my boots were trapped in the mud. If Paddy charged, which felt imminent, I could neither move nor dodge his gladiator-like blitz. We had put him in this arena, and he was going to fight to the death.

“Is this normal!” Morgan’s anger again pleaded, her tone dropped the last syllable. This time, there was no question about it.

I could not respond. The weight of farming mixed rudely with the unexpected cold of the early morning and they both pressed too heavily. Our bull’s frozen pains lived in the soils and they held tightly onto my boots. My frightened stomach dropped from my body and drifted away over the ice, but the rest of me could not move. I was stuck.
Three days’ snowfall had converged with Paddy’s frantic pacing

and last night’s evening warmth produced a sinuous union of sticky sludge and slow-moving slush. But this morning’s dawn-infused freeze now capped the trail of his earthly pain with a sheet of thin, melancholic ice.

It was a linearly bisected landscape between the cold and that which is colder. Between the mud and its ice. A dark-eyed junco with its frost-heaved wings spread in farewell bolted heavenwards from the base of a bull thistle on my right. She was flying north and must have taken rest inside the thorny thistle through the night. But she was late and she did not stay long.

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