Notes from Maine - 2025/06/22

The horses here are on strike. It’s difficult to guess what they’re striking for or against. Their communication skills are limited. Actually, that’s unfair. They seem to communicate with each other just fine. We just don’t share a lot of common vocabulary. I’m left to guess at the meaning of their behavior.

The weather yesterday was beautiful—sunny, but not too hot. A sweet breeze kept away most of the bugs. I opened up all the doors to let the horses out in the pasture. As a family they walked two steps out into the morning sun, turned around, and came back in the barn while I was refilling the water buckets.

Earl (shire horse) towered over me, breathing on me.

“What?” I asked.

There was no answer—at least not one I understood as an answer.

“Go eat grass, maybe?”

He simply stood and blinked. Behind him, Maybelle (spotted draft) and little Lilly (their daughter), backed him up. 

“I don’t know what you want.”

They had pasture and water. I cleaned the stalls. I leave the barn open so they can escape the bugs when they need to. Lilly likes to take naps in the barn during the day. She’s only three months old. She’s allowed to take naps whenever and wherever she wants because she’s a little angel.

A few hours later I came back outside and they were still standing in the doorway of the barn, looking out at the sunny day instead of enjoying it. I put some hay outside—maybe the grass is too short for good grazing? That lured Maybelle and Earl out for lunch but Lilly stayed in the barn with me. She’s such a sweetheart. I scratched her soft fur as we watched her parents. With them outside, I could give her a little hay in the barn as a special treat. When she saw me fetching hay for her she squealed and that brought her parents running. Soon they were all back inside, eating in the shade of the barn. I felt like I had been bested in a key moment of negotiation. Having just convinced them to go outside and spend time in the shade of a tree, the little filly had manipulated me into feeding them in the barn, where they really wanted to be.

This time of year I typically switch the horses to nocturnal turnout. There are fewer biting bugs at night, so they’ll go outside in the evenings and then stay indoors during the day. This year we have little Lilly and I hear coyotes yowling and laughing in the woods. I don’t want her outside when they’re on the prowl. Looks like I’ll be putting out more hay than usual until we reach a detente. 

We had a very windy day on Friday and lost power for nearly five hours. It was a good opportunity to sit on the porch and read. I chose The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which I hadn’t read since it came out. It’s such a dark, gripping story. I hadn’t realized (or just didn’t remember) how stylized the prose is in that book. The punctuation is sparse, like the landscape.

Here’s a passage from early in the book:

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.

You forget some things, dont you?

Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.

There are no quotation marks on dialog, and very little attribution. There are long sentences with no commas in sight, although a couple in what I transcribed here. He doesn’t put an apostrophe (inverted comma) in contractions like don’t, won’t, or can’t. Each page of the book looks barren and hopeless, mirroring the plot. I just looked up Blood Meridian and I think it shares some of the same visual style. I don’t know why I’m just noticing it.

It was a fun book to read with the power out. The suffering of the characters made me feel ridiculous for lamenting my temporary lack of electricity. Losing power in the summer is almost a treat. It’s an opportunity to take a break from all the electronic noise that infuses everything. It’s like waking up from a foggy dream. And then, of course, I drowned myself in Cormac McCarthy’s dark imagination, but just for fun. I suppose it’s time to go check on the horses again.