III. Tools

But there are other languages I find myself beginning to speak. And they are not of cows or of people, but those buried deeply in the work and the sounds here.

The rhythm and phrases of the day I have begun to speak. To interpret.

Morning: The silent amber awakening on the bare wooden floor, the heat of the sun, calling one to work. There is the lowing of the cows, and when the weather has been good there is a crispness to the air, and when it has rained there is the damp, faint smell of mist rising over the fields; those days I know the dew that will wait for us, wetting my boots in the working. There is the roughness of the hard bread on the kitchen table that I take for my breakfast each morning in that silent half hour before work begins. The tangy-ness of the jam, the soreness in my legs, the coolness of the milk pitcher. My communion with silence. That wonderful open smell of a full day’s labor. The mornings are like reflections in some vast mirror, in which everything has been frozen. No sounds but my own contemplations. Stillness.

Day: I’ve come to chart time by sounds. The scraping of the brittle ends of the old, caked shovel trailing its progress across the hard concrete. The steady whirr of the hay mixer, its slow, methodical, and greedy teeth sinking into the hay, into the corn, into the sugar beet. Belabored bellows awaiting from the barn before the grazing. There is the thwish of the newly mixed hay tossed and spread well across the polished floor, or the scratchiness of that that falls to the rough concrete. The spluttering spray from the cut hose in the corner of the stable, washing my boots back to a new slickness. In the milking room, hot milky water bubbling and frothing in the tubs from the day before. The empty silence of the stable when the cows are out to field. The calls of Urs or Franz across the sweaty landscape, bearing on their tongues that word, mysterious as it is refreshing “Essen! Food. Its promise as good as any incantation. It is time for a break. It is time for lunch. And afterward a return, but the sounds are less, because the day grows older, and already we find ourselves thinking of dinner, and of milking, and of the blazing sunset to come.

Evening: A powder blue canvass, mountains in bas-relief upon its surface. The lone cry of a single crow. It cuts arcs across earth, but it, too, is fading behind the dusk. The unbroken tolling of a cowbell or a wind chime from some invisible source, from the countryside itself. All over the country, the cool stillness sets, eyes get dusty with dark, things whisper into shadow. And one by one little lights begin to blink into existence. Far off in the distance, before true darkness, a ring of flickering lights upon the mountaintop. A village? A camp? The air is cool and good and everything has slowed almost to stillness. Sometimes the small stirring of a cow, or the wind against the old wood, creaking it. This is a stillness unlike that of the morning. It is one of closing. One of peace and cool rewards for the day’s work. The hillsides, one by one, put themselves to sleep.

Each sound is a noun to be held and cherished and felt. Each image, each smell a verb. The hillsides are alive, the day is alive, and it is either waking or sleeping or lazing in its splendor. And if one is careful, if one is alert and gentle, one can place oneself in the language of each day.

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About The Author

Greg Fulchino is a Blast reporter spending the year working a month at a time in 12 different countries around the world. He can be reached for questions or comments at [email protected]

2 Responses

  1. mary clancy

    Hey Greg,
    I love your writing style, thoroughly entertaining. I have to say that your description of your relationship to the cows is very similar to that of parent and child. One would think that the parent were more “overlord” to the children “subjects”. Trust me when I tell you this is not the case. The parallels here are solid.
    For the first 2 years of their lives, one of my primary jobs was to clean up the pooh that the kids produced, as they remained blissfully unconcerned and I sadly, unacknowleged.
    My chlldren are much older now and I am still here to serve them. Only now they tell me how better to serve them and I am met with great disapproval if I should not fulfill expectations. Otherwise I can still go unacknowleged. Come to think of it, they’ve always been able to let me know if I were not adequate. I clearly remember the hours of them crying unconsolably, testifying loud and clear that I was not able to provide them comfort.
    Bottom line, be grateful that all they can say is “moo”!! xoxoxoxox m

    Reply
  2. Amanda

    Maybe try speaking to the cows in French. You are in Switzerland after all. 🙂

    Reply

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