I spent a couple of hours in the heat today with the old sheep, and we are finally all getting comfortable with one another. I especially loved these photos, because I think I saw today how much these animals support one another, take comfort with one another, and help each other get through an uncomfortable day. Intense heat is very tough on older sheep – these are 80 in human years – and I could see how they kept touching one another, leaning on one another.

They are an inspiration to me, the old sheep. They age with the dignity not afforded human beings in our culture, who are bombarded with faux discounts, ads for diapers and sex pills, kept alive to enrich surgeons and pharmaceutical companies and lured into confinement facilities to get out of everyone’s sight. Sheep do not live beyond their time, and this is their time for the old sheep. I do not believe they know it, but I do believe they feel it.

I learn from them.