I often work to understand the alien language and consciousness of animals, as our world emotionalizes them, we embrace the arrogant human conceit that we know what they are thinking – usually we conclude that they are thinking what we are thinking because we love them to much. They don’t like to be alone, they are jealous, they grieve the way we do, they are learning as many words as we know, they understand our deepest thoughts and emotions. In my life with animals, I have gone the opposite way, I believe they are utterly different from us, and I agree with the writer Henry Beston, the author and naturalist,  who wrote years ago that we do not have a language for them, we do not understand what they are thinking.

I am often reminded of this in the kind of awful weather we have been having – cold, rainy, snow and ice, fog and mud. I feel for these creatures out in the dirt and cold all day, yet I understand more and more with each story that the animals on a farm do not see the weather the way I do. They do not feel sorry for themselves, they do not have a language of lament and complaint, as we do.  When it is cold or wet, they simply move under shelter if they have it (they do here) or under trees if they do not. They gather themselves, they seem to turn inward, they conserve their energy.

They are more focused on eating, as they can’t graze or forage or even move about much. I do not believe they have a sense of what suffering means, even though they can get visibly uncomfortable and restless. Their senses and  instincts tell them all they need to know, they don’t need our drama. They are not aware that they are uncomfortable, it is a state in which they work to center down and conserve their energy and food. They will sit quietly in the barn for hours, even a day or so, staring out into the woods, through the mist, listening. I believe they appreciate our visits and snacks, it seems to ground them somehow.

In our society, the weather has become more and more of a hysteria, along with so many other things. I don’t think anyone who pays attention to the weather or lives on a farm is unaware that our climate is changing radically – every year, every month brings weather we have never seen before, seasons different from any other. History will judge us harshly – so will Mother Earth – for our ignorance and hubris of denial, yet another reason I do not wish to live in a fundamentalist religious Republic.

We understandably pay more attention to weather, yet we are also turning into a frenzy of alarm, notifications, alerts, warnings,  storm-naming and corporate greed and manipulation. Whenever I succumb to this, I turn to the animals for wisdom and inspiration. Part of their language is acceptance, a lesson for every human at all stages of life.