Walk Like a CowA Rumination on Walking

In his essay, ‘Walking’, Henry David Thoreau exclaims to the reader, ‘you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast that ruminates when walking.’ Thoreau was extolling the benefits of reflecting while walking around the wilds of Concord, and no doubt he would have also approved of the ruminating qualities of the cow as it walks. After a cow has left the dairy, it will often pause on the track to the paddock, as if contemplating the night ahead, and stand there, chewing its cud, watching other cows file toward the night paddock. I grew up on a dairy farm at Panmure in Western Victoria. For me, walking was a daily activity often connected to work. I walked to get the cows in for milking, waded through flooded drains chasing cows and newborn calves, and stumbled over the furrows of ploughed paddocks picking up stones. Each of those walks brought me closer to the paddocks I took for granted each day.

Memory Walks

My memories of walking through paddocks to get cows in are some of the strongest memories I have. This may have something to do with being able to be on my own, to claim some space away from my brothers and sisters. It may also have something to do with the everyday richness such memories evoke: walking in rubber boots through knee-high grass, on the lookout for snakes, and stumbling over lumps in the dirt that the cows had made with their hooves. Barry Lopez suggests that ‘one learns a landscape by perceiving the relationships in it’. My knowledge of the landscape I grew up in has been developed through working the land, talking about it, dreaming of paddocks at night, and through writing about it.

When my parents first arrived on the farm in 1966, many of the paddocks were overgrown with tussocks and thistles. There were stones scattered everywhere, many also just below the earth’s surface. The stones had to be cleared from the paddocks so that the paddocks could be sown for rape or clover. My brother and I spent many weekends and summer holidays picking up stones. We walked from stone to stone, picking them up, chucking them on the carry-all attached to the tractor. It was a way of getting to know the paddock: its terrain and the rich dirt smells of a recently harrowed paddock. We left the paddock only when a pyramid of stone had been constructed on the carry-all. I sat on the tractor wheel guard, watching with trepidation, as the tractor wheels bounced lightly down the track. It was monotonous work in the heat of summer. Walking around paddocks, picking up stones; even now, my brother and I can hardly believe the jobs we had to do.

Working the land takes you into its intricate corners, places you can’t see from the road, places which occasionally change with a new track to the dairy, but which often retain the memory of certain experiences. I remember walking behind a herd of heifers at our out-paddock which we leased from a local farmer. The heifers were approximately fourteen months old, flighty, inquisitive and stirred up by the experience of being taken out of their paddock. As I shooed them up a laneway, they came across the carcass of a dead calf. Noses down, the heifers sniffed at the bones and circled around the carcass. Each heifer had to sniff the carcass before moving on. I could only watch and ask my own questions about what the heifers were thinking. Something primal was emanating between the calf’s bones and the cows. Now my memory of that experience has become haunted by that patch of grass on the laneway.

In the paddock beside my brother’s house is the Maternity paddock, where cows that are ready to calve are separated from the herd so that my brother can check on them regularly. At night he might walk around the paddock with his spotlight looking for cows with their backs arched and moaning, or cows that are ‘down’ with milk fever or unable to deliver a large A.I. calf on their own. On my return trips to the farm, the memories of pulling calves from cows or of finding dead calves smeared across the grass are awakened. The key may be a row of tussocks, a swampy recess where the dam used to be, or the caked mud around a drain that I used to wade through. These return trips are also a way of helping me get in touch with the land. It is as if by walking the paddocks again, I can enter the land and return to what the land holds for me. Yet, these walks have become a kind of pilgrimage that I am wary of. I am reluctant to become nostalgic through my memory of childhood or of the farm that I grew up on. After all, it is cleared land with the main purpose being to breed dairy cattle from it. However, something shifts inside of me when I first see the paddocks after time away. Some emotional welling-up behind the eyes occurs when I see the cypress trees with one side shaved by the wind bordering the cattle track.

I return at different times of the year: when the mud is a foot deep around the dairy and the jonquils are wavering along the roadside; when the paddocks are shut up for silage in early Spring, or when rows of round bales announce the close of the year and memories of carting in square bales on Christmas day. There have been changes to the farm that I grew up on, and it is these changes that stop me when I am walking around the farm now. The herringbone dairy has been replaced by a rotary dairy. There are sewage pits used to irrigate paddocks, more native plantations, more water troughs, smaller paddocks so that the cows can eat them out more efficiently. While it can seem as if I am seeing the farm for the first time, there is also the burden of memory that reminds me of where the windmill used to be. While every place on the farm appears to be held by memory, the loss inherent in these memories is palpable as I stand in the back paddock looking at the trees along the bush track, Mt Warrnambool in the near distance, and across to the right, the boundary fence bordering Monk’s farm. Memory takes me into the paddocks, and it is the present that takes me out of them.

But it seems that it is through memories that I have been creating my own relationships within the landscape. Perhaps the act of walking through the paddocks each time I return home strengthens these relationships. Perhaps it is through the images recalled in poems that I have been able to realise a relationship between winter and cape weed slowly covering the carcass of a bull.

the collapsed skin of a bull
slips from the teeth
of a ribcage.
Nearby an assortment of bones
left by crows, a stray eagle,
cattle dogs in their wilder moments.

‘Corrugated Iron’

Walking through the hoof prints of cows seems to locate me. The hoof prints remind me of how recently the cows have walked into a particular paddock, whether the cows are pregnant or not, or if the paddock has poor drainage. In my memories of these walks, the paddocks are positioned close up, as if I can smell the mud around the gateway rising up to the lip of my rubber boots. As I walk, my eye sweeps over the paddocks and rises to the clouds collecting overhead. This is how I used to be able to tell the time: close observation of clouds and light. Just as the cows became used to the routine of being brought to the dairy for milking each day, so I became used to the weather fronts sweeping in from the west, ibis fluttering around the overflow drain from the dairy, light dimming as the chill began to rise off the paddocks in the afternoon. I read the paddocks by signs: familiar plantations of cypress trees, a dead gum tree stranded in a paddock, the sound of traffic two miles away on the highway, and the finality of the boundary fence. Each of these signs seems to contain the present and past within them.

Walking within boundaries

While the boundary fence is a practical structure for keeping cows within a farmer’s property, and for marking the dividing line between his and the neighbour’s paddocks, on a psychological level the boundary fence can form an emotional enclosure to the farmer looking out over paddocks. Unlike the change enclosure brought to the villages of England in the nineteenth century, where the construction of fences and land clearing contributed to many farmers losing their land, the boundary fences on my parents’ farm have become enclosures to our family’s emotional experiences. Within those boundaries, our daily lives were played out. I grew up respecting that the land on the other side of the fence belonged to either Moloneys or Monks. And yet, as children will often do, my brothers and sisters frequently stepped through the boundary fence that was sheltered by a strip of bush. An old four-wheel drive track wound through the bush that separated our farm from the neighbours. My brothers and sisters and I would walk along this bush track, exploring its shadowy recesses, willing ourselves to go further as we knew we were entering foreign territory – land that belonged to the neighbours. These walks amongst the ferns, fallen trees, rabbit burrows and furtive noises in the undergrowth were our adventures beyond the boundary fence where the paddocks felt different. Walking along the track had taken us away from the emotional hold of the farm into something else.

Our directions swaying with the bark
we trudged through pools of clotted water
then froze before a bearded shooter in an old black coat
walking toward us. A rifle pointing
over his shoulder, he maintained his gaze
looking through us to things we could never see.
‘The Bush’

Perhaps the pain of enclosure that John Clare wrote about can be likened to the loss Aborigines may have experienced when squatters first moved through Victoria, erecting fences for the protection of their sheep. As an adult, Clare saw the destruction that enclosure wreaked on the English landscape:

Inclosure like a buonaparte let not a thing remain
It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill
And hung the moles for traitors – though the brook is running still
It runs a naked stream cold and chill

‘Remembrances’

Unlike Clare who lost his personal world of Helpstone through enclosure, I am lucky enough to be still able to return to my parents’ farm. Each boundary fence forms a physical limit to my personal visual world. I grew up looking over paddocks to fences that could be climbed through. As a boy, I often walked through the paddocks just to reach the boundary fence, put my hand on the top barbed wire strand, and looked back at the path I had trampled through knee-high rye grass. Perhaps ‘good fences do make good neighbours’, but only if we have grown up with them.

The boundary fence is also a form of enclosure to a farmer’s detailed knowledge of paddocks; what year the paddock was last ploughed, how well the cows do when feeding on that paddock. When people visit our family farm, out of habit, I point out to them the farm boundaries. Perhaps this is a form of boasting about how much land we own, not a lot in comparison to other farmers. It is also a reminder that within these boundaries experience has transformed my relationship to the paddocks. The paddock beside our dairy will always be remembered as the paddock where I almost stepped on a red-bellied black snake stretched out and asleep in long grass. The boundary fences are more than demarcation lines for farmers brooding over ancient feuds; they are physical structures that cows and farming families have become used to.

without fences
cows wandering between paddocks
bring neighbours together
their boundaries down
they talk, looking away
from the auction neither has forgotten

‘The Unnamed Paddock’

After the Ash Wednesday bushfires swept through our farm in 1983, many of the fences were destroyed. Cows wandered between farms until the boundary fences could be restored. Volunteers from across Victoria helped our family rebuild these fences. In the first few weeks after the fire, when the days were quieter due to the absence of birds, lines of treated pine posts formed eerie silhouettes against the blackened paddocks. Wire was nailed to the posts, and the new boundary fences began to suggest stability, growth, and a return to order so vital after a bushfire. Once the fences were standing, the possibility of recovery appeared to be real. Now, each boundary fence on the farm represents that period of time when we were without fences. The fences enclose my experiences in a way that memory fails to.

The ridges of old fence lines linger as the ruins of earlier years and different farming methods. Old ridges, formed by grass growing where cows cannot reach them, are exposed by new fence lines. The old ridges remain as lines of dirt ghosting the centre of a new paddock. When I walk the paddocks, I carry the old fence line in my head so that when I look over the paddock, I see two fence lines, old and new, adding another layer to twenty acres.

Working walks

When I return to the farm, I walk around trying to be reacquainted with the feel of the paddocks. The feel of the paddocks comes back to me through memories, through work, through experiences, through thinking about them. It is the one constant within my life: the feel of each paddock as I walk through it. This is the paddock with the solitary big tree in it. That is the paddock where the river used to flood, and leave us with the cloying smell of mud for weeks afterward. While a certain amount of nostalgia is involved in these walks around the farm, walking the paddocks has also become for me a means of defeating loss, of overcoming it, and returning to a place I know.

Like an echo she returns
to the trunk of a dead gum tree
rubbed smooth by cow’s necks.
She leans into wood
electrified as prayer.

‘The Paddock With the Big Tree In It’

Walking around the paddocks, I am reminded of how much farm work has framed my way of looking at the paddocks. Much of my walking on the farm was spent walking behind cows. Chasing after cows and calves, walking into a head wind, rain biting at my cheeks, the stud on the collar of the oilskin flapping at my chin, walking head down like a cow, determined, stubbornly refusing to yield to weather. Often there was nowhere to shelter. The worst it could get was when the calf was too weak to walk. The cow might move ahead in response to my presence, knowing it had to move toward the dairy. On numerous occasions, I carried weak Jersey calves through mud and rain toward the dry concrete of the calf shed beside the dairy. These walks through the waterlogged paddocks were desperate walks. Often the mud around the gateway to the dairy was a foot deep. My footsteps were ungainly and awkward. No sooner had I reached the concrete of the dairy, that I dropped my bundle and the calf fell like a half-full bag of potatoes onto the concrete. After it got its breath back, the calf would clamber to its feet and trot toward the udder of its mother bawling nearby.

Walking after cows and calves is a working walk. You are forced to stumble along behind the cow and calf, adopting the calf’s pace, its clumsy tentative steps, and the circles it finds itself in as it attempts to walk beside its mother’s flank. Apart from the frustration involved in herding cows and calves toward the dairy, what I remember most of these occasions is that I was often rushing to get the job done before footy. All I could think about was the goals I might kick, or which girls might bother to turn up to watch us play. Meanwhile the cows stepped heavily through the mud, weighted low like galleons on a dirty sea, a constant murmur emanating from their mouths as they looked around to see where their calf was. A surrogate member of this temporary family (the calf would either be weaned or sold in three days time), I brought up the rear, shooing them along, impatient, clambering through the mud.

While a cow walks in a straight line, not moving from side to side, it also walks a deviating line. This line seems to be closely linked to two elements a cow encounters each day: the geography of a paddock and habit. Due to their physical size, cows will walk across a hill rather than down the steepest incline. Being a herd animal, a cow will mostly follow other cows along the track they walked the day before. Their cow tracks meander around bumps and ridges in the dirt, and so, the tracks suggest the intimate knowledge the cows have of each paddock. Each day the cows walk along these tracks, perhaps for security, most likely because the tracks have a more practical basis. When viewed from a distance the cow tracks describe the routine of a cow’s day. One track will lead straight to a water trough. Another track will fork off toward shelter on the boundary fence, while other tracks converge like veins around a heart at the paddock’s gate.

Getting the cows in on foot demands that you allow more time for the job. Walking through paddocks in rubber boots also means that you scuff your boots in the grass as you walk. I was always told that I dragged my feet as a child. No doubt, this was related to my habit of walking around in daydreams, or as my father used to say, walking around with your eyes closed. Scuffing your boots as you walk through grass forces connections between yourself and the dirt. You sink into the muddy patches around gateways. You feel the land as you walk on it. The lumps and holes cows make as they trudge through drains become a part of your own slippery physical terrain. Walking through their hoof prints, I come closer to walking like a cow.

The walk of a cow

If habit determines the domesticity of a cow, it is rhythm that gives a cow its unique gait. As a cow walks, her head bobs, and her back legs seem to bear the weight of her stomach as her hips sway from side to side, milk arcing across the dirt. Walking behind a herd of three hundred cows instills a reflective quiet in you as your eye runs along the cows’ nodding heads and ridges of their backs. For a short period, you are unified in purpose with the cows – to walk toward the dairy. Whether it be at dawn when the ‘sky is beginning to bruise’, or late afternoon, when the light is softened by a front moving in from the west, walking behind the cows is a meditative experience. Your mind wanders to the paddocks, the spaces around you. It is almost a dreaming state where you are caught in the midst of ritual – repeating what you did the day before, and so taking for granted the rhythms of your walk. Knowing they are about to be milked, the cows simply amble down the track paying little attention to the yelps of cattle dogs.

The hierarchy of cows can be clearly seen when the herd is walking toward the dairy. It is a mix of personality types not dissimilar to the seating arrangements of students in a classroom. The cows that give a lot of milk are usually near the front, while the young heifers and big Friesians who throw their weight around can be found at the rear of the herd. Occasionally, a Friesian might ram a small Jersey into a fence. Cows that are bullin’ (on heat) will jump on each other’s backs in anticipation of the event. Bullin’ cows can upset a herd with their high temperatures and unsettled nature, and they are usually separated and milked first.

the bullin’ cows don’t know
they are about to be joined,
fixed up by the A.I. man.
He is young
knows this landscape
by the herds he impregnates.

‘The Bullin’ Cows’

Apart from these occasional skirmishes, a dairy herd will mope along at their natural rhythm, ruminating like Thoreau’s camel. Walking behind the cows, I often found myself adopting a similar rhythm to the way they walked; plodding along in my rubber boots, kicking at stones, happy to have this time to myself. This might be an image of the simple, rural life, yet these quiet, reflective moments were often contrasted by the busyness of farming – milking, feeding thirty calves before dark, checking on pregnant cows with a spotlight in the maternity paddock. Walking behind the cows I was always walking towards our farmhouse, the machinery shed, the washing on the five clothes lines, and of course the dairy. As I walked towards home, I thought about this place where I lived; how strange it was in its familiarity. It was almost indescribable; this glum acceptance of where I lived, and an almost downbeat appreciation of whatever was right or wrong about this place, it was formed out of these moments of routine. The track the cows walked on was built from local scoria, cambered for drainage, yet I still know its potholes as intimately as the cows that formed tracks around them. My father always told my brothers and I never to hurry the cows down the track, it will upset them, put them off their milking. It is a practice my younger brother still carries out, although these days he idles behind the cows on his four-wheeler. 

One of my own poems, ‘Milk Fever’, is largely written out of memory, but from the perspective of being ‘in the paddocks’. Often when I return to my parents’ farm, I will walk around with a notebook in my pocket. On this occasion I tried to write down all the impressions I had as I walked. These impressions included physical descriptions, memories, descriptions of fence posts being banged in on another farm, and the trampling of hooves as a herd of heifers ran up to see what I was doing in their paddock. For a long time, I kept this initial draft of the poem in a drawer, unable to decide how to refine it. It was about a year later that I did some final editing of the poem, re­arranging end lines, but mainly kept the bulk of the poem as it was written in the paddock. The poem ends with a realisation of change, which is perhaps what the walks around the paddocks give me.

the views of paddocks and Occupation Lane
are the same, it’s where I’m looking from that’s changed

‘Milk Fever’

While it is not possible to know what a cow is thinking of as it walks, the slow, ambling rhythm of her walk, the chewing of her cud all suggest a contemplative way of experiencing the world. Perhaps a cow is a model for us in contemplation. Clearly, walking has many purposes for us; it can take us out into the world, it can take us within ourselves, it can be the process from where memories begin. It is also a way of experiencing the world without rushing, or driving as many of us do these days. Walking encourages us to look in detail at the world, and often to ruminate on how things work. For many writers, walking is where they do the early drafts of their work; writing in their heads, the process of walking helps to develop characters’ voices or turn over lines of poems. For me, writing is a ruminating process, closely linked to memory and how I walk.

At night, I dream of paddocks. Sometimes I fly over them, other times I am wading through the swampy overflow of dams after winter rains. The strongest form of intimacy I have with land is through memory. Separated from the farm I grew up on, I walk the paddocks in my head, at work, when I am pushing my daughter in her pram down a city street. Like the photographs of paddocks around my desk, these saunterings through the paddocks are, for me, a way of putting my feet in the hoof prints of cows.