The dance of moving animals this fall is in full swing with another load out on range now, including the two heifers who have been at El Potrero all summer. The bull found the new girls right away, and every time I see them they seem genuinely pleased with each other’s company. At their first meeting, Bellows and Lucia looked like beautiful girls at their coming out party, standing close together in their fine fur coats, sniffing noses shyly with Papa and throwing little approving side-eyes at him.

Papa Cobre takes his job seriously, including the lolling about part. He never seems to have a care in the world and doesn’t participate in any of the political life of the cow. He protects his place from other males, knows the time of all the females, and when those jobs are done he rests–with a kind of languorous assurance that I can feel quite envious of. Perhaps I could learn something from that…

Recently we brought Myj and her calf to El Potrero to be company for Stu while he is being weaned from Konchita. One of the most special moments this fall happened after we let Myj out of the trailer into the pasture at El Potrero. It felt like some kind of sign as I watched big red Myj lumber around the perimeter of the tiny pasture, with an oh-so-delicate monarch butterfly riding along on the very point of her hip, calmly opening and closing its wings, taking advantage of this broad beast as a place to rest. I wouldn’t know how to interpret the sign precisely, but it gave me one of those feelings of rightness that bubble up out of the land and its relationships.