Finding Grace
“Never again,” I said back in 2019, after the last one of our flock, a brave survivor of previous attacks, got carried off by a fox. The heartbreak of witnessing two batches of backyard hens (a dozen at least) get either picked off one-by-one by predators or succumb to various avian illnesses had left me emotionally scarred. Not to mention that if you, like me, are a strong advocate for free ranging, these ladies can, and will, eventually escape barriers and ravage your garden.
But let’s just say I’m a sucker for sob stories and pecked hens. So when a friend texted last week asking if I could rescue two newcomers to her flock who were being brutalized by the old guard (hens can be super mean, y’all!), my husband and I set to cleaning out and refurbishing the old chicken coop. It’s not ready yet. The flooring needs to be rat-proofed, the roost needs a good scrub down, and the nesting boxes need fresh straw, but the two rescues arrived this morning anyway. They are happily pulling out plants in an overgrown, enclosed area of the yard as I write this.
I spent some time sitting out there this morning, just watching them scratching about, fluffing their feathers in the sun, pecking at this and that. For a while, the ceaseless clamor of the world — the terrible pain of the war in Ukraine, the trailing impacts of the pandemic, the regular workday woes — seemed to fade into the distance. Though these birds aren’t “wild” by most measures, for a while, they brought me into what Wendell Berry describes as
“…the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.”
As we roll on through these tumultuous times, may we all find many such moments of peace and rest in, as Berry writes, “the grace of the world.”
Maureen Nandini Mitra
Editor, Earth Island Journal
P.S. Our Spring print issue is out. Check it out and, if you haven't already, do support our work by buying a subscription.
Photo: Ian Umeda
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