Dawn Hayman - If Only They Could Talk: The Miracles of Spring Farm

If Only They CouldTalk

The Miracles of Spring Farm

POCKET BOOKS
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO S YDNEY

The Miracles of Spring Farm

Bonnie Jones Reynolds

POCKET BOOKS
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY

Comments from the Animals
of Spring Farm CARES

People see this as animal communication. We see it as people communication.

Gulliver the llama

I get to meet lots of people and watch them learn about the peacefulness of animals.

Topaz the horse

I really love workshops the best because people love to talk and listen to me. I will help you find your way around. Im very busy though trying to be the head cat around this place. It is really a great place with lots of love.

Jasmine the cat

Come in for a visit. I love company and I love to share some of the wisdom that I have learned.

Amber the donkey

This is a cool place to hang out. We ducks are given a place of honor. But they make us move from the driveway. Great people here. You could come, too! We have lots of room for people, but no more room for ducks.

Onyx the duck

I found a great home here. Lots to do. Lots to see. I look forward to meeting EVERYONE!

Snowball the poodle

I have asked to stay here and retire. I have my own room with my other dog friend Monica and am treated like the princess I am.

Rosie the shepherd mix

I love to have visitors. I tell great jokes and am pretty handsome.

Taffy the cat

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Copyright 2005 by Bonnie Jones Reynolds and Dawn E. Hayman

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-6486-4
ISBN-10: 0-7434-6486-9
eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-3920-2

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To Three Mothers:

Willa Dean Newcomb Jones (Deanie)

Jacqueline Hayman (Jackie)

Bertl Unkel (Mu)

We couldnt have done it without them.

It is said that a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.

Yet so often it seems to us that our steps take us nowhere. Frequently, they seem aimless, accidental, ill advisedeven stupid.

Yet, like droplets descending from the angel realm into a rain barrelplopping here, then there, sometimes in profusion, at other times with scarcitythe seeming lack of purpose finally produces a full barrel, a cohesive collection of liquid that is a purpose in and of itself, which gives life to thirsty passersby, a collection that eventually overflows, keeps refilling and overflowing yet again, giving life even to the green things that surround it.

Neither Dawn nor I, Bonnie, had journeys in mind when we took our first steps in this life nor as we each faltered, stumbled, and rambled along differing paths in the years that followed. Goals were sometimes achieved, yes, but, immediately upon being achieved, those goals lost importance. There were other places to wander, more meanders to investigate. It all seemed pointlessa chaos rather than a cohesion.

Even when we chanced to meet one day and decided to investigate a path together, we didnt sense any journey.

Then one day here at Spring Farm we found ourselves with a full barrel. Indeed, we realized that we were the barrel and the fullness therein, the sky above and the earth below, the ones who drank and the drink that was given.

For here at Spring Farm, that place of so many springs, we learned that all is one.

We discovered that all of creation communicates with itselfeach atom, each molecule, each rock, tree, and living thing talks with all others.

We found ourselves talking with our animalsand listening as they talked back.

Passersby came to drink from the vessel that we had becomebottomless, ever filling, forever overflowing.

All those steps that had seemed pointless, foolish, were now seen to be the endless particles that had created an ever-expanding whole.

Yet were unfinished here at Spring Farm. Were in a state of eternal becoming.

We are all the journeys. We are all those who journey. There is no destination. For we are all already there.

If Only They CouldTalk

The Halloween Inferno

To my dying day Ill relive the moment in that Halloween night of 1993 when Dawn burst into the bedroom where I was sleeping.

Bonnie! The barns on fire!

In Spring Farm parlance the arena and the attached stable were the places where we kept our horses. The barn was home. Everything.

I pulled on sneakers and, in my nightgown, ran behind Dawn out the back door of my mothers house into the darkness and fog and fourteen inches of wet, heavy snow that had fallen in a freak snowstorm that night. Flames were dancing behind the windows of the kitchen in the barn.

Call the fire department! I cried to Dawn and began running through the snow as best I could.

Lets see how bad it is first, she said, running beside me.

Surely it was already so far out of control that we couldnt put it out by ourselves.

Yet as we plowed toward the barn, I wondered wildly about the quickest source of water.

Snow! We might be able to throw snow on the fire.

We knew that if we opened the eight-by-eight-foot overhead door that was the entrance to the barn, wed be feeding oxygen to the fire. We knew it could flash over and engulf us. But some of the small animals of the Spring Farm CARES sanctuary were in there. There were twenty-eight of them throughout the barn.

The door was warm to the touch, not hot. We threw it up.

Two of the dogs were right inside, in the spots where they always slept. Cookie, a miniature German Shepherd crippled in the back legs, snapped to attention and pulled herself out into the snow. Spangles, a black Labrador cross, seemed drugged. We dragged him out. None of the others could be seen. Or heard.

Any thought of extinguishing the fire was gone. We were looking at a wall of smokeblack, ugly, hot, and noxious. In that smoke was an inferno in what had been the kitchen. There was no hope of saving possessions or structure.

But please God. The animals.

The evening had begun as usual. We finished our chores in the stable at 7:30. Remarking on the sudden heavy snow and sodden mist, we went to the barnthe old Spring Farm cow barn, converted into home, Spring Farm CARES offices, small animal and conference facility, thrift shop, library, and workshop. There we fed and walked dogs and topped off water bowls and cat food dishes. Wed recently turned the old granary in the second-floor haymow into an office, where Dawn could conduct her animal communication consultations in peace. There we covered the parakeets Babcock, Chartreuse, and Dove for the night and left the cats George Bump Bump, Peaches, Blackie, and Cauliflower curled in favorite spots. In the main nave of the haymow, the cats Tessie and Thistle were crunching on their kibble. In our second-floor apartment, connected by a spiral staircase to the first-floor bathroom, a dog named Keisha and ten catsMarsha Mellow, Archibald Peabody III, Pazazz Purr, Sidney, Sylvanna, Timothy Tyler Butts, Rikki, Julie, Otto Sharie, and Heidiwere settling into their preferred spots, as were the animals on the first floor, in the large open area that was our office, kitchen, and meeting roomthe dogs Buddy, Zoe, Daffy, Spangles, and Cookie, and the cats Oliver Augustus Perrier, Queenie, and Pink Flower. Never thinking that it might be for the last time, we bade our friends Sweet dreams and went to the house for supper and TV with Mother.