lamb Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

Wild Afternoon Sky – Photo: L. Weikel

No Lamb Today

Without even going outside this morning, I could hear the runoff of melted snow coursing along the side of our road. Water rushed through a tunnel of compacted snow, amplifying the sound of its frenzied quest to join either the Tohickon or the Delaware, whichever was quickest and easiest to access. The sky was gray but the air was mild, content to simply do the job of melting winter’s whites. I truly thought I had this ‘first day’ pegged; but alas, March was no lamb today.

Oh sure, every once in a while the sun tried to push through and shake things up, but it was a heavy lift. The day just felt sort of blah.

Only when I had to run out to the post office in the late afternoon did I start rethinking my assessment. Snarling clouds were building in the west and I sensed a growing energy that felt distinctly leonine. I stopped by the creek to pay my respects and everything just felt dismal and swollen.

Swollen Tohickon – Photo: L. Weikel

Overflowing her banks – Photo: L. Weikel

Transformation

An hour later, Karl and I were heading out with Spartacus. The weather transformed before our very eyes. There was the barest hint that change was coming as we rounded the first corner. Those dark billowing layers of slate gray clouds had almost magically given way to a speckled sky of marshmallow puffs.

The longer we walked, the more dramatically everything shifted. Another mile under our belts and overhead the puffs poofed and their background of blue became the main event.

As we crested the final hill, the power behind the shift made itself known. We kept looking behind ourselves, thinking the whooshing sound we heard was an approaching car. But no, it was the wind, and that wind started buffeting us, moving us along, and most definitely ‘blowing the dust off’ our attitudes.

Speckled Sky of Puffs – Photo: L. Weikel

This Evening

As I sit here writing the title of this post, ‘No Lamb Today,’ the catalyzing wind has only become wilder and is making our normally melodious wind chimes clang vociferously. (I should probably bring them in.) The lights have dimmed at least four times this evening, but we’ve mercifully been spared a complete loss of electricity. So far, anyway. It’s a wonder.

At the moment, it feels like the wind is angry and determined to root out and whisk away anything that isn’t grounded and in it for the long haul. Its roar is unmistakably declaring that March 2021 is coming in like a lion.

May it clear away the Covid! Help us all start fresh. It’s a new month – a month of new growth, of hope, of life returning to the surface of our consciousness. The month that brings us spring.

All in the span of two hours – Photo: L. Weikel

(T-270)

Lamb

Nope; it’s not what’s for dinner. Not our dinner, anyway. This lamb, at least, is one of the creatures I call to in a sing-song voice as we make our way up the hill that is the last major leg of our daily walks.

I love springtime. I especially love it because there seems to be a steady supply of itty bitty lumps of fluff in the fields each day, struggling to get to their feet in order to begin the somewhat unsteady business of frolicking. My favorites so far this year are the two pristine white fluffballs hovering close to their very black-wooled mother with the white splotch right in the center of her forehead.

The three of them are simply adorable. The twins because they’re hoppers. And the older they get, the more they bounce off each other, off their mother, and recently, I’ve seen them bouncing off other members of the herd as well. The elders are marvelously patient.

Mom, however, is obviously savvy to us and protective of them. While the lambs seem to respond to me with increasingly predictable (and precious) curiosity as I address them each day in my sing-song greeting, mom makes it clear to them that they should not be tempted by my seductively kind voice. No. They must beware of me. I’m probably one of ‘those’ two leggeds who like to steal little lambies who don’t stick close enough to their mommies and get stolen away, only to end up on two-leggeds’ dinner tables!

The Stuff of Nightmares

You can tell by the horrified looks on the babies’ faces that these lamb’s tales are the stuff of nightmares. “Really, mommy? She’d do that to us?”

“Well, she might not, but the ones who look like her might.”

It’s interesting to notice their reaction to my greetings each day. I swear, there’s a recognition. Even if it’s just the high pitch of my voice. One of the elders of the herd consistently answers me. Each and every time I call out my long, “Halloooooo, babies!” that particular ewe responds.

Yes, she could be telling me to get lost. But it doesn’t feel like that’s the message. It feels much more like she’s greeting me with enthusiastic recognition.

The message I’m getting at the moment is that I need to look up ‘sheep.’ Not tonight, though. It’s too late.