Yaks Around the Corner

Today Yak. Dozens of you in the field. Long shaggy hair. Great horns.

I can't see the towering mountains behind you. They are lost in a cloud of dust and smoke from the forest fires in Taos & Tres Piedres. Yet i drive toward them in faith that they remain. And as i turn one slow corner on the road through ranch-land, there you are.

Stunning in the dusty air. I Feel like i have driven into another time, another land. Have i somehow slipped through the thin veil of time and space and landed in the mountains of Tibet?

I wish for the camera that i sometimes carry in the car. Wanting to capture the surreal quality of your presence, here amidst no backdrop. As if you have fallen from the gray sky. Here grazing in the desert. I want to capture the traces of snow still visible in crevaces on the mountains just beginning to appear through the hazy nothingness. I want to capture the wonder of this land with its dust-outs, and random wind whirls that are like mini tornadoes that pop up in front of me as i drive on endless roads.

Seeing you, i think of my neighbor, who loves to stop and gaze at you when you are near the fence, near the road. He is fascinated by you, Yak.  Today i am as well. Wondering how you ever got to be the latest fad in lean, tasty meat at trendy restaurants.

I want to slide out of my drivers seat and slip under the barbed wire fence. Move slowly  toward you. Put my hand against your powerful body. Curl my fingers in your long and winding hair. 

I want to stop and weep at your majestic and seemingly cumbersome beauty. I want to know what a community of Yak smells like. I want to slip through time and space to your home in the peaks of Tibet. I wonder at your wonder presence here in southern Colorado

I want to stop.      Stop.      And ask.

What have you come to teach us Yak? 

What power and medicine?

How did we come to be in the same place and time once again?