Under the Canopy Chapter 8

 

Chapter 8

    On this day in the Alpine sunshine, it was all behind him as he was quietly and sedately on the move with his noble donkey, which he had named Freud. Ernest thought that a suitable name because he had constant one-way conversations with his donkey on the lonely hills seeking insights into life, but sadly, with very little emotional progress to show for all the therapy. For spiritual and religious companions, Ernest had two hard-working sheep-dogs, Knox and Zwingli, also useful in moving his flock of sheep from one high-level pasture to the next in splendid solitude.  Together, always on the lookout for meadows where his sheep and donkey could graze.  As a former medical student, he found that he felt more like Francis of Assisi, finding quiet contentment in caring for his animals, keeping them on course, nursing the sick back to health and enabling them to rejoin the flock.  Life was simple, yet a certain restlessness stirred within him.

    Ernest soon discovered that, like sheep, to survive, he had to learn to adapt and change with conditions.  Sheep, with their thick woollen coats, are very resistant to high-altitude alpine temperatures and can scratch food from under even thick layers of snow; unlike cows, they can even eat frozen grass. They are well adapted to their environment, but under harsh conditions, food must be brought in to supplement the herd's diet, adding further expense to this dying mountain tradition.  

    Ernest was pondering his next move. 

    By the end of the season, Ernest would gather his flock and all of the stragglers he could find along his route and eventually lead them to the village of Belalp, where the owners would take them back, some for market and eventual slaughter, and some for shearing and the wool market. 

    The herding process had become more difficult over the passing years, given the growing urbanization even in more remote areas.  It’s not always easy to find adequate grazing between roads, housing estates, motorways, or “off-limits” fields that make up an incredible patchwork of landscape that a shepherd must hop, skip and jump over and through with his flock.  His was one of perhaps fifty or sixty such traditional herds left in Switzerland as farmers have been forced into more modern methods because of growth and progress and pressures from the outside world.  The same pressures that Ernest felt in his own personal life.  Modern influences always led to more change.  It’s not that Ernest was averse to change.  He did have a complete disregard for modern-day encroachment on traditional lifestyles.

    Ernest started to rethink his off-the-grid philosophy and lifestyle, and in terms of “pressures from the outside world,” he thought he had come up with a grand alternative.  He had weeks of solitude to think over his options, both while sitting for six months in a jail cell for his somewhat rash decision to dodge the draft and while on the magnificent slopes of Switzerland during his self-imposed banishment to the alpine wilderness where he now found himself. 

    It was during these long hours of solitude, under the blue mountain skies in the company of his dogs and sheep, staff in hand, boots damp from grassy dew, that his wayward thoughts often turned to the allure of the distant forests of Borneo.  He had researched these wild Indigenous people and those dense, lush forests ever since emulating their lifestyle on his Basil apartment balcony as a child. The Penan and other tribes of Borneo were the last of the great forest nomads who still moved to the rhythm of the jungle, carrying their world in rattan baskets on their backs.  His sheep pressed around him, interrupting his thoughts, nuzzling for salt. Ernest smiled faintly.  Switzerland had always been his home, but it was not his final destination.  The Penan called to him, wild, elusive, untouched in ways the Alps had not been in centuries.  

    The final decision dropped on him like a stone, causing radiating ripples in otherwise still clear water.  It was time to go.  To move on.  To leave behind these tiny meadows, to trade the ordered landscapes of Europe for the humid shores of Borneo.  He would slip off the beaten path, deeper than he had previously dared, into a world where survival itself became the final truth.

     He had made his decision.  

    Facing his steadfast sheepdog, Knox, he affectionately grasped  him on both sides of his furry face and stared straight into his deep brown eyes and said, “My friend, when I deliver you and this flock of ruffians, I am off to Sarawak; it’s time to truly get off the grid and do some spelunking.” Knox cocked his head as if in confusion, likely detecting a note of insanity from his temporary master before wandering off to do what he did best, mindlessly but strategically, chasing sheep.