The summer of 2003, I was asked to care for an elk farm in central Pennsylvania. Life at Doe Run Farm was like stepping into an idyllic painting of overlapping meadows and rolled bales of hay. The long driveway leading up to the farmhouse was lined with old locust trees. The house itself dated back to the 1700’s, and near to it stood a red barn and silo.  There were 3 cats to care for, a small garden of corn, squash and tomatoes to harvest daily. And of course my job was to watch the elk and make sure their antlers were not caught in the fence, that bear did not attack them. 

Mornings were amazing in that a heavy fog rolled into Po Valley, so thick at times, the room where I slept turned milky. It seemed to wake me, this fog, and I rose and instinctively peered out the old window. There they were, the elk rising from their grassy beds with sunbeams cutting through the very fog they walked through.  Soon, it became a ritual to stand on the deck at dawn and photograph them.

The room where I wrote had a large glass window where I could watch the yearlings graze and move about.  The elk fascinated me. As with many intimate experiences with wild animals and plants, I tried to connect with them in nonverbal ways.

Most days were spent writing in this room with the large window, followed by simple farm chores. At sundown, I would enter the barn and slide back a door to the loft and journal while watching a pink luster cover the hills. Some evenings my friend Betsy, who lived nearby, on Egg Hill, would join me.  We would ruminate on the ways of the world, of the world itself, the dear earth we love.

Other nights, I left the farm to visit Betsy. On Egg Hill, we would sit outside in wooden chairs watching orange Mars in the sky, star-gazing, moon-watching…. We witnessed how beams of moonlight illuminated the valley below, offering a faint outline of an old farmhouse, the amazing place called Doe Run Farm.