3:24 am, Tuesday April 15.

You wake up, as you always do in the middle of the night, though 3:24 am is not customary.  1:29, 2:32, and 4:12 are the oddly consistent clock numbers that you see when you wake up. Your brain says you need to pee, though usually that’s not true, it just wants to wake up, process the dream you were just having, take notes, and go back to it or start a new one. 

Every night of this trip to the property, you’ve gone to bed 10% less blissful than the night before, perseverating on all of the things that need to be attended to. The good news is that you slept hard until 3:24, despite the red wine headache and a throb in your arm from digging a compost ditch for the last 2 days.  The digging has flared up an old injury—falling off a skateboard you had no business being on in the first place. Isn’t it funny how you can suddenly know you’re going to bite it right before you start to fall, but after it’s too late to stop?

Instead of walking to the bathroom, you slide into your Haflingers, walk to the front door, and down the steps to the front lawn. The septic system needs yet to be rebuilt, and water needs yet to flow through the pipes before you can write the words, “you walk to the bathroom.” Saturday's Pink Moon is only waning a bit and it peeks through the Doug first beyond the pasture. It illuminates the silhouettes of the fruit trees, the outbuildings...and the cows. 

Your property isn’t next to a small cattle ranch, it is in the middle of one. The ranch is owned by a cousin to the previous owners of your property. He keeps a couple of dozen cows and sells them for meat. The barbed wire fencing that surrounds your property is compromised in several areas. On the day you moved in, 10 months ago, there was fresh cow shit everywhere but inside the house. You thought it was probably a welcoming message from the neighbor, a little hazing. You did, after all, outbid him in the sale.

Roughly 15 cows are scattered across the lawn, illuminated by the moonlight and grazing on buxom tufts of grass that hasn’t been mowed since longer than your skateboarding injury.  It’s actually quite beautiful and peaceful. The frogs in the pond nearby have stopped croaking for the night, and all you hear is the gentle sounds of cow jaws ripping grass from the ground. You sigh, pee, calmly walk back in to switch out the slippers for the Danner boots, and begin the roundup. 

“MOVE IT!” “LET’S GO, LOSERS!” “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” “LET’S GO!!" “MOOOOOOOOVEEEEEEE” 

You’re using your newly forged rancher voice. During previous encounters with the cow, in the daylight, you’ve been more tentative.  You don’t want to scare them, or look the fool, but at 3:27am, you have never been more committed to a part. Pretty swiftly, they move, understanding that you’re not fucking around. They don’t understand direction as a concept, so they need to be corralled and then move in unison. You are a herding dog.  Some of them are escorted off the property like civilized people, through the cattle gate. Some of them jump the compromised fence that they trampled over to get onto the property.  You’d think all the yelling would arouse Clayton, the tenant staying in the cabin, but all is quiet. He’s dealt with this before, and he’s letting you have your turn. 

“I just had to get the cows out at 3ep am” you blindly texted to the neighbor-cousin, who is also controls the well that your property was once connected to, before the sale. Maybe you can use this as some kind of leverage. Or a softening of the relationship. Until you placed the winning bid, this property has been in the same family since the island was colonized. The last thing you want to do is get into a legal battle with Orcas Island royalty for water rights. You come back to the house, and Sarge was waiting by the door, distressed.  Back in bed and he’s velcroed himself to your side. For a few minutes you don’t think you'll go back to sleep, but the next time you opened my eyes, the sun was streaming through the east-facing windows. 6:47am.

At 6:48am, the whole thing happens again. 

Later today, the neighbor's nephew will move the cows to the pasture to the north.  Divvied up by the reigning patriarch three or four generations ago, this place was never intended to be in the hands of a stranger, but here we are.