Bethany’s Idealized View of Sheep
Sheep. What animal conjurs up more thoughts of bucolic rolling landscapes, lush green pastures, fluffiness, clouds, clouds with legs, falling asleep, falling asleep in clouds, and falling asleep in clouds with legs? My obsession with sheep began at some point and for some reason (neither are apparent), but it’s genuine, and it’s for life.
Early in my and Joe’s dating relationship, Joe cracked a hilarious joke: “What do you call a sheep?” I shrugged. “A sheep, I guess?” Joe delivered the poignant punchline: “A cloud with legs.”
I embraced the charming image and allowed it to permeate my heart and mind. Nothing rang of greater truth nor made me feel so warm and fuzzy. Sheep — already cute — now became cuter. Or perhaps clouds became cute for the first time?
There’s something special about the bleat of a sheep. It’s different than the bleat of a goat. Goats don’t bleat so much as scream, and their scream betrays their universal angst (ok, maybe that’s unfair and not true). But hearing the sonorous bleat of a sheep is like putting on a too-big sweater: it’s comforting and reassuring, and makes you feel like everything will be all right.
And the wool. I draw a connection — perhaps obvious, perhaps odd — between a sheep’s wool and the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. In the book, Lucy hides from her siblings in a wardrobe filled with luxurious fur coats. The coats are soft and have a subtle, pleasing smell. Lucy buries her face in the coats, appreciating the texture and scent, before thrusting her whole body into their dense mass. The next several seconds in the wardrobe are for Lucy a transformative event that carry her into a new, stunning, magical world. For me, pushing my fingers into a sheep’s wool is as close as I’ll get to experiencing Lucy’s wardrobe: fingers passing through near-endless thick soft fibers, wondering (if fingers could wonder) when they’ll touch warm skin, protected, unscathed, and pure. The whole experience lasts a second at most, making my association with the wardrobe utterly unfounded. And yet, I think of Lucy and the wardrobe every time I touch a sheep.
It’s fun to focus on one sheep. Up close, you can familiarize yourself with their antics, watch how they chew, how they flick their ears and tail. You can see the calm confidence in their eyes and in the way they stand or lie; yet you know that behind their cool composure they’re prepared to run like hell, which they’ll do when a branch snaps or a gate creaks open. If you zoom out — way out — you can see all the sheep in the pasture. You appreciate the iconic, idyllic visual of white dots against a green field and blue sky. You’re reminded of some 19th century landscape painting you saw once, and the recollection makes you feel smart. You notice how sheep tend to graze in groups, and often face the same direction within their groups. Occassionally a sheep or two will spice things up and do a little leap or skip to a new group, and the white dot pattern morphs. The scene is peaceful and innocent; and you forget about stupid things for a while; and you think you might want to be a sheep and have unrestricted “friend zone” access to wool and flicking ears.
My love for looking at sheep and my desire to sneak quick pokes into wool led Joe and me to the Cotswolds in 2024. We rented a shepherd’s hut on a sheep farm, and I spent hours watching sheep. Those hours were, prehaps, the most fulfilling hours of my life. More on our trip later.
We don’t have sheep. Yet. It’s a goal. What we do have is a bouncing, barking sheep dog named Mabel who can’t wait for us to bring our first few sheep home.