A short tale from the hill

The lambing gather for this year has been completed. Gathering in a flock of sheep from an area of over 3000 acres while navigating the veritable maze of heather laden hills, busy roads, tumbledown fences, dodgy gardens and building sites is always quite a daunting prospect. However, like all things, once you have started, it gets much easier.  Here is a short story from the hill. 

I had left the girls snuggled in a safe hollow on the hill where they played. The stone became a kitchen, the spots of lichen were cooker tops, and they concocted wild dishes of moss, dead heather flowers and coarse grass. Meanwhile, I scrambled to the top of another hillock, trying to get a clear view of the distant, high ledges where I expected to see my husband bringing the sheep down.  Leg weary and breathless, I reached the top only to find that my view was obscured by yet another slope covered in thigh high heather.  Local folklore says that this hill is cursed and at times like this, I believe it. 

Imagination play in nature

I sit down on a dry rock. It is starting to spit with rain and I try to judge the subtle change of colour in the sky.  Will the shower pass quickly? Or are we in for a deluge? Should I return to the girls and protect them from the weather or should I continue on in order to stop any sheep from cutting back and being lost from the gather? While I try to decide, I watch a lone sheep in the distance.  She is North of me, a few hundred metres away, grazing an area of recently muir burnt hill.  We had passed her on the way up, but let her be. Right now, our focus is on other sheep; those grazing the summit. The wild ones, the evaders.  She will be swept up when they come along. It is them, my husband and the other dogs that I am waiting for. 

Jess - one of our working border collies

The rain becomes heavier, my decision is made. I must go back to the girls.  If the sheep cut back, so be it. Suddenly, as if she reads my mind, the lone ewe looks up at me and bleats.  Her bleat tells me everything that I need to know. It’s a warning bleat. From her position, she has seen what I cannot.  She has seen ten to twenty sheep approaching.  She has seen their speed. She has seen the dogs on the horizon and heard the shouts of the shepherd.  I breathe a sigh of relief. If I hold my ground for another couple of minutes, the sheep will pass me and there will be no risk of losing them back into the ledges where I am.  

I hear the girls' laughter before I reach them. The makeshift kitchen has been abandoned and they roll around tickling each other in the bouncy heather. I make a mental note to check them for ticks later.  “Mum!”, they shout, running clumsily to me in their waterproofs, “Can we have a snack?” I usher them forward, telling them for the hundredth time that I have no food on me. “We need to move, the sheep are past, we have to follow them”. They run ahead of me, throwing themselves down mossy banks. My youngest is only three and tackles the hill walking admirably, falling behind often but understandably.  She won’t be carried. She isn’t a baby anymore, so she tells me with a stomp of the foot.  

Eventually, we reach a clearing and can see all of the sheep streaming ahead of us in three separate, single file lines, flanked along the way by dogs.  I wave to my husband, who is a ledge away.  He waves back.  Hand signals and shouting are our only communication up here.  My eldest daughter runs to join him and we descend the hill, ready to take our flock home.   

Bringing the flock home