Two or three times a week I come to this spot in the field corner. I sit, I watch, I make notes and I name a stone which I add to the cairn. The cairn was already quite tall when the cows first knocked it down. I remember feeling pretty fed up when I first saw the stones scattered on the ground and then I remembered the word impermanence and managed a smile. I rebuilt it and now it has become a game, a bit like Jenga, though I’m not sure if the cows know they are playing it.
Today is a thoroughly grey day with a cold westerly wind. It is 7.30am and I sit on my spot on the wall. The cows crowd around and the stiller I am, the closer they get. They are intimates, one cow tenderly licks another before being butted away by a third, a forth rests his head on another’s back, whilst a fifths licks the top stone of the cairn. They get dangerously close to knocking it down again. I say a magic stone-standing spell in my head and they get back to grazing, rotating their jaws in a clockwise direction as they chew. I wonder if they all chew clockwise when I notice an outlier chewing in the other direction. A left-hander perhaps?
It is 9am when the gulls begin their commute up the valley, flying in easy, loose flocks that are buffeted by the wind. I feel relaxed, the cows have wandered off and my fingers are cold. It is time to put that stone on the precarious cairn. What shall I call it – hmmm PATIENCE