Goats

Louisa and I spent 20 months (1999-2001) wandering between Mexico, Greece, Turkey, Georgia, Ireland and Morocco. About six months in, on the Greek island of Paros, I wrote this:

Lying on rough concrete, a weatherbeaten boat dock. As we stared into the clear water, we talked sporadically about our plans, our uncertain future, of being overwhelmed by choices. The curse of freedom! Wavelets slopped against our perch and in my imagination, during one of the long pauses between our ragged words, I heard a distant tinkling of bells: echoes from the past, my humor enthralled by the tall tales I'd been reading of Mycenian navigators and Dorian settlers who ventured on these shores when the world was young.

My mind was now in overdrive. The bells seemed so real. Those stories, this air, must be affecting me...or not. Something was moving in the periphery of my vision. I looked harder. It seemed that the entire scrubby hillside on one side of the bay was in motion, a flood of shapes, brown and grey, black and white. Goats. Hundreds of them. Jingling down to the shore, each sporting a bell slung below its shaggy neck. Clanging and clanking they came, an army of tintinnabulation, nimbly trotting down the same stones we had trodden, awkwardly, an hour earlier. They passed behind us, hurrying along the beach, rank upon rank, hooves clattering, bells ringing, a old goatherd in the rear cantering along to keep up with the unstoppable horde, his work delegated to four mutt dogs who watched warily for dawdlers.

Just as quicky as they had appeared, they were gone, up the opposite hillside, no muss no fuss, obviously a well-travelled route for this mottled flock. I envied their certainty: they knew where they were going and how to get there. We stumble along, destination unknown.