Leia, the Lion and the Lamb

trigger warning: this post contains references to veganism and pictures that cause it

Yesterday at the grocery store, in the meat case, I saw a truly terrible sight to my American eyes - a whole lamb, skinned and with its wide black eyes still staring out in mute appeal. I took a photo, but did so while averting my eyes, so that’s why it’s wonky, I couldn’t bear to get a clearer picture of it. Ridiculously, I cried for a bit as we walked around the store getting our oat milk, granola, dried apricots and veggies. I know it’s stupid - after all, I’ve seen animals slaughtered with my own eyes, and I’ve been to more than one pig roast that featured the whole hog so to speak, an apple stuffed in its mouth. And of course, I was a meat eater for most of my life.

But a lot has changed since then - the climate, my sensibilities, and the ease and known health-benefits of having a plant-based diet. I changed too, but it didn’t happen all at once. I remember my college roommate’s sister visiting back in the day - she was a vegetarian, a rare and dare I say even weird thing in those days, especially in the midwest. She was also a judgemental pain in the ass - never explaining her values, just announcing “You’re eating Bambi you know” when I took a bite of my burger.

Bambi was a deer, and my burger was beef, and I was annoyed at her attempt to make the connection that all meat eaters were heartless destroyers of Disney characters - so much so I refused to even consider if her position had any merit, and I don’t blame myself for that - no one likes to be lectured, even people who are provably wrong don’t like it.

I remember being at the gym in my early forties, in San Francisco, listening to two women talk about being vegan, something I was only vaguely familiar with - like a rumor of celebrities. (In fact, it was a celebrity, the late River Phoenix, that brought veganism to my attention). As they talked about not eating meat, butter, milk yogurt or cheese, I remember thinking What on earth do they eat?

But somewhere in my late 40s a shift began - it started when, working in healthcare, I read The China Study. It picked up speed with Michael Chabon’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and was cemented by Scott Jurek, a personal hero of mine. Jurek is a vegan ultrarunner who has won the 100-mile Great Western States ultra seven times, set the record for Badwater Ultra, a 135-mile race through Death Valley, and if that wasn’t enough also set the speed record for running the entire Appalachian Trail. I’m a veteran of more than 100 marathons and a few ultras myself, and when my husband gifted me with Jurek’s book Eat and Run I felt compelled to at least give a plant-based diet a try. Living in California at the time, and working a farmer’s market every weekend for three years, it was a fairly easy choice, as we had more fresh produce than we knew what to do with.

Now, if YOU eat meat, I do not judge you - let’s be clear, it’s my values we are talking about, no one else’s. Everyone has to make their own decision about how they eat and live. The h and I became vegans in our late 40s, and kept it up for ten years, though we continued to eat salmon. As part of our life in Alaska we are allowed a certain annual catch…though me being me I still cry when they swim up the Copper River into our nets, their lives ending with a quick club to the head on a rock that becomes slick with blood as the day progresses. The fact that we are killing them at the end of their lives, and that they would end up in the belly of a bear if not mine does not make it a whole lot easier to kill a living thing for your meal. For me, anyway.

In the past six months we began eating meat again, mostly as a matter of convenience - with no refrigerator or stove, after 12 hours of physical labor, it was easy to stop at the churrasqueira for a whole grilled chicken, or order picanha at one of the local restaurants. It was hard trekking up to the store every day and bringing home enough vegetables to cook for a few days - water-based food is heavy.

Veganism is catching on here in Portugal - there are quite a few vegan restaurants in Lisbon, and most places have vegetarian options on the men. There are a growing number of Indian, Pakistani and Chinese restaurants, a cuisine with many naturally occurring vegan dishes. Our village is as yet a bit lacking in plant-based options - we tried to eat vegetarian at the restaurants in walking distance (we do not yet have a car) but it wasn’t easy - a dinner-sized salad is not really a thing here, not like in California where I’d regularly make salads with upwards of 15 ingredients.

Now that we have our garden in place, with potatoes, onions, garlic, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, peas, carrots, radishes, apples, grapes and pears all available on the daily we will be resuming our plant-based diet. It is, after all, a major reason we chose to buy a fazenda here in Portugal and not move into an ocean-view condo.

Seeing that skinned lamb in the meat case, I couldn’t help thinking it was apropos, given the weather lately. Spring entered like a lion, then, last week, temps in the 80s suggested it would go out like the proverbially lamb…except this week the lion, which hadn’t left but was just hiding in the tall weeds enabled by all the rain we’ve been experienced, leaped out and ate the lamb, and now we sit shivering again in temps in the high 40s, when we aren’t trying to staunch the flood of water in the kitchen pushed in by the 85 kph winds.

Yesterday the rain was too much for grilling so we all trouped over to the quinta where we had heat and an oven (well, an air fryer - no oven yet) and our guest Linda who is an excellent cook made chicken Milanese and no, I did not cry over the chicken, and yes, I did feel a bit guilty given my flock roosting in the trees just a hundred yards away. We ate it with leftover avocado/spinach salad and pasta and it was perfect, but honestly even if it tasted horrible it would have been wonderful because we had the heater on and it was toasty while outside the wind howled and hurled rain, which splatted against the see-through plastic roof in the laundry room, dropping branches and cones from the towering Monterey pine and making even Jake jump.

At the end of the meal Jake asked to go out, and thinking he just needed to take a whizz in the garden I let him out. Five minutes later when there was no scratch at the door I ventured into the blowy dark with my headlamp and searched the upper and lower garden - no Jake. I ran up the steps and looked up and down the quinta road - no Jake. Surely he wouldn’t go on one of his rambles in such bad weather? Then again, he didn’t get a walk yesterday, the first time since he’s moved here that this has happened - the weather was truly terrible though I suppose that is no excuse now that we both have raincoats.

I ran back to the palaceta, screaming for Jake, the wind carrying my voice away. I found him at the back door of the palaceta waiting to be let in. Woof! he said, his front paws leaving the ground. I was so relieved we didn’t have an hour or two of thrashing through wet knee high weeds in the wild back four acres of the property searching for him, I immediately hugged him. He smelled wonderfully of wet dog. I searched for my key, Jake with his nose pressed to the door crack as if to say Hurry up, it’s cold and wet out here!

It was much warmer in the quinta, but much comfier in the palaceta where he could pile onto the couch amidst down blankets. Also it must be noted that back at the quinta I’d put the chicken leftovers into the fridge, so nothing much of interest was happening for a Lab at that point. As for the warmth - Jake was born with a fur coat, after all. What was chilly to us probably felt just right to him.

The wind finally died down at midnight and it was gloriously still and dry for eight hours; now the next storm, called Nelson, according to neighbor Alberto, is on the way. You can feel it, just like in the midwest - the sky is darkening to the point I need a lamp to write; outside, the olive trees quake in the quickening wind. The air feels wet when you breathe it, though you have to check to make sure it’s not just your nose running from all the pollen in the wind.

The flock stands around the courtyard away from the drippy canopy, drying their wings. The wind blows the tails of the roosters like the skirts of cancan dancers.

There’s Alphonse, the h says, looking out the front window, which is mirrored so people can’t see in during the day. The chickens can, though. I first suspected this when the roosters took to standing around on the railing of our front porch, putting them at eye level with anyone sitting in the entryway, where we have most of our chairs set up as it’s the smallest room in the palaceta, with three sets of double doors that let us close it up tight and easily heat with the space heater. It’s a pleasant place to work, too - the floor-to-ceilng double doors have four windows, letting in lots of natural light when the shutters are open.

It turns out we were right - the mirrored windows do not impede the chicken’s vision of us. Chickens have unbelievably good eyesight. Because their eyes are on the sides of their head (and take up 30% of the real estate) they can see 300 degrees - as compared to our 180 - without even turning their heads. You simply cannot sneak up on a chicken! They can see more colors than us, as well as ultraviolet light, and their eyes zoom in and out. So my unease when the flock gathers nearby to watch me at the outdoor shower is maybe justified - they really ARE looking at me, zooming in even! I don’t know if I should be offended or relieved that all that zooming is ignoring my lady parts and simply searching for where I might be hiding food.

This morning a knock came at the back door - Alberto with a bag of chicken feed, which he graciously picks up for us once a month. I asked after his wife Rosa, who is recovering from knee surgery and had a physical therapy appointment yesterday. I wondered how they managed in those 85 mph winds, she on crutches, the sidewalk tiles slippery with rain. She’s better, he tells us. The pain is menos. He shows us pictures of his fava beans, destroyed by the wind. The flowers on the fruit trees - gone, he says. No fruit this spring. The price of food is going up.

Is this a normal spring? I ask and he shakes his head. No, no. It’s very wet and cold. And the wind! The climate change, you know.

And he does know, better than most - he’s out gardening through every season for decades. We benefit from his knowledge - our fruit trees are now safely tied to stout stakes that bear up under winds that move through the orchard with the speed and force of freight trains. He texts us reminders to plant according to the cycle of the moon’s waxing and waning. If not for him we would never have gotten our potatoes into the ground - he showed up with this tiller, hoe and fertilizer in the two day reprieve between storms and we got her done.

Estou cansada da chuva, I complain. Normally Alberto will just shrug but today he agrees it’s been a little much. And we have another whole week of it - the forecast today is for twelve hours of rain, and for the next three days as well. As we stand there, the first cold drops begin to fall. Well, bye, Alberto says. I run to the quinta to put the fresh bread and rolls he’s brought into the freezer, and make it back before the rain starts falling in earnest.

In other news we have discovered, after reading many articles about sexing chicks, that Han Solo (named for being the only survivor of a predator attack on mama’s nest) will now be answering to Princess Leia. She is a determined little thing; last night as I wrote at midnight, I heard her cheeping under the blanket we throw over her box at night. I peeked under to find her standing on top of the warmer, looking up, wings akimbo (help me Obi-Wan!). This is the position she takes to let us know she’s had quite enough of the box, thank you, and would like to peck around on the floor or snuggle under someone’s wing (which is the space under your ear, with a curtain of hair falling over her). I took her out and she snuggled under my chin and immediately went quiet. Sometimes we just need our moms.