Ed. note: This excerpt is taken from Being with Cows, written by Dave Mountjoy and published by BedfordSquare Publishers. You can find out more about the book and Dave’s Being with Cows retreats here.
‘Meditation could be said to be the Art of Simplicity: simply sitting, simply breathing and simply being.’-Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
The very first retreat unfolded in its own organic way and proved to be something of a microcosm of all that I had experienced so far with the cows. There was a rough structure to it – meditational walks in the mornings and mindful sessions with the cows in the afternoon – but apart from that I had no wish to try to fill every minute with organised activity. It was the cows themselves who had impressed on me so deeply this alignment with rhythms borne not of the mind but some deeper undercurrent, a trust that the quietness brings all into its own order.
When it had become clear that I wanted to begin inviting guests to the farm on retreat, the brainstorming of ideas regarding the structure and form they might take didn’t really get off the ground. It wasn’t needed – the thinking about things. That time would be spent with the cows was obvious yet I knew that something else could compliment the sessions with them, something a little more active that had to involve the landscape that I had fallen in love with. The feeling of wanting to share everything I felt grateful for had become a powerful guiding force since the acceptance of Cork’s death, and it was this that brought the understanding that the essential ingredient had to be simplicity. The foundation of whatever might unroll on retreat had to be free of techniques, teachings and anything that desired to produce any kind of result, whether it was mindfully beneficial or not. This much was absolutely clear. The being part of Being with Cows said it all. The sharing had to express all that I loved about the cows and the beautiful land round about in the simplest way possible and one of the simplest things I knew was walking.
It had long been something very important to me, a vital activity that was as natural as breathing in and out, and the cows themselves spent at the very least half of their days ambling around wherever they happened to be. Putting feet on the earth, particularly in a natural environment, usually provided an incredibly levelling experience, a quite literal grounding of all that was surplus to requirements at any given time.
The walks therefore were made in silence, a chance to be together with the landscape, each other and whatever arose in a way that wasn’t dominated by talk. This temporary suspension of chit-chat was of course also inspired by the cows. In all the countless hours that I’d spent with them, I’d realised that their need to vocalise things was absolutely minimal. Hunger, giving birth or excitement at moving to fresh grazing might lead to their calls echoing around the valleys, but other than that, their communication was non-verbal and they passed their days in silence. It seemed natural then that the retreats would end up reflecting this, becoming more of an extension of what was already present on the farm rather than something new imposed on it.
Some mornings were spent on the tracks that crisscrossed the farm while others took us out into the surrounding valleys and hills. What a time to be out and about, in the full flush of spring and all that it could bring. Both of the guests were already committed nature-lovers and at times it brought a genuine sense of joy to be strolling our way up and down the hills together, untroubled by comment or conversation.
At times we would stop and sit a while. Some places that I’d discovered in the years since we’d arrived on the farm seemed to naturally lend themselves to meditation, to a sitting in quietness and something else as well. They were places where I’d experienced a deeply touching calmness, a warmth and unlooked-for feeling of safety that was a kind of homecoming. I’ve heard them called sit-spots by some, places where stillness becomes an immediate reality rather than something to wish for or desire. They are supportive little niches woven seamlessly into the landscape and are often not obvious at first sight.
Over and over I had witnessed the cows returning to the same patch of meadow or part of a woodland glade that, on the surface at least, looked no different from everything else around. Watching them purposely moving to these favoured spots had impressed me deeply. It was fascinating to observe that they were aware of things that mostly seem to have been buried beneath endless layers of restlessness and thinking.
On the second day of the retreat, the walk took us up to the highest point in the area – a set of oak-covered hills and green, meadow-softened valleys. As we wound our way up the hunters’ track to the top, I indicated to the guests that we could stop for some moments and sit down.
From where we sat, the views out and across towards the Pyrenees further south were simply magnificent. In equal measure, they inspired both an urge to talk and express wonder at such natural beauty and the necessity of keeping the mouth firmly closed in quiet appreciation of their majesty. The invitation was to let them do all the talking, and the initial idea of spending just a few minutes gave way to an hour or more of quiet gazing. Rain laden clouds that we could almost reach out and touch, miles of sparkling greenery too perfect to name and an undeniably refreshing smell of spring in the air had us naturally stilled into silence.
When we arrived back at the farm a while later and the walk had officially finished, I noticed that none of us were so keen to break the silence with words. Walking and talking is fine in itself, yet over the course of the last few hours, we had tapped into something that removed the need to say anything at all.
