An essay on the countryside, contemplation, and the perfect cycle of life
I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self-contained;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
— Song of Myself, Walt Whitman
A few days ago, as we were coming back from the grocery store, we passed by a pasture. You were struck by the sight of all the cows lying down at the same time. It was noon.
“Why are all the cows lying down?” you asked, with that kind of curiosity that sometimes sheds light on simple things.
That question opened a quiet door in my memory, a thread that led me to reflect on cows, the land, and the wisdom buried in books and in the life lived close to the soil.
Cows often rest around midday due to a combination of natural rhythms, digestive cycles, and environmental factors: an elegant choreography rooted in biology and instinct.
Reason 1: Rhythms of Rumination
Cows are ruminants, meaning they chew cud—a process that requires them to lie down to digest efficiently. After grazing during the cooler hours of the morning, they usually take a midday break to ruminate. It isn’t mere rest; it’s part of their digestive dance.
Reason 2: Avoiding the Heat
Midday is usually the hottest part of the day. By resting, often in the shade, cows conserve energy and reduce heat stress. It’s nature’s way of saying: pause, breathe, wait for the sun to soften.
Reason 3: Herd Synchrony
Cows are social animals. They tend to imitate each other’s behavior, a phenomenon known as social facilitation. When some lie down, others follow. This synchronization helps maintain group cohesion and offers a sense of safety.
Reason 4: Circadian Rhythms
Just like humans, cows have circadian rhythms—internal clocks attuned to the cycle of light and dark. These rhythms influence feeding, rumination, and resting, aligning the herd into shared daily routines.
So when you see a field of cows reclining beneath the midday sun, don’t mistake it for laziness. You are witnessing an ancient ritual, a choreography without score between life, the earth, light, and the body.
It is nature’s language, speaking softly while the day goes on.
The rumination of cows is a silent wonder—one of those daily masterpieces of the natural world that few stop their souls to contemplate.
For in that slow gesture of chewing again, the cow is not merely digesting grass: she is participating in an ancestral miracle. A sacred cycle in which sunlight, captured by photosynthesis, becomes edible life. Let us look with wider eyes:
From Sun to Grass: The First Act of the Miracle
Photosynthesis is the secret language of plants—their way of taking in light, water, and carbon dioxide, transforming them into glucose and oxygen. It is how solar energy becomes matter, becomes leaf, stem, flower, seed…
When the cow eats that grass, she is consuming stored sunlight, woven in green.
The Cow as Alchemist of the Earth
The cow does not chew in haste. She eats, stores, waits, reconsiders the food, brings it back to her mouth, and transforms it with patience.
This rumination is a slow alchemy, in which, thanks to her four stomachs and millions of microorganisms, grass becomes protein, fat, milk, meat.
Thus, what was once sun and leaf becomes primary nourishment—the foundation of life for others, even for us. Pause and think about it—really think—and tell me this isn’t wonderful.
The Heart of the Vital Cycle
The wonder is that it all begins with light.
That light touches the soil and becomes plant.
The plant feeds the cow.
The cow, without breaking or forcing anything, returns nutrients to the soil through her manure, enriching the earth and completing the circle.
All of it without machines, without artifice, without noise—just her, ruminating beneath the sun.
A Gesture of Contemplation
In a world that rushes, where everything feels urgent, the cow teaches us the value of rumination as a vital act:
To return to what has been lived, to what has been taken in. To think again. To break it down. To understand.
The cow does not swallow and forget: she chews, stores, feels again, and transforms.
That is why her rumination is a marvel.
Because it is digestive poetry, the metabolism of sunlight, slow life nourishing the world.
An ancient ritual that turns light into food—and through it, the cow becomes a bridge between heaven and earth.
The Teacher and the Pride of the Land
Everything above comes from the wondrous and magical books that already exist; nothing I’ve written here is truly mine—not even these final words that come from my mind. Someone else wrote them before.
Let me remind you that my essence lies in what I have read, not in what I have written, as Jorge Francisco Luis Isidoro once wisely said.
The only difference between me and others is that I have managed to keep my eyes open and my soul humble and docile when wisdom and understanding—reached by others before me—were laid before me.
My thoughts are the children of the thoughts of Emerson, Whitman, Sagan, Rilke, Thoreau, Matthew, John the Divine, and that Carpenter who, with humble wood and words of fire, built the invisible temple where the spirit still dwells. And, of course, of the eternal Artist who made all this possible.
I write—perhaps not much, perhaps not little—but I’m certain it’s enough.
Still, I do not publish. I avoid casting yet another bottle into the sea, already tired and overflowing with trash and messages.
In fact, I kindly ask you not to think of me as the author of these words. Think only of the path they lead you to.
I ask this because perhaps then we will once again become more interested in poetry, and less in poets.
I want to end this piece by telling you how, when I was a young rancher, a rural teacher taught me the reason to feel proud of being a farmer, a cowboy.
His name was Don Camilo Cisneros. We became friends one day when, after asking me for a few oranges, I brought him an entire sack. Seeing its size, he said it was too much—that he only needed a few.
I replied,
—Don’t worry, maestro. When one works honestly, the earth always gives.
You just have to care for her and be patient.
He looked at me calmly, smiled faintly, and said,
—You’re right. That’s how the old ones used to speak.
Weeks went by, and one day, while we were pruning lemon trees, my cousin “El Gordo” told me,
—Hey, the teacher’s been asking for you. He said to drop by when you can.
One Friday, when we didn’t finish too late at the lemon and orange farm, I went to see him.
Don Camilo pulled two books from his briefcase: both by Miguel Delibes, the great Spanish writer who deeply loved the countryside. One was The Innocent Saints, the other Diary of a Hunter.
“I brought you these books,” he said. “I know you like to read. You’ll find thoughts in here much like your own.”
I thanked him and told him it wasn’t necessary, to which he replied,
“They’re already yours—they’re dedicated. I can’t take them back; that’s bad luck.”
Time passed, and whenever we had the chance, we’d sit and talk—exchange ideas and readings, always with a Jarrito soda in hand.
Years later, I took another path, chasing what people call progress. In those disconnected days, I never heard from him again. I only learned he’d been transferred to another school.
My cousin “El Gordo” told me when I returned to the ranch one day. He teased me with that familiar rural humor, the kind that hides affection behind mockery.
“Your boyfriend, the teacher, doesn’t live here anymore,” he said, laughing, with that tone halfway between joke and tenderness.
In those days, it wasn’t common to see a true friendship between a teacher and a ranch boy—and the easiest way to speak of affection was to laugh a little about it.
Today, I tell you this because it was thanks to Don Camilo that I could explain—in another way—what you asked me that day as we passed the pasture.
Don Camilo led me to the Spanish writer, and the Spanish writer led me to understand that there is a silent wisdom in the countryside and in the farmers.
There is also an intimate connection between those who work the land—the farmers, the cowboys, their cattle, the mountains, and the rhythms of nature.
Because those who dwell upon the earth do not live off it, but within it—breathing its rhythm and its silence.
And then they come to understand that they are not above or outside of anything, but part of a universal perfection, a work that sustains itself, without noise or pretense.
But that understanding cannot be learned from books or grasped from afar; it only comes from living there—from feeling the sunrise and the fatigue, the rain and the waiting.
Perhaps that is why so many who criticize or wish to end this way of life do so from the distance of the cities, never truly understanding what it means to belong to the land, and not merely to use it.
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