Now that summer is upon us, the herds have appeared, again.
I’m talking about the cows. Not the tourists. Although there is a certain similarity.
Like with the tourists, our cows don’t spend the entire year in Pagosa. They get trucked in from other places, to enjoy the abundant grass during the summer months. (Some tourists also enjoy abundant grass here, but of a slightly different botanical species.)
I imagine the cattle also enjoy the mild summer weather, the fresh air, and maybe the scenery. But those are merely assumptions. The cows rarely reveal their true feelings. They just look out from their big sad eyes.
There’s one difference between herds of cows and herds of tourists, however. The cows live in a big family unit. They go everywhere together, but they are also fenced in. So ‘Herd A’ never hangs out with ‘Herd B’… because ‘Herd B’ stays on the other side of the fence.
When a herd of cattle gets transported back to its winter home, it’s still the same herd. Tourists, on the other hand, are like wild animals, unconfined by fences, roaming all over the place. We see tourists from Texas, and tourists from California, sitting at the same restaurant, right next to each other, even though their political views are utterly incompatible.
And we see tourists from distant places sitting next to local Pagosans who maybe haven’t been out of town in at least the past year. (Like, for example, me.)
The cows, in other words, travel and hang out in individual herds. The tourists’ get all mixed up with each other, and with the locals. Which means, where people are concerned, there’s really no such things as a ‘herd’.
Even though a lot of experts have been talking, this past year, about ‘herd immunity’… we humans do not actually exist in herds. (Something the experts didn’t think about, perhaps, because they’re too busy looking at ‘data’ instead of noticing what goes on in the real world.) We humans are really one enormous herd, with certain members taking vacations or business trips to Spain or China or Brazil — bringing back collectable souvenirs, selfie photos, and novel infectious diseases.
The souvenirs, we put on the coffee table, to spark conversation. The selfies get shared on social media.
The novel infectious diseases? We’re not entirely sure how those get shared. But they definitely do get shared.
Cows never have to worry about this type of thing. “Vacation? What’s that? I’m just hanging with my bros. Same as always.”
The cows have natural ‘herd’ immunity, because they never mix with cows from Texas or California, and are never exposed to novel diseases from Brazil or China.
Which is probably why, when we look at a herd of cows, they look back at us with those big, sad eyes… because they’re feeling sorry for us.
They know that, for humans, ‘herd immunity’ is nothing but a dream.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.