Knot Pining: Existential sheep has message

Tuesday’s wet and windy weather blew many things around, including a piece of paper with handwriting on it. It went splat, flat onto the front window of the Pine Knot. Or perhaps we should say “hoofwriting.” Apparently, the notorious loose sheep, known by many as Brad, was making his way back to Carlton County after quite the odyssey. After so much adventure, it seems he felt obligated to get it all down for the record.

He was first spotted up the North Shore in the Two Harbors area a few weeks ago after escaping from the trailer that picked him up from the Osvold farm south of Carlton. He had then been seen in Duluth, on the shore of Lake Superior and at Glensheen Mansion, up rivers on the east side and, early this week, in Midway Township east of Esko.

He lingered there, apparently long enough to write the following missive, and long enough to be tranquilized and returned to the farm in Carlton.

Perhaps Brad was hankering to come home. Or was just contemplating it. We found the paper plastered to our pane quite the interesting read. His writing is a bit inscrutable, lending more mystery to his being.

My story

It’s a sodden, blustery day, and, after finally finding a writing implement to fit between my hooves, I fear my travel log will simply blow away and no one will know my story.

First off, I’m much more comfortable after talking to Rabbit, who seems to know things. She says making it through the bang-bang season is a slight miracle. She told many tales of woe regarding her deer friends in these shortened days.

So I’m lucky I didn’t get the bang-bang from the blaze-orangers. I can’t resist white bread, and there have been a few moments I felt I had come too close to the bipeds for comfort. This one keeps throwing that bread and a rope toward me. Easily evaded, but curious all the same.

Rabbit and a few others have told tales of the wonders of the river now just below me. It has lots of wild action, and many of the crags I love to lope around on.

Squirrel says he’d seen me before, through a window and in a box glowing from a building. He says I’ve become quite the “celebrity,” whatever that means.

He says there are those wishing me continued good stead as I wander and try to find my place. Apparently the phrase “Go, Brad, Go” has become a rallying cry.

Squirrel said others are hellbent on capturing me, likely to put me back inside the fences. Oh, how I hate the fences.

It’s been a good half season that I’ve found myself roaming. I feel older, wiser than my age of seven months.

Yes, I have a story. But I don’t think the bipeds have the capacity to know it. It’s a deeply personal journey I am on, a search for my soul, my passions. My place in this world.

But as far as any tick-tock biography, I tend to think of Holden Caulfield in the opening of “Catcher in the Rye.”

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

I can barely recall my parents, to be honest. My dad is a complete mystery. I assume my mom and twin sister are still at the farm. I kind of feel like Holden did about his sister Phoebe. I’d like to maybe sneak up to the farm and watch her peacefully sleeping. A silent goodbye.

It’s been a long journey. My animal friends told me that if I get to the river, I’d be close to where my life started. Since I began this exploring, I’ve discovered something about myself. I cannot be contained. I was meant to be free, be wild, as the animals tell me.

City life definitely isn’t for me. But I had to give it a shot. You don’t know until you know, you know? I like the idea of river and rock life. You can have Lake Superior. Too cold. Too temperamental.

Yes, Carlton is my known known. What I do remember about my family was their somber look when I was carted away. I would have given anything for them to put up any kind of fuss. They just looked sheepish, like they’d never fight for anything in their lives.

I am going to fight. And I am going to tell my story. That’s why I probably won’t choose to see my family again. Too dangerous. Hopefully they can just read this and know I was destined for something other than donating my wool every few months.

I am not a mitten, scarf or ill-fitting sock. I am certainly not Brad. I am Rimbaud, a name I chose in honor of my favorite poet.

I have much to say, and perhaps on a less wicked-weather day I can say more. This tempest has me wondering how I might survive in what Snowy Owl said can be a very cold climate. I need to hunker down, Skunk said, or keep moving south.

Until then, I’ll let my poet, Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud, have the last words of this chapter:

I heard them, squatting by the wayside,

in September twilights, there I felt the dew

drip on my forehead, like a fierce coarse wine.

Where, rhyming into the fantastic dark,

I plucked, like lyre strings, the elastics

of my tattered shoes, a foot pressed to my heart.

This wind is picking up, best I tuck this away and ….

Mike Creger is a reporter and page designer for the Pine Knot News. Reach him at [email protected].