The clue’s in the cow

Maybe it’s my star sign but I found a tucked away piece in The Sunday Times last weekend about the increasingly popular trend for cow cuddling (that's right) among Americans made stressed out and lonely by the pandemic particularly resonant.

You might say it mooooved me.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

It's true - cow cuddling's a thing. Apparently the Dutch have long been advocates - 'koe knuffelen,' they report, helps lower stress, boost oxytocin and improve wellbeing. Now the Americans have cottoned on, with farms in upstate New York offering cow cuddling sessions at an hourly rate and the restorative, therapeutic potential of the experience is drawing shattered people who've spent months isolated and alone in lockdown.

Bonkers? I get it.

I’m a Taurean, I move at a bovine pace: meander….pause, meander….pause. Just occasionally I’ll kick my heels up and snort - metaphorically, of course. I set little store by the fiddly predictions of an average daily horoscope and though I’ll admit to displaying some of the characteristics typically attributed to my astrological birth sign, as many others fail to describe me. Whether it’s down to being born a bull or not, mostly I just love cows.

There is something fundamentally therapeutic and reassuring about being close to cows - even without cuddling them, which for their sake I’d likely draw a line at. They are ultimately serene: still and dignified, with an air of knowing - perhaps some noble truth - like bovine Buddhas in whose presence one feels nourished, in context and at peace. Clearly, being an inner city dweller offers little opportunity to get among the herd but any country holiday walk that’s happened by a cow field has always for me been cause to linger and commune.

Last October I was made redundant and found out whilst on a half-term break in Wiltshire. Day one of a brief bucolic retreat and there I was, standing on a country path... getting chucked by phone, to birdsong. It was all fairly miserable: the timing, the setting, the penny dropping: my CEO’s mournful visage on a four by six inch screen betraying what was to come. The only thing that would have made the experience even worse was if I’d started crying so duly briefed and feeling perilously close to doing just that I cut the call short and began walking.

I didn’t know which direction led where but my legs needed to move. So off we crunched - my legs and me - along that gravel path, flanked by pretty thatched-roofed cottages on one side and a village green on the other, empty but for a see-saw and row of swings - such apt metaphors!. At the end of the path we reached a lane, veered right and slowly the horizon widened, the sky fanned out and there opened up a field. And in it, to my delight, was a herd of Friesians, scores of them - ambling, lowing, nibbling grass, all gloriously back lit by a setting autumn sun. I honestly can’t imagine that coming across a throng of wildebeest on an African plain would have been much greater a source of wonder than happening upon those heifers in a Wiltshire pasture at that moment. It was breathtaking.

Immediately the adrenaline that had infused me began to recede. My legs could be still. My breathing slowed. I rested my forearms on the field’s perimeter fence, leaning slightly over it and just took them in - all those beautiful animals, decoratively studding the earth. After a while, likely of me cooing in their direction, one cow peeled herself away from the herd and began to sashay slowly towards me. Delicately placing one heeled foot in front of the other, her ample hips and shoulders rolled from side to side as she moved and the huge dark eyes that coyly averted my gaze disappeared occasionally beneath the slow motion fluttering of her eye-lashes.

Eventually she came to a stop in front of me, placed one forefoot in front of the other, and curtseyed, low. And there on her forehead, distinct against the smooth black background of her hide, was a heart. A perfect white heart.

Call me mad, call me a cow cuddler (I never touched her - couldn’t reach), but to me, there and then, with the tectonic plates having shifted a little and my world view suddenly unfamiliar, it was a sign, a gesture, a little nod from nature and the universe that the heart, with all its infinite courage, love and fortitude still remained.

‘Have it, take it, know it’s there’, said the cow.

And I did.