Read Eating Stone for Free Online

I would die.
    At the edge of a higher cliff, I lower the binoculars straight down. The magnified abyss makes me queasy. I turn the binoculars around and aim them at my feet. How very far away they are, claustrophobic in their socks. I peer down at a blackbrush, all woody matter and nearly leafless: winter sheep food, the edible desert. In the faraway end of the binoculars, the bush looks like a tiny silver cage for a hummingbird.
    The afternoon's long shadow swallows the canyon with an almost detectable speed. The sheep no longer lie in sunlight. One ewe rises quickly from her bed and looks at the river gorge as if suddenly remembering something she left on the bus. The others leave their beds and amble about. The flared-horn ram stands behind a bush, near the ewes, staring at their asses.
    “Let's see you get that cantaloupe off the ground,” I say to the chocolate ram as he rises. In one slow-motion push of his haunches, he leaps straight up a wall to a ledge above the bed area.
    Map the day trails of a mixed group of desert bighorns and you will quickly see that ewes instigate “aimed” motion, the movement from one place to another. When a ram leaves a group, none of the other sheep follows. If you are anthropomorphizing about gender, this may set to rest once and for all who exactly is in charge around here.
    Ears forward, body and stare fixed along a distinct line of sight, the first ewe off her bed now holds an attention posture.
    With her gaze, she tells the others that she intends to move soon and which direction she will take. When she moves, the others follow … well, like sheep.
    In their liquid leaps, eleven animals flow up a rock face to a narrow shelf below a steep arroyo. They pretend to act like a bunch of chewing herbivores. In fact, a bit of hell is breaking loose.
    The flared-horn ram rushes at a female and singles her out from the herd. She bolts off at full speed. She careens and zigzags across the ledge, veering sharply around shrubs and boulders like a barrel-racing quarter horse at a rodeo. The ram is on her tail at every turn. When she pauses, he tries to mount her, but she wheels around to face him off and won't stand still.
    Pursued closely by her suitor, the ewe weaves back and forth around the shelf of rock. Sometimes they pass within inches of its lip and an abrupt drop to the river, saved by their agility and the pure luck of galloping lust. The ram's strategy is called a “rape chase,” or “coursing.” In some cases, coursing works. Often the ewe rejects his attempts to mount, or the dominant, guardian ram broadsides the younger male and sends him sprawling.
    The chase lasts for over eight minutes. Then the ewe leaps up a boulder, where the chocolate ram happens to be standing. There she stops, her sides heaving.
    When the chasing ram spots the big chocolate male, I swear I hear a meek little Oops! bleat. In a split-second about-face, he whirls around and bolts straight toward the other ewes. His arrival splits the group apart and sends everyone fleeing in different directions. He dashes about, madly charging butts.
    The chocolate ram, the tending, courting dominant, stands on the boulder with the tired ewe. He stretches his back and pees. He noses her flanks and pushes his chest against her rump. She half-jumps and lifts her tail. He noses and pushes her again. Then he mounts and humps her atop a rock the size of a Yugo.
    Back at home, my services as goose whisperer are no longer required. The “hunters” have not returned, and the big birds peacefully track the arc of the day with their flights from field to river and back.
    The canyon country sprawls under a tepid sun and ten years of drought, which has left hardly a stick of vegetation. I sit on the deck and draw optimistic pictures of desert bighorns eating the bounty of less desertified times. Below the house, across the valley, a coyote throws her song to the other side of the river. The high red bluffs throw the song back.