So, as I wind down Week 1 of Round America with a Duck (23 more to go!), themes are arising. There are lots of ways to live a life. Simple pleasures. Love prevails. Hope exists in the fact that things keep growing, even when we don’t always know where we’re going. And there are huge, real, possibly-insurmountable challenges to all of this.

As this baby goat on my lap got its little horns burned off yesterday (and another goat got castrated, and yes I saw both these procedures), I thought about how much I’m being challenged to practice radical nonjudgment. To strip myself from preconceptions. Be fully present in the moment and in other people’s truths. And accept that there is more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak (no, we haven’t skinned a cat, but we are about to kill a rooster and deliver its carcass to the exotic lion and tiger cat sanctuary down the road).

That little goat, post-procedure, fell asleep in my arms in the truck on the way back to the farm where I’m currently WWOOFing.

And that was that.