Sheep in Motion

At the end of last year's winter, around August, I was doing exploration work in earnest. This was to increase our confidence in the geology surrounding the shaft area for the new underground mine. It was quite cold on some days and I learned to work standing sideways to avoid the wind.

The one borehole I logged was in a farmer's field of corn (mielies in Afrikaans). To get to the farm, you had to open a very stubborn gate made of wire and wooden poles. The catch was a piece of wood and wire under tension. If you let go of the catch at the wrong time, the wood would snap back and give you one hell of a black eye. It's friggin' hilarious for everyone but you :-). The borehole was at the edge of the field which had already been ploughed. It was covered in leftover corn stalk pieces and there were lots of sheep - mostly ewes and lambs. The sheep were grazing lazily, but were very annoying with their constant bleating. I wouldn't have minded if the bleating had some kind of harmony or rhythm, but each sheep had its own pitch and bleated randomly. I struggled at first to concentrate, but later just blocked it out.

It was a particularly hot day and every now and then a mini-twister would blow across the field. It was amazing to see this swirling mass of air, some as high as 6 metres, pick up dust and corn stalks and dance over the ground. Such a surreal experience. One of the smaller twisters ran right through a herd of sheep and they were not happy. I suddenly remembered that scene from Wizard of Oz where all the animals and people were floating past the house and couldn't stop laughing.

The best moment, however, happened almost in slow motion. An ewe to the left of me started bleating something fierce and was answered by a tiny lamb quite far away on my right. They started running towards one another and kept on bleating. It was like a scene from a movie where the mother and child are reunited after some tragic event. The sheep raced towards each other and they both stopped bleating once the ewe lovingly nudged the lamb. It was quite touching and supremely funny.

And, I disagree with the recent studies which found that extensive exposure to exploration geology can cause delusions and severe cases of outdoor fever (the opposite of cabin fever but with similar effects :-).