I really must stop imagining negative things. Clearly, if I believe that visualizing dreams can make them come true, I must accept the corollary. If I keep thinking about bad things happening, then they will. Truly, the power of the mind is awesome.
We actually managed to get Duc and Valentine on their leads with very little aggravation. No head-butts, no broken shins. It was a breeze. Somehow, although I had intended to take Valentine, predicting that he would be the easier one to handle, I somehow found myself slipping a lead on Duc as he presented his head to me and surprisingly didn’t flinch when I put my arm round his neck. Simon just as easily got hold of Valentine, and we headed off out of the gate.
Duc, as he had on his previous excursion, immediately set about trying to eat every green thing within sight, so Simon went ahead with Valentine, to try to encourage a little more orderly walking-in-a-line. So far, so good. Duc agreed to follow while his mouth was full, with intermittent lurches to the side to get another mouthful of juicy clover to keep him going. Ahead of us, Simon and Valentine strolled happily along, and I muttered inane comments to Duc in the vain belief that the constant sound of my voice would be calming and reassuring.
Now whilst I might have been able to convince rooms’ full of early years practitioners that I was calm, knowledgeable and in control, (whilst secretly panicking) during training sessions in the not-too-distant past, I suspect that Duc has a more highly developed ability to detect fear. He was edgy. I was edgy. He started breathing faster. My pulse rate increased. Breaking all known laws of time and space, the distance to our intended destination increased with every step we took nearer to it.
And then – just as I had imagined, expected, predicted – at the point where I needed him to follow me up a short steep gap in a ridge, he got round behind me, stumbled up and down the bank, and because I was unsteady and twisted round awkwardly, I stupidly didn’t hold on to the lead tightly enough. “Oh f*ck!!” I heard shouted by a voice somewhere, that turned out to be my own. And he was off…..
My god, llamas can move fast when they want to. He ran a few yards and turned to look back at us. Was that panic or triumph I could read in his wide-open eyes? I took a few steps towards him, Simon shouting something helpful at me like, “Get hold of him”. He started to run again. I stood transfixed in useless horror, as he picked up speed and headed back the way we had come and round a corner. I ran to try to keep him in sight – knowing I could do nothing about it except watch the drama unfold before me. Then in a moment of silent clarity, as I stood midway between Simon (trying to keep hold of an increasingly anxious Valentine), and the retreating rear end of Duc heading towards the road, I felt a sense of relief as I surrendered to whatever was about to happen. I could not control it. I could only respond to it, and deal with it as best I could. What could be more simple?
Duc reached the next bend and stopped. From where he stood, he could see the road and the route back to the security of his field. In the other direction he could see me, and further behind me, Simon and Valentine. He hesitated -confused, uncertain. The birds stopped singing. The insects stopped buzzing. The world held its breath.
And just then Valentine, dear lovely sweet Valentine, let out a very strange noise. A sort of anxious distress call, that Duc seemed to hear. He turned towards us, and in a flurry of dust, with his lead flying out horizontally in his wake, he galloped back in our direction. What an amazing and beautiful sight. He looked magnificent. Free and wild, and powerful.
Again, Simon shouted with a helpful suggestion. “Grab his lead!” He had to be joking. Duc was approaching at what must have been at least 30mph. No way was I going to even contemplate trying to grab his lead. I stood back out of his way as he hurtled past me towards Simon and Valentine. And then he veered to his right, straight down a line of vines into the very middle of a vineyard.
I contemplated the logistics of the situation. If I walked towards him he would move away. I couldn’t head round him in a circle as the parallel lines of the vines dictated only up and down movement. He stood still. He nibbled at the new shoots on one of the vines. He moved on to the next one. And the next. He must have thought he’d found the perfect restaurant, with the tastiest dishes laid out in easy-to-reach lines at perfect munching height. I glimpsed a vision of the rest of a long day spent following Duc up and down the leafy lines of growing vines, always a few steps out of reach, as he systematically transformed the vineyard into a petrified forest of woody stumps.
Realising that there was nothing I could do, I stood still. Simon couldn’t help to head him off – he was still trying to keep hold of a restless and distressed Valentine. So I stood still, and somewhat pathetically called to Duc to “come here”. And, much to my astonishment, he actually did. He stopped munching, and just trotted up to me. As Simon later said, he just ‘gave himself up’. I picked up his lead, turned around and uttered the immortal words “Walk on!”
Of course it wasn’t completely plain sailing thereafter, but when we reached the dodgy steep ridge, and Duc baulked again I was ready for it. I had virtually tied the lead around my hand. I was NOT going to let go again. My panic brain had calmed down, and my thinking brain had come back into action. I recalled Mike’s advice about getting reluctant llamas into a trailer. “If they won’t go, you’ll never be able to pull them. Just walk them around and let them check it all out. Walk them around as many times as it takes until they are sure it is OK, and when they are ready, they will go in. Just be prepared to take it slow”
So I let Duc circle around a few times. He stood, he looked at the track, he looked at me, he looked at Valentine safely up the ridge and heading away round the side of the wheat field. And, at last he followed me up. Praise the Lord!
Just the wheat field and the track to the gate and we would be there. At last the infinity of the experience slipped back into human time, and the final 200 metres or so took minutes rather than eons to traverse. We reached the gate to their verdant new home. We were in, the gate shut securely behind us. We walked on, up to the point where a bale of tasty hay awaited them, in a spot we had cleared under the shade of a large tree. “When shall we take their leads off? Simon asked me. “I already have”, I replied.
We spent the next couple of hours anxiously following Duc and Valentine around the Rough Land, as they explored the (very far apart) boundaries, tasted the huge variety of plant-life on offer, and emitted constant high-pitched hums to each other, as if discussing what on earth was going on. Suddenly the three-wire fence seemed pathetically inadequate compared to the solid wire netting we had used on the other field. It seemed entirely likely that Duc, in his desire to go ‘home’ to the other llamas would find a way through or under or over the new fence. And that Valentine, clearly intent on not letting Duc out of his sight, would follow him.
Eventually, driven by our own thirst and low blood-sugar levels, we decided to go away and come back to check on them in an hour or so. But even after finding they were still there, (and still humming frantically) when we returned, we found it very hard to take our final leave of the day, when the sun was setting over the blackening hills, and all good llamas should have been settling down to sleep.
This may very well be the steepest learning curve that we have ever attempted to ascend. I wonder, will we ever reach the elusive Plateau of Complacency?
