
Recent blog posts have featured my life with my animals at Las Golondrinas and one post featured report of visitors who came to ‘meet’ my animals.
There can be magic in the encounter of humans and animals. When animals have learned through sustained exposure that humans are trustworthy, and humans approach with simple curiosity, open-hearts and joy, treasure is found. That treasure to be found, rare and priceless, is our natural selves.
By contrast, the great bulk of modern life is unnatural. It’s pasturized, homogenized, sanitized, and digitized such that our artificial selves are more about image and style and glitz than what is real. In fact, ‘reality TV’ has now falsified the term, making even the language of reality phony.
So I was pleased when my impromptu ‘petting zoo’ at Las Golondrinas became a true reality show for three car loads of guests wanting to ’see’ the animals. I can talk about what happened, but prose and rhetoric pale in comparison to what I saw.
Simply put, the faces of those guests, children and young adults, in memorable non-verbal expressions, mark the magic of discovering what our artificial lives forget: Nature’s claim on the human heart . . .

Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine




