I first heard about visiting goats from an interview on our local radio station. It was only a few weeks since my daughter, Sky Velvet, had passed away and I was sitting alone in the house I’d moved into with the man who would later become Evan’s father. He had two daughters younger than Sky, Mamie and Samantha, and he’d taken them to a street fair on Central Avenue in Albuquerque.
Everything felt wrong without Sky.
I can still picture myself at the kitchen table turning on the radio and realizing I was hearing a live broadcast from the street fair. The radio had become my constant companion—both a source of comfort and pain connecting me to the outside world I then rarely felt like joining. Music and children’s laughter in the background almost compelled me to change the station but a sweet voice speaking about newly born baby goats kept me tuned in. The voice was Nancy Coonridge’s and she went on to describe the remote farm where she lived with almost a hundred goats as well as a few herd dogs, pigs and chickens. People from around the world came to live, work and, I would later learn, to heal at The Coonridge Goat Farm.
I looked up the farm quickly with the first spark of intention I’d felt since Sky’s passing and, in that moment, knew I wanted to go to that farm and be with those goats. I wrote to Nancy and then found myself, a few weeks later, surrounded by scores of sweet and silly goats. Before breakfast, we were shown how to milk the many new goat mamas by a young man named Alex Vincent. I immediately dubbed him “Goatboy” and the name has carried forward these nine years of our friendship.
Those first mornings at The Coonridge Goat Farm, Alex taught us the importance of bringing a cup of strong coffee from Nancy’s early morning kitchen with us to the goats since breakfast wouldn’t be served until all of the mamas were milked and set off to roam the high desert with their guardian dogs. Alex demonstrated how to entice these milking mother goats to their milking stalls with small buckets of cottonseed. He even showed us how to squeeze fresh goat milk into our coffee cups straight from their teats. I was surprised at how sweet the milk was and learned from Alex that goat milk only takes on its strong flavor after a few days.
I was painfully sad during this visit to The Coonridge Goat Farm. But, at the same time, I felt like I’d entered another world, another reality—one where I didn’t feel so isolated in my pain and where my story was part of everyone’s story. The moment when I first recognized a brief reconnection to the rest of the world was when I’d just collapsed onto a picnic bench outside of Nancy’s kitchen. I’d left the others eating lunch inside so that I could deal with a wave of excruciating and intense longing for my daughter. As I looked up the hillside and my eyes blurred with forever tears, I witnessed the arrival of a tiny, delicate creature making its way down the rocky terrain.
I ran to find Nancy and tell her that a baby deer was near her house. When she saw it she smiled and explained that this must be the baby of one of her mama goats who’d disappeared a few days earlier and now was returning to the farm with her offspring.
I remember thinking that Sky had left this universe only a few weeks before and that this new being—this amazing creature—had just entered it a few days ago. Everything felt surreal and bittersweet.
This feeling remained as we nursed the baby goats with bottles of milk, as we scooped up the goat poop with shovels, sometimes even laughing at the goats’ silliness, and as we celebrated Alex’s 21st birthday with sweet wine and sacred tobacco while he also mourned the passing of his father a few months before.
I asked Nancy while we were hiking around the farm what kind of people came to her farm to work with the goats and she answered simply, “People like you. People who need to heal.” When I asked her why she was able to understand and even embrace those of us dealing with such grief and loss, she told me that her mother had passed away when she was five years old.
Then there was the arrival of Jane to New Mexico while I was highly pregnant with Evan. Jane and Alex had met during college and she’d come to join him at our small farm near Albuquerque for a few days before Alex took her with him to work at The Coonridge Goat Farm. Jane later became “Goatgirl” to me.
Jane and Alex often came to stay with us when they were in Albuquerque. On one of these visits, Jane and Alex brought us Nancy’s gift of three baby goats. We named the two sister goats Evening and Ebony. And the third goat, with marks on her that reminded me of lighting, we named Electra.
A year later, Jane was visiting our farm and I awoke to see her doodling magnificently in our kitchen. I remarked, “You could illustrate a children’s book.” She asked if I had one in mind and I told her I did but could never seem to find the time to sit down and write. She offered to play with Evan while I did just that and the first version of Evan and the Skygoats was on my computer a few hours later.
After I’d written Evan and the Skygoats, I shared the project with my friend and artist Ophelia Cornet. I told her about the Marc Chagall paintings that I’d most identified with in those first years after my daughter passed away. I’d frequently felt like I was floating above myself or at least floating above the rest of the world. I was often torn between wanting to join Sky “in the sky” and trying to stay on this earth with the rest of the family and friends I so dearly loved.
Chagall’s paintings, filled with floating figures being held by earthbound energy and mixed in with sweet goats and colorful creatures, were the point of departure for Ophelia’s illustrations. Ophelia then developed her own unique style of illustration and brought Evan and the Skygoats to life beyond my words. One can still see Ophelia’s homage to Chagall in this illustration of Evan’s mom floating above the farm while Evan’s dad holds her with one hand and Evan with the other.
This journey of healing is ongoing, but I’m grateful that I’ve stayed in this world to mother another child and to tell my stories once again. I am forever thankful for every thoughtful person and every sweet creature who has helped me accept and even embrace words as ancient as my mind can imagine such as, “The only constant in the world is change.”
Skykisses forever.
V.