Milk of the Gods

My adventures in goat milking on Collins Farm, in five parts.

I. Inspiration
Food is delicious. We all know this. But there are some foods that are extra delicious, foods that make you drool at the very thought, foods that one would go through great lengths to obtain. These foods, of course, are different for each person. For me, chèvre, or goat milk cheese, is quite high up on the list.
Most people know goat cheese as feta, the tangy, crumbly stuff usually thrown on Greek salads and pizzas. Chèvre can also be made like cream cheese, a flavorful spread that’s excellent on toast, crackers, salad, apples and right off the knife. This substance is one of the things I would take onto a desert island; I would marry it if only it had a better personality; I would sell my own grandmother if it came right down to it (not really, but you get the picture). Actually, that’s the only downfall of chèvre: it’s darned expensive. At Safeway, a potato-sized log of low-quality goat cheese runs around five bucks. For a really good, locally made kind, you can pay three times that much. In fact, in my college days, my monthly grocery budget looked a little like this:
Fruits and vegetables (organic, of course): $60
Dry beans, rice, flour, tofu and yogurt: $50
Coffee: $20
Chèvre: $50
Well, something like that, anyway. Anyway, the point is, I like chèvre. Since coming to the farm, however, I’ve adopted a mostly local diet (my new motto is, “Will work for vegetables”), which meant no goat cheese. Until now.

II. The Goats

I have to admit that the goats have played a sadly minor role in my life on the farm so far. I don’t think I’ve even mentioned them on this blog before, and seeing as how everyone’s online these days, they’ve probably noticed that. So I’ll offer a formal apology and waste no more time in introducing them.

Miss G (left). This old goat belongs to Andrea, the fiercely independent mother of four who works with me at Arrowvale. In her prime, Miss G produced a gallon of milk a day, effectively nurturing Andrea's kids through their formative years in addition to her own. When Andrea moved into a house without a yard, Miss G shacked up here, where she seems pretty happy. She’s fourteen, which is older than goats are even supposed to live, but though she’s a gummy, graying, rack-of-bones old granny (probably a granny several times over, in fact), she is the indisputable matriarch of the goat pen. Miss G loves kale, sunflowers and banana peels, and will head-butt anyone who gets in the way of her eating her fill. She’s too old to be milked, so I’ll move on to the stars of this story.

Spotty (center). Surprisingly enough, Spotty is white with black and brown spots. This spring, she gave birth to two little white goats, who we recently weaned along with Dotty’s single offspring. (Among goats, giving birth to twins or even triplets is the norm.) Spotty is a friendly goat who keeps her beard clean and would never dream of stooping to the shenanagins of her younger pen-mate. She loves just about anything, especially squash, banana peels and carrots.

Dotty (right). True to her name, Dotty is black with white spots and crazy, but more like a motorcycle racer than an eccentric aunt. She wears a blue dog collar, which helps when you’re trying to catch her, but getting close enough in the first place is the real challenge. Dotty has simple tastes, preferring goat feed (grain) to most other foods, but likes to try what the other goats are eating so she can spit it on the ground and crush it under her hooves. She smokes Marlboros and has a tattoo of a snake on her left shoulder.

III. The Milk
A few fun facts about goats and their milk:
Goat milk is consumed by more people worldwide than cows' milk.
Goats are the earliest known domesticated farm animal.
Goat milk takes on the flavor of whatever the goat eats. If the goat has lots of sweet clover, the milk will be sweet. If she gets into something really bitter, watch out.
The ancient Greeks and pagans worshiped a god named Pan, who had the legs and feet of a goat and played the original pan flute. He was notorious for his lustfulness, going around making love to nymphs and instigating orgies. It is said that in order to remove this clearly dangerous being from the cultural lexicon, early Christians modeled the devil after the goat.
In Hindu mythology, the god Shiva also appears with the horns of a goat or bull, an incarnation known as “Pashupati”.
Male goats (“bucks”) smell foul. I’ve never smelled one, but numerous sources have told me they are fond of rubbing urine in their beards and generally being disgusting. If you keep a buck around the doe goats, their milk will also start to smell this way.
Goat milk can be consumed by people with an intolerance to cow milk, but scientists aren’t really sure why.


IV. The (not so) Tragic Departure of the Little Goats
All summer long, Andrea and I have been eying the udders of Dotty and Spotty wistfully. Their three young ones, given the opportunity to nurse long past the time they might have otherwise been weaned, got all the milk. There wasn’t anything we could do about it but laugh at the overgrown kids when they crawled on their knees to get under their short mothers. Really though, these little goats were a pain in the neck. They crawled through the manger where we would feed them and stand in everyone's food, pooping on it and causing Miss G to roll her eyes in disgust. They dug a hole under their little barn so they could escape. And they cried whenever they thought they could trick somebody into feeding them.
Finally, last week, the little goats found a new home (a relative who needed them to give her bored border collie something to herd), so we undertook the difficult task of separation. The three little ones went down to a pen by the barn, and the moms stayed in their pen at the top of the campground. They cried for a day straight and Spotty escaped several times to go see her little ones. It was all very heartbreaking and would have made a very good Disney film where the baby goats are sold to a cruel circus master and embark on a long journey back home. In reality, all that happened was that Spotty and Dotty seemed to get over it pretty quickly, and the little ones started to get hoarse, sounding like squawking seagulls by the end of the second day. In the meantime, I closed in on our milky bounty at last.

V. The Milking
The day of the first milking was also Andrea’s day off, which put the duty of training me on Ann’s shoulders. I was desperately in need of instruction, considering I’d never gotten milk out of anything but a plastic bottle and my interaction with the goats has been limited to giving them their grain, filling their water bucket, and poking kitchen scraps to them through the fence. In preparation for milking, I found a four-gallon bucket and scrubbed it clean, then reported back to Ann. She eyed my bucket doubtfully. “Don’t you think that’s a little large?” she asked, politely. I shrugged my shoulders, so without another word we headed over to the goat pen.
Spotty and Dotty are pygmy goats, which means their heads reach no higher than four feet, and their udders dangle a scant eight inches or so above the ground. In fact, pygmies aren't even bred to be dairy goats; they're supposed to serve as petting zoo animals or as companions for lonely elephants in captivity. I observed their unfortunate lack of height when the first goat was on the milking bench in front of us, and immediately realized why Ann had had doubts about my optimistically sized bucket. I went to the kitchen for a smaller plastic pail and returned.
Spotty was the first one to come through the gate, so we started on her. Luring her onto the stand with grain, we placed a halter around her head. I tried to hold her still while Ann, who grew up on a dairy farm and ran one here for fifteen years, bent over behind the goat and began pumping out white jets of liquid like she was brushing her teeth. Good, I thought. This isn’t so hard after all. After a bit, she gave me a turn, so we switched positions. I placed my hands on the two fleshy teats and squeezed.
Nothing happened. I tried again, putting a little bit more muscle into it this time. Still nothing. Ann tried to explain how the trick was in closing your fingers one at a time, starting with the top one. I couldn’t seem to relay this information to my fingers, which simply pressed the teat uselessly into my palm. I had a the sudden, draining feeling that this was one of those skills bred into farmers, like knowing when the rains are coming or how to grow a pumpkin to the size of a wheelbarrow, and I would never get it.
In the meantime, the good-natured Spotty was putting up a heck of a fight. She and Dotty hadn’t been milked before, and I imagine the feeling of it was pretty weird. She kicked, she squirmed, she shook her head. I stayed stubbornly in place, my hands between her back legs, trying to gain in thirty seconds a skill that I knew would serve me well for the rest of my life. All I could manage, though, was to avoid her hooves when they came flying at me.
At that point, Ian, a friendly Australian from the Yukon who is on an extended camping stay here with his family, strolled up. “Want me to hold a leg for you?” he inquired. “Sure,” Ann and I said, and he grabbed one of her back legs. That put an end to the kicking. I applied myself with renewed determination, squeezing and pulling and muttering under my breath. Then, suddenly, I saw a white mist erupt from one of her teats. I tried to duplicate this result on the other side. After a few tries, a small stream of milk sprayed sideways into the air. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
When Dotty got on the stand, the project turned into a group effort. Reinforcements were called; Bob stood at Dotty’s head with Ann while John, Ann’s brother, and another fellow he works with joined Ian in holding various moving parts of the goat. A few other campers strolled up to watch this diversion. Farmer Bill, a neighbor who cuts our hay, rolled by in his tractor and threw in a few pieces of sage advice. I could feel sweat tricking down my hairline, fueled by frustration and the bright early September sun. After I'd gotten about half a cup, I handed it off to Ann. She milked most of it out, then gave me one last turn. I gripped her udder more confidently this time, observing that it was significantly less full-feeling now. We were nearly there. I squeezed out a couple of jets of milk, and Dotty kicked the pail over on me.

The next day, Andrea instructed me in the fine art of milk storage before we got to milking. In essence, always use a cloth to filter your milk, and use it up within a couple of days or it starts to get, as she put it, “goaty”. This factor may explain why goat’s milk isn’t popular in developed countries like the US and Canada, where milk travels long distances and sits on shelves before being consumed in a deteriorated, super-goaty state.
After we had gathered our clean containers, our udder-cleaning cloth and the all-important grain bait for the goats, Andrea and I went out to the pen. Spotty volunteered first again, hopping up onto the new milking bench that Bob had constructed the night before. Rather than hunching behind the goat to milk, Andrea showed me a different technique – sitting next to the goat, facing the rear, one shoulder into her side. I gave it a shot and slowly but steadily began coaxing milk into the pail. With my ear to her belly, I could hear the food gurgling down to her stomach and smell that clean barn-y smell that is one of the best parts of being on a farm. Gradually, I developed a rhythm, which worked for about ten seconds until my hands started to cramp up. Andrea expertly finished the job and we moved on to rebel Dotty.
Goats are smart, and Dotty figured out this game fast. At the sound of grain hitting the feed bucket, all three goats rush to the gate like cats after a can of tuna. Since Spotty is the boldest, she usually gets there first and slips out before the others when we open the gate. Dotty, though, hangs back, looking at me with wild eyes that seem to say “Come on in here and catch me. I dare you.” So I slip in, shutting the gate behind me, and face off with the little black goat. We size each other up, locking eyes and planting our feet firmly on the ground. Dotty makes a feint to the left. I charge directly forward, putting the rock pile in the center of their pen between us. She gallops joyously around it and to the other side of the pen. I follow slowly, keeping low to the ground, arms outstretched. Cornered, she makes a desperate lunge to sail by me. I grab her collar on the fly and stumble sideways for a few feet as she continues her trajectory. Andrea cheers and opens the gate, and I drag her to it. Before long, she’s on the milking bench. The fight isn’t over, but it’s certainly less intense than yesterday’s. Half an hour - and a few sore fingers - later, I’m in the kitchen following Andrea’s recipe for home made chocolate pudding.
This pudding is deliciously rich and not a bit goaty, but my craving for chèvre has not yet been satisfied (it takes at least a gallon of milk to make cheese, and we get about six cups a day). The adventure, in other words, is not over yet. But my fridge is now stocked with jars of milk and the time of the cheesemaking is near. In the meantime, go make some chocolate pudding – just be sure to use whole milk for maximum fatty goodness.

Andrea’s Fabulous Chocolate Pudding

1 c sugar
1/4 c flour
½ c cocoa powder
4 c whole milk

Whisk together dry ingredients in a small, heavy-bottomed pan. Add enough milk to make a paste (about 1 ½ cups) and whisk until lump-free. Add the rest of the milk and whisk smooth. Heat over a medium-high flame until mixture boils, stirring constantly. This will take about 20 minutes. (We recommend doing your pudding exercises in this time: squats, leg stretches, curls with heavy objects lying around the kitchen. You can then enjoy pudding guilt-free. Alternatively, grab your internet access device of choice and watch this video repeatedly.) Once boiled, remove from heat and cover, stirring occasionally until cool. Eat warm or refrigerate and consume within three days.

And the winner is...

I'm publishing a blog post rerun tonight. Now, I don't normally believe in reruns, in fact I rank them right down there with tick bites and GM corn. But this may be the most exciting thing I've ever written - not for most people, probably, but for the simple fact that it is actually the first bit of writing I've ever made money on. Yes, that's right, this little blog has now been recognized and awarded through the University of Oregon's study abroad program. They asked for an entry of a blog post written about a study abroad trip taken in the last year, and I had a lot posts to choose from. I polished up one I wrote after going on one of my weekend homestays in India, and assumed I'd either pushed my luck too far in submitting an hour before the deadline or they hated it so much they didn't even think it warranted a response. Then, lo and behold, I received an email saying I'd won first place.
So, with no further ado, I give you the first ever re-run and first cash cow of NoTulips.


Spelling Lessons from Krishna

My second weekend homestay is to take place at the home of a farmer-turned-artist who is a friend of Sunita, the woman I’m working and living with during my three-month internship. She makes the arrangements that Friday and, after finding the right bus, I’m only two skull-rattling hours away from a little weekend relaxation. Luckily, I get a seat, and enjoy a stimulating conversation with two young schoolboys who quiz me on my spelling, finding my American method of spelling words like “color” and “favorite” absolutely hilarious.
When I finally get off the bus in the city of Sagar, it’s nearly dark. I approach the row of rickshaw drivers at the bus stop, clutching the piece of paper Sunita gave me with my host’s address and phone number. I tell the nearest driver where I want to go: Radhakrishna’s house in a nearby village called Banghadde. Houses don’t have numbers here, and streets rarely have names, but Sunita told me everyone here knows where this house is. Radhakrishna is an artist of some local fame and one of the prominent landowners in his village.
We take off down the tree-lined avenue, going past a giant shrine featuring lions’ heads, gods, goddesses and various other brightly colored carvings. The streets are packed with vendors, women with baskets on their heads, dirty kids, bicycles, motorbikes, trucks and automobiles. After a few minutes, we pull up in front of a fenced-off building at the outskirts of town. Sunita had told me the village I was headed to is a few kilometers away from Sagar, but I forget that fact for the moment, excited by the fact that I see a sign, written in English, announcing this as the place of Shri Ramakrishna. I pay off the driver, extract my backpack and camera bag from the back of the rickshaw, and head toward the gate.
A bunch of young men are milling around the entrance to Shri Ramakrishna’s. I hang back, uncertain of how to best make my presence known, until one notices me and beckons me into the covered porch. He pulls me up a plastic chair behind a table and urges me to sit down. Then he leans over the table, and the interrogation begins.
“From where do you come? What is your business here? Who are you?” Somehow, this doesn’t feel right. I try to explain that I’m a guest of Radhakrishna for the weekend and if I could just talk to him everything will be ok. Nothing seems to get through.
Finally, I’m ushered into a small office in a room off the porch. Inside, there are two desks; behind one sits a middle-aged man with intense dark brown eyes. Between his eyes there’s a bright red dot, signifying religious faith. He wears a powder-blue shirt with a funny short collar, and his hair and mustache are neatly trimmed. I take a seat across from him. The blue walls lit by fluorescent bulbs glare down at me. Behind the desk is a framed black and white photo of a guru, hung with strands of plastic flowers and beads.

“Who?” The man behind the desk asks when I tell him my weekend host’s name.
“I’m staying here this weekend,” I insist. When would they stop this rigmarole and take me to my room?
“You can’t stay here, madam,” the man informs me. “Our rooms are for students only.”
Much back and forth arguing ensues. All his words sound like they’re spoken through a large potato lodged at the back of his mouth, and according to him, my English is equally awful. Indians have a way of integrating English words into their native language, and when faced with a foreigner, they simply mash together all the English words they know and leave out or mumble the intervening ones. The result is, at best, difficult to follow. Of course, it doesn’t help that my accent is something they’ve never encountered before – Sagar is not a city that tourists usually find.
Eventually, our semblance of conversation unravels our mutual confusion. It turns out that I am speaking to the director of Shri Ramakrishna Residential School, an ashram for boys. The man whom I’ve utterly befuddled is Thimmappa, the director of the school. Apparently, the rickshaw driver thought Ramakrishna is close enough to Radhakrishna and dumped me here. In my excitement, I hadn’t noticed the difference in spelling either. Maybe those boys on the bus would have. A sense of panic begins to rise in my throat.
Luckily, Thimmappa finds me amusing, if somewhat of an encumbrance. He can’t host me at the ashram, but neither will he hear of my ridiculous schemes to leave, find another rickshaw, and travel to Banghadde at this late hour. It is now about seven in the evening, but according to him, it’s a dangerous trip fraught with unknown danger for a young female traveling alone – the least of which may be tigers and rickshaw accidents.
One cultural trait of urban Indians I’m swiftly discovering is that they have an intense fear of forests, darkness and unknown rural stretches. So no matter how many ways I try to insist, Thimmappa does not believe there exists in this city one rickshaw driver with the courage to take me to my destination, or even somebody with a car I could hire. Tut-tutting at my foolishness, he calls in one of the half-dozen men who are now plastered to the doorway, staring at the alien in their midst, to bring me a cup of coffee. I tell him that I don’t want any (Indian coffee is usually awful, made by boiling instant coffee, milk and tons of sugar) but I’m swiftly realizing I’m not in control of the situation. Thimmappa is already on the phone to the English teacher he’s decided I’ll be spending the night with. We can discuss the possibility of transport to Banghadde in the morning.
Thimmappa seems to think the situation is under control, but I have fears of my own. I’ve traveled before. I’ve been trained to stick to plans, avoid talking to strangers, and to mistrust unknown situations. My mind is made up: I don’t trust this place, I don’t trust Thimmappa, and I certainly don’t trust his English teacher. I need to get out.
I get firm with him, demanding that he call the real Radhakrishna, whose number is on the piece of paper that is suddenly my only lifeline. But when he calls, Radhakrishna is not home, and his daughter doesn’t speak English and is immune to my pleas to be rescued. I try calling Sunita, but she can’t help me at this point. Rickshaw drivers who don’t know their way around and overly hospitable ashram directors were not in our plan. But she seems calm, not understanding my desperation and panic. Why not just wait until the morning?
By the time the coffee arrives, my schedule has been reworked for me. The English teacher has been contacted and will be here in fifteen minutes, but as far as I could tell, no attempts were made to find a driver willing to take me to my homestay. I have now reached the pinnacle of internal rage and have to work to keep the desperation out of my voice. My coffee shakes in my hand. Somehow, the stubborn but placid man behind the desk has elicited a level of frustration in me previously only witnessed by algebra teachers and my parents when I was a teen. I feel like throwing the cup of boiling hot coffee at him. Who was he to tell me I couldn’t pay whoever I want to get me out of this godforsaken place? Why was I so stupid to get myself in this situation in the first place? Why do all Indians have such silly, identical names?

All there is to do now is wait. Thimmappa sits back in his chair and places the tips of his fingers together. He considers me, observes my frustration with slight amusement. I stare back defiantly. It’s awkwardly silent for a moment, but he isn’t gearing up for a fifteen-minute staring contest. He’s preparing a lecture.
He quietly gestures to the picture on the wall above him.
“Do you know who this is?”
“No,” I tell him. Who cares, I think to myself.
“This is Shri Ramakrishna.” Oh. The photo looks about fifty years old and the man pictured is no spring chicken. This guy isn’t having any weekend guests.
“In 1839,” he says, repeating the date for clarity, “he went to Amerika and brought respect to the Hindu religion. He did this with a speech. In which, he call all the Amerikans ‘brothers and sisters’.” He pauses to take a deep breath, overwhelmed by the significance of it all. “Brothers and sisters,” he continues. “With this, he convince the Amerikans.”
I slowly warm up to the story. It turns out this guy Ramakrishna is the one who introduced Hinduism to the US and set up a bunch of ashrams and community centers there. He had many followers, including the Beatles and some of the more influential American yogis.
“You see,” Thimmappa continues, “Hindu religion is like an ocean. All the religions are in it. However, all other religions are only rivers. But all lead to God. Many ways, one God.” He goes on like this for a while, not preaching but explaining.
As he talks, I begin to consider the possibility Thimmappa isn’t so bad after all. I relax slightly, calmed by the chanting prayers of the boys in the next room. The crowd by the door slowly loses interest, and my unshaken coffee develops the smooth skin of boiled milk.

Before I can make a conclusive reassessment of my situation, however, the English teacher arrives. She’s extremely nice and acts like having me stay the night would be the best thing since Ramakrishna went to Amerika. I’m all ready to follow her out the door when the phone on the desk rings. Thimmappa holds up a finger as he talks, so we wait. When he hangs up, he informs me that they’ve drummed up a rickshaw driver who thinks he can manage the scary drive to Banghadde. Apparently, someone had been working behind the scenes.
A minute later, the driver is there, and I’m given the option of staying in Sagar or going off with him. As much as I like the English teacher, I realize I can’t pass up the opportunity to get to Radhakrishna’s, where they’re expecting me. More than that, I’m embarrassed at having mistrusted the ashram people and refused their hospitality. I thank everyone and climb in the rickshaw, a bit sorry to be leaving what was suddenly a safe haven.
As we rumble off toward Banghadde, I get a chance to process the whole experience. It’s one of the many times during my trip to India that I’m forced to admit I have been totally, completely and foolishly wrong about something. While I’d been scoffing at the rickshaw drivers for their forest-phobia, my fear of Indians is just as unfounded. No matter how much I’ve prepared myself for it and expected it, not a single person I’ve encountered here has tried to rob me, abduct me, or even take advantage of my confusion. And the overly cautious, callous exterior I’ve fostered is not only useless, it’s made me extremely impolite in the face of traditional Indian hospitality. While my actions this evening could be completely rationalized by a sensible need to look out for myself, there are lessons here that go beyond spelling words. Mistrusting somebody just because they happen to be male or Indian is as unfair here as it would be back home.
We’re on the highway now, the dark forest whizzing by. I can see the lights of Banghadde ahead of us. Through my weariness and feelings of being completely overwhelmed, one thought shines through: to survive my travels, I must allow myself some naievete, a healthy does of innocence. It’s the one thing people everywhere tend to forget – that although some individuals can’t be trusted, there are even more out there who just want to help. After all, as Ramakrishna would put it, we are all brothers and sisters.

Radhakrisna Banghadde, with some of his mud and plant-based paintings.

West Lawn: Death and Commerce in the American Landscape

[Note: This is an essay I wrote for my Contemporary American Landscapes class, in which we were assigned to take the bus to a random place in Eugene and write about what we found. It turned out a bit more morbid than I would have expected, but the results were interesting nonetheless.]


Any landscape architect wishing to achieve the stately, respectable, American appearance of West Lawn Memorial Park on Danebo Road can easily do so by mimicking the following design strategies. First, plant Douglas fir in a long, neat line near the busy road and wait sixty years for them to fatten. Clear the rest of the land and put in rows uniform headstones, and throw in a couple of American flags and a fake waterfall for ambiance. Then, be sure the cemetery is situated in a sprawling, industrial end of town, across the street from such barbed-wired establishments as Bad Bitch Choppers and Pacific Metals. It will easily be the most attractive enterprise in the area by simple process of elimination.
West Lawn’s unexpectedly dignified appearance is what first drew me in as I wandered up Danebo from West 11th last weekend. West Eugene is notorious for its sketchiness, and I’d arrived at its most distant fringe: the bus stop just past Wal-Mart, realm of speeding semis and disaffected young men in black hoodies. In this setting, West Lawn Memorial Park appeared a peaceful refuge. I paused for a moment on the narrow shoulder to appreciate the neat daffodil bed around the large sign at the entrance. Looking down, I noticed something misshapen and feathery by my feet. A dead bird. I didn’t know it yet, but that’s the closest encounter I would have with my own mortality at this thoroughly modern American cemetery.
“Cemetery,” of course, isn’t the term the West Lawn proprietors would prefer. The sign out front advertises “funerals, cremations, and memorial park,” dignifiedly refusing to allude to the unpleasantness of death with more descriptive words. This is a safe place, it seems to announce. We’re sorry you have to come here, but we do welcome your business.
It’s a Sunday – prime grave-visiting day – but there are only two cars in the West Lawn parking lot and they might as well belong to the former drivers belowground. The place is deserted. However, it’s not entirely unpleasant, either: The “park” lives up to its promise of shady trees, green lawns and inviting benches. Only a sign warning of a security camera in the parking lot reminds me that this is not a public space. At the top of the upward-sloping pavement is a red brick building with a slanted roof and generic stained-glass window. Though it at first appears to be a church, this is in fact a non-religious “Chapel of Memories” attached to the West Lawn office, part of the one-stop-shopping funeral package offered by the business.
I wander toward the waterfall nestled in a grove of trees between the parking lot and the grassy hillside of burial plots. Another sign tells me I’ve entered the Memorial Garden. A walkway meanders among shrubbery and shiny granite markers, most of which are blank, unwritten pages in the West Lawn death ledger. One is freshly engraved: “Teresa Morales, 1940-2009. Mamá siempre estarás en nuestro corazón,” it reads, the inscription accented by carved roses. I move on, drawn to the sound of the waterfall, which almost manages to drown out the hum of traffic on Danebo. Peering inside the water, I spot a plastic koi fish on a pole, disfigured by a healthy growth of algae.
The Memorial Garden is not disorderly but lacks cohesion, its elements holding in common only their newness, like displays at a home and garden show. Next to the small pool is a wood gazebo with a bench inside, and next to that a stone box that looks like a chest of drawers (I later learn its name: "columbarium". The units inside are known as "niches" and can store the ashes of one to two people.) A little farther down the circular path is another stone box and cardboard sign: Private Mausoleum. Available for purchase.
Memory and sales just became too closely tied for my tastes. I exit the garden for the wide open space of the cemetery proper. A cold wind sweeps over the grass, fluttering plastic flowers and miniature flags. In the distance, I can make out the roof of a Target store. Stenciled wooden signs demarcate sections of the graveyard in a fashion reminiscent of a Disneyland parking lot. Only here, instead of leaving your car in "Goofy," you can abandon your carcass in "David" or "Peace." For children, there's "Baby Circle," watched over by a statue of a marble angel kissing a fawn. One segment has bushes cut into a strange funnel shape; another is shaped into a mound with a single tree growing in the center. Is it the tree of life? A symbol of the lone individual reaching toward heaven?
I’m stirred from my ponderings by a blue Pontiac that drives up suddenly, a white-haired woman at the wheel. Disregarding the parking lot, she takes advantage of the cemetery's paved lanes and pulls up to a point near the headstone of her choice. It takes her less than three minutes to exchange the flowers and get back in her car.

What does the landscape of West Lawn reveal about Eugenians, living and dead? As J.B. Jackson, the great American landscape critic, has pointed out, Americans – and Europeans before us – have a long tradition of collecting populations of the deceased and placing them under the ground. Traditionally, those with higher social status were buried closer to the church, but in general we prefer to hide away these groupings of bodies, behind a glade of trees or outside of town somewhere. In these locations, plots tend to be rectangular, like the squared-off spaces – houses, fields – in which their occupants spent their lives.
Landscape truly is history made visible, as Jackson said, and this modern graveyard reflects changes in American habits and values over the past hundred or so years. It’s egalitarian, yes – now everyone can be buried near a church. Of course, that church can’t be a real one in the sense of being affiliated with a religious institution. That would narrow the customer base.
So religion, which once was integral to culture, has been reduced to a representation in this landscape. Death is a business here, made abstract by the mingling of cash with the respectable facade of the cemetery. Walking through, I don’t feel morbid, just curious. Who would want to be buried in this place? My best theory is that few actually chose this end. Perhaps these dead are all relations of the country’s transitory class, people who came here to seek their fortune and moved on long ago, choosing an economical site on cheap West Eugene land for a quick and easy burial. The lack of family plots may be evidence of this theory. Or maybe these discrete, nearly identical units are simply indicators of a society that simultaneously values individuality and conformity, where a membership to any community is a burden but standing out comes at a cost. By becoming conspicuous consumers – of fancy caskets, a “niche” near the waterfall, dozens of flowers – even in death, we make that passing less threatening for ourselves and easier for loved ones to bear.
Judging by the abundance of blank plots and markers in West Lawn, its owners are at least subconsciously counting on the next generation of dead sharing the values of those already in the ground. They’re not the only ones, though; we all depend on the eventuality of these slots becoming filled. Babies are born each day, newcomers fill apartment complexes and suburbs. We always need more space.
I watch the lady in the Pontiac drive off and turn to leave as well. As I do, I notice a backhoe in the next field over, pouring out a cloud of black smoke that stands out against the grey sky. It doesn’t take long for me to figure out what it’s doing over there in that far corner of the hedged-in lawn. Shovelful after shovelful, a new grave is quietly being dug.