Wanderer
Legacy Name: madily5420

She wasn’t content to laze in the sun. Her explorations started local. Running to the far side of the barn to find what lay in the shadows on the other side. Following a butterfly through a gap in the fence and coming face to face with a deer. Sticking her nose under the water of the pond and letting the tiny silver fish tickle her nostrils.

Her first really grand adventure came when she snuck into the back of the farmer’s truck, claiming the title of world’s first calf to travel 20 miles inside a moving vehicle without being stuffed in the back of a stuffy trailer.

The sights! The smells! It was another world, one heavy with new possibilities.

She couldn’t return to a dull life of chewing the cud, not when there were so many unknown places to explore. She felt a pang of regret for leaving without saying goodbye to her mother but knew in her heart that Mother would understand. Mother was happy in a quiet life. Wanderer never could be.

She let the sun and stars be her guides. Nature always offered something good to eat and when she could not find a bed of hay or moss, there were always bags of human garbage as a last resort. They were soft and she could always go for a swim to wash the smell away.

The months passed and Wanderer grew.

As a calf, she’d been quite good at avoiding the attention of humans but this was getting difficult. Fine breeding had given her the blazing orange coat for which her breed was known. It was good for a farmer who didn’t want passing cars to strike a bovine escape artist but not so great for a cow simply wanting to be left alone.

She avoided humans during the day and learned to keep to the edges of their cities. Autumn was a friend that provided good camouflage and ample apple treats.

Then winter came.

Cold and hungry, she resigned herself to approaching a lone cabin at the edge of a frozen waterfall.

The hermit who lived there had been an accomplished explorer once. An accident high up in the mountains had taken the lower half of his left leg…and very nearly taken his life.

His last horse had died of old age nearly a year ago. With a bad leg and obsolete trapping skills nobody in the modern city desired, he barely scraped enough money together for his daily bread and beans.

The skinny cow that wandered up to the porch seemed like a gift from above. He sat in the rocker he’d carved with his own two hands, puffing away at his pipe and marveling at his good fortune.

He kept a stock of good, clean hay in his small stable – it made good mattress stuffing. Wanderer could not resist the sweet promise of food and a warm, sheltered place to sleep.

The man rambled on about a treasure high in the mountains, laying out a map and talking to Wanderer as if she were a person. Wanderer was fascinated by that map. She could see that part of the river she’d already traveled, all the way back to the farm of her birth.

The man had never seen any animal…not even his trusty hound…look on a human-made object with such obvious intelligence. The sketch was a copy he’d drawn from his original. He left it there on the floor for Wanderer to study.

Much to his disappointment, the cow was gone in the morning.

So was the map.

Wanderer treated that magical paper with the respect a greedy man would have for a bar of gold. When she had to stop and eat, she would find a few dry stones and use them to weigh the paper down so the wind wouldn’t steal her prize.

She saw the stinging sands of the desert, the clinging muds of the river and the swinging vines of a rainforest jungle. She always found tasty things to eat and curious creatures to observe but there was one thing she questioned whether she would ever find.

A home.

The thought weighed on her mind. No matter where she went, no matter how lovely the location or how good the food supply, she would eventually grow tired of her surroundings and move on.

She began to figure into human legends. She was mostly spotted by drunk men who were just as convinced they’d seen Big Foot in front of them at the gas station…but there will always be those who believe a local legend as truth.

Wherever you may wander, may you always find your way back home.

C R E D I T S

profile | Paula
center map | Paula
other maps and patterns | digital curio @ etsy
journal vector | freepik
photos | subeta
story | Pureflower