Over the ten years, I’ve probably got the most newspaper mileage out of pigs. Until recently, there were always two porkers here from spring to Thanksgiving. Of all the barnyard animals, they were the most fun_bright, playful, zestfully devoted to food and everything sensual. I remember them all with affection_Prosciutto and Pancetta, for instance, and Truffle. But none matched one of the first pigs here, the irrepressible Cholesterella.

Her name, I think, was true inspiration, evoking both her lard-barrel build and fairy-tale overtones. For Cholesterella, lumbering through the pig-yard, suggested a subtle grace she really didn’t have but perhaps aspired to. (There were no mirrors in the sty, so she lived unaware of her looks.) Her full name was too much of a mouthful; I always called her "Ella" for short.

Ella had all the regular pigly virtues in full measure. At feeding time, she could snort, shove, squeal indignantly with the best of them. And bite, too, if some swine, trying to shoulder her from the trough, foolishly flipped its ear near her mouth. (Another pig’s nickname was "Notch.") But Ella loved quiet, too. Sometimes I’d spot her standing alone in the sunshine, staring off, over the electric fence and across the fields.

"What’s she thinking?" I’d ask myself, and sit on the grass to wonder just what pigly thought might be. Most human thought is snatches of unspoken words and phrases_for when we think, we’re really talking to ourselves. But though she did recognize two words (her name and "slop,") Ella had no ordered language, no way to talk to herself. Maybe, as she stood there in the sun, she was engaged in something far more sublime than thought, in pure contemplation of the sun’s warmth on her back, the waving grass, the brash cries of bluejays.

I know. More likely, she was just asleep on her feet. But no matter. Ella was and still is an emblem for me, of nature life evolved enough to rejoice in itself, without self-consciousness. I aspire to that state, and that pig is my model.

Ella, as I say, came early in that long waddling line of pigs. But now that line has ended. It did, in fact, two seasons ago, though I didn’t tell you about it. I may have hinted when I described that year’s "pig-slop-bucket tendonitis," as Dr. Don Lewis called it. Or when I described trying to push that year’s pair of pigs, 350 pounds each, up the ramp and onto the truck. Poor mythic Sisyphus, rolling that boulder up the mountainside? His trial was child’s play. I faced vast, dense bulk on four short legs set firm. It was like trying to heave a safe up that ramp.

That day made me confront my age and add a new principle to the slim list that governs my life: "Don’t raise animals heavier than you are." Sad so say, that means I now live in my post-pig era.

There are still the other creatures, of course. Sheep still safely graze here (more about them next week), and lots of cackling still comes from the hen house. And of course there are the domestic pets, Owen and Zach. Zach the aged collie has been amiable toward Owen the cat since he arrived in May, but I never expected Owen to warm up to him. That hasn’t happened yet, exactly. But the two will now sometimes touch noses; and, if Zach is blocking a doorway, Owen will walk casually right between his legs. And last week the two of them brought me pleasure to match Cholesterella’s, basking in the sunshine.

I’d gone to our woods to cut holiday greens for the Mohican Club. Last year, you’ll remember, I stupidly risked life and limb doing that job, standing on a stepladder set up in the bed of my pickup. I was more prudent this time.

Zach and I set out through the back field, I with a pruning saw, he on a red leash. (The leash was to keep him from roaring off into the woods after deer, to return covered with more burdocks than fur.) We hiked into the woods and soon came to a likely pine with boughs only about seven feet from the ground.

With a foot on Zach’s leash, I reached overhead and starting sawing. When I glanced down, there was Zach, eyes bright, tongue lolling, watching through a fall of sawdust. Like anybody’s loyal dog, he was backing me up, even if I looked stupid.

When the branches were down and while Zach sniffed them thoroughly, I caught a flash of orange off to the right. My gosh, it was Owen, who’d shadowed us into the woods and now sat on his haunches, tail around paws. When I greeted him, he gave a benign, slow blink_a cat’s smile.

Now was time to tie the boughs together and haul them to the house. A smarter man would have brought a length of rope, or at least some baling twine. But a solution was at hand. I unhooked Zach’s leash, slipped it through the piled branches, ran the clip through the loop at the other end.

Out of the woods we came, up through the back hayfield we paraded: Old dude in a tattered barn coat. Behind him, dragged along, a pile of fragrant pine boughs. Following the boughs, an aged collie, almost prancing with happiness. Trailing the dog, a sinuous orange cat, well aware that a procession’s end is the place of honor. The old dude kept glancing over his shoulder, laughing. He started humming the buoyant march from "Peter and the Wolf."

Buddhists gently tell us to live free from the spent past and the uncertain future. In any flash of time, they say, we have "only now, only here, only this." So did the old dude feel, leading that parade. He was as happy and unfettered in the moment as_well, Cholesterella basking in the sun!

Jim Atwell lives in and views life from Fly Creek. Learn about his book at JimAtwell.com.