“I wonder why we think the thoughts and emotions of animals are simple.” – John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley.

The Taos Gogi Eco Lodge sits 11 miles north of Taos in the small village of San Cristobal, just below D.H. Lawrence’s old ranch. Its 40 acres of gogi trees, vegetable gardens and fields are nestled within the Sangre de Cristo mountains, at an altitude of some 7,500 feet. There are plenty of humans around – its owners, Eric and Elizabeth, and their children and grandchildren, as well as a handful of cabin dwellers and 6-8 temporary farmhands working in exchange for food and accommodation. But its most notable inhabitants are the animals – the goats and sheep and chickens and coyotes who populate the fields, form hierarchies, create bonds and navigate the intricacies and politics of rural life.

A sign on D.H. Lawrence’s old ranch.

María Lionza and I arrived early one evening, just as the sun was setting over the mountains to the west, streaking the sky with purple and gold. I wandered around between the rustic old buildings until I located someone who showed me to my bunker – a tiny, handmade home that María Lionza and I would be sharing with another woman. We made ourselves comfortable, and I let her out to explore. With some misgivings, she stepped from her carrier and sniffed at the open air. Did she smell the tangy red gogi berries growing in the fields below? Was she absorbing the stench of coyotes that howled in packs as they haunted the land at night? Or was it simply the knowledge, carried on the wind, that there were new animals in this place – new relationships to form, to navigate and to grow? Whether or not cats’ olfactory senses are equal to those of dogs, she was definitely garnering valuable information from the evening breeze.

María Lionza guards our bunkhouse from a comfortable spot on the porch.

I’m quite certain that María Lionza has magical powers, though I’d be hard pressed to say what, exactly, they are. After all, she’s named for a Venezuelan cult goddess – head of a religion that blends Santería, Catholicism and indigenous beliefs, and often pictured as a green-eyed, topless woman riding a tapir. Her pantheon includes an Indian chief named Guaicaipuro and the black slave Negro Felipe, both of whom were murdered by Spanish colonists, and they oversee courts of lesser deities made up of famous authors, Catholic saints, political figures and deceased criminals. How could she not be magical? When I was living in Venezuela, I attended a ritualistic annual gathering of María Lionza’s followers on Sorte – the mountain in western Yaracuy state where people make pilgrimages to walk on fire, drink copious amounts of rum and smoke cigars – and watched as a person possessed by Erik the Red chewed on shards of glass. Surely, there was a purpose for all this. And though I wasn’t sure how, exactly, my cat was somehow, quite clearly, involved.

Worshippers pay homage to the goddess María Lionza at Sorte mountain in Venezuela.

María Lionza watches farm life from the comfort of her camp chair.

While María Lionza had claimed our porch and garden for her own, it wasn’t long before others began approaching in an attempt to forge a friendship. Yoda – a stunted young goat that everybody had feared wouldn’t make it, one who’d only recently begun to walk – wandered over to the stoop with Shanti, the wiener dog, in tow. They sniffed at María Lionza in a friendly, welcoming manner, but she backed them off with a hiss. Undeterred, Shanti became more crafty, sneaking up on her from various other angles in an attempt to get close, grabbing a few licks of her long fur before being shooed away. Yoda simply forged straight ahead. After all, everybody else loved him, didn’t they? Surely, María Lionza would come around. But she didn’t – at least in the short term – and they finally gave up, moving on to nibble at some ragweed in the yard.

That there was a hierarchy among the animals soon became apparent. The larger goat, Luna, was clearly in charge – hurling herself recklessly on top of tree seedlings and head-butting the others into submission. Obi-Wan, the sheep, followed Luna everywhere with a blind sort of trust, happily signing on for her mission of the moment – whether it was harassing the chickens or munching on the forbidden fruits of the gogi trees. When I entered their pen in the mornings, I would often find Luna and Obi-Wan cuddling, their knobby limbs entwined in an awkward embrace. And as they took off on their daily adventures, Yoda would sometimes join them, bumbling alongside; at others, he preferred Shanti’s smaller, more manageable antics.

Obi-Wan looks wanly at the camera.

While the larger animals had formed a friendly cadre led informally by Luna, the real ruler of the farmyard, I soon realized, was the rooster – King of Hearts. The name was something of a misnomer; the creature was ruthless. Big and bold and handsome, he imposed himself over the hens with an iron spur – if he wasn’t raping them, he was holding them down and plucking out their feathers with his beak. Several of the hens, their backs bare from the plucking, would cower from him in terror. Emboldened, the King of Hearts strutted around the yard – his chest puffed out, one beady, round-pupiled eye on the alert.

The King of Hearts and one of his victims.

A young chick with a mohawk, as yet too small to be terrorized by the rooster.

On the alert for what, you might ask? Good question. If anybody was the Napoleon of the farmyard it was him, and I was the Jones who would one day be driven away. María Lionza and I watched the ruckus from our porch – her rather disinterested, and I pondering the possibilities. “Go with the others,” I urged her as Yoda and Shanti rambled by, extending an invitation to join them on a forage to the feed bin. “Those goats have some eyes you can trust. Go now, form allies, there’s strength in numbers!” María Lionza simply glanced over at me, unfazed –the breeze ruffling at her mane – and lifted her magical nose to the wind.

María Lionza regards the chickens from the porch, totally uncaring.