The memory I hold most dear of Susan is one from a visit to the SASHA animal sanctuary in Southeast Michigan. She invited me and my now husband Kevin to it for a volunteer workday. Her compassion for animals stretched beyond her vegetarianism to an active role in this sanctuary. It was populated by animals that had been rescued from factory farms, from abusive homes, from careless people. Among the many animals that found a safe and caring place to live out their lives, cats had found new families in the barn, pot-bellied pigs got belly rubs from their caretakers, and pastures were filled with cattle.
This workday’s tasks were to clear the pastures of downed branches and to collect wood that had been cut from downed trees that surrounded the pastures. What we realized soon enough was that collecting branches from pastures meant walking out into one of them where a bull the size of a truck stood with horns at least four feet long from tip to tip. They’re curious creatures, I discovered – they watch you and sniff at the air when you’re in their vicinity. They have a herd, and they want to know who’s near it. I looked at this one who stared at us and thought, “How can you move your head, it’s so big and heavy with those enormous horns.”
We were supposed to walk into that pasture.
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Susan, Kevin, and I stood at the entrance. She had volunteered us for this task. I remember watching as other volunteers started gathering wood on the other side of the fence where there weren’t bulls.