Professor Andy Merrifield was chasing a dream when he moved from England to teach at a university in New York City, but, as he admitted recently, "things didn't work out so well, I felt very lost." So he went to live "somewhere totally antithetical to [New York]," moving into a farmhouse in France's Auvergne region, an area known for its sought-after green lentils from Le Puy. Intending to slow down the pace of his life, he borrowed a friend's donkey and set out on foot through the countryside of southern France.

"When you go slow and travel with a donkey, you have time to think and daydream. Daydreaming is very important in cleansing stuff that's muddling your mind." Like Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Merrifield writes about his "journey of the mind" in his first non-academic book, The Wisdom of Donkeys.

Walking with Gribouille, his donkey, provided many "pregnant moments of great meditation," he says. "The donkey just stares out into the forest, and you wonder, 'What is the donkey doing?' . . . and you just go with it." Merrifield also says his donkey taught him the virtue of staying calm when dealing with "tricky situations." Along the way, an agitated horse appeared, "towering over both of us" and blocking their path. Merrifield had no idea what to do, but Gribouille tranquilly walked away in the opposite direction: "Gribouille alone stayed calm, and let the situation wash over him. I had a lot to learn." Donkeys, apparently, are famous for their cool-headedness. They are often "fielded with nervous horses or can become supervisors in halter breaking," explains the author. Donkeys are also intelligent leaders. If a donkey is introduced to a female horse and a foal during weaning, "the foal will often turn to the donkey for support after it has left its mother."

Merrifield began to mimic the donkey disposition. "If you let yourself drift into that donkey world, taking simple strides and slow deep breaths, calm reigns. Things happen with clarity, with simplicity, decisively."

Before setting out with Gribouille, Merrifield researched his subject by visiting an outdoor, mobile donkey clinic in Egypt where Dr. Mohsen Hassan gives free treatment to abused, overworked donkeys. Hassan told him that "local kids treat donkeys worse than bikes, whacking them with wooden batons, pushing and kicking them, sometimes just for the fun of it."

Historically, Egyptians brutalized their donkeys, Merrifield writes, but donkey milk was considered a luxury drink, as well as the secret to eternal youth. "Cleopatra kept a stable of 300 donkeys; each day she bathed in donkey milk, believing it the key to skin health. She was right: donkey milk is full of fatty acids and vitamins A, E, and F . . . effective for dry, wrinkled skin." Donkey milk soap is sold in France, adds Merrifield.

At the Sidmouth Donkey Sanctuary in Devon, England, Merrifield learned how donkeys internalize pain. "Horses buck up, rear, kick and make a fuss if they're in pain. With a donkey, it's the complete opposite. Hence, it only appears that a donkey feels no pain." A donkey's pain threshold is similar to a human in emotional denial. Merrifield describes how, for far too long, he internalized his unhappiness in New York: "It was painful to admit and I didn't admit it quickly." Donkey's psychic needs are very complex, he writes. "A donkey can spend days and days searching for a missing loved one; and if too perplexed by what's happened, by an inexplicable absence, they can go into a deep depression and die of a broken heart."

In Devon, Merrifield met a donkey that visits residents of a retirement home. Lulu is toilet trained to swish her tail when she needs to go. "She knows it's not proper to do it in a living room!" says Jan Aherne, the manager of the sanctuary. Lulu travels with a plastic flexible bucket as a precaution but has never needed it. When she walks through the retirement home, she is "admittedly a curious sight," writes Merrifield, "a shock for a few; others smile bewilderedly, not believing their eyes, laugh and then suddenly start to cry, tears rolling down their cheeks with joy."

"Travelling with a donkey," Merrifield concludes, "is about asking yourself basic questions. Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?" He quotes Robert Louis Stevenson's 1879 book Travels with a Donkey in the Cervennes: "We are all travellers in the wilderness of this world . . . the best that we can find in our travels is an honest friend."

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