beautiful photo by Bob, up by Kite Lake

My favorite part of having a dairy cow is what some folks say is the worst. The daily ball and chain. The day in, day out, heading down the hill to bring her in, wash her up, and sit beside her as you lean over to milk, warming your hands even on the coldest of mornings.

Swish-swish-swish-swish…

The rhythm of our day. A metronome pulsing in the background, mindlessly pacing us to keep up, keep on.

Something I could count on. Like the sunrise. Or the ticking of the clock.

For my child, chores have provided unspoken lessons of caring, of self discipline and responsibility, of humility. I don’t need to remind Forrest that the chickens are waiting to be let out in the morning or closed up at night. He has left the coop unlocked and knows the guilt and sadness of the resulting loss resulting from any one of the assorted predators that call the mountain home. He has let them free range on a day that was too quiet to keep off the coyote.

Remorse from his losses, affections from his nurturing, and pride as he comes in at night with pockets full of eggs, has taught him many of life’s most important lessons. Lessons learned better from his actions than from my words.

Like learning to take the eggs out of your pockets before you sit down.

Icicles on the roof at sundown

I feel a commitment to the land, and yet, I am preparing to walk away.  I ponder this paradox. I have been through this before. 

A visitor speaks of his fierce attachment to the land.  I am intrigued with this expression, and consider his meaning further. A fierce attachment to the land.  What I see is a fierce attachment to the past.  He remains attached to a memory.  An important place in his heart, I see, but as vague and distant as a dream only partly remembered.  When he is awake, he is not here. He has built his life and home elsewhere. 

For us, it is more, it is less, it is good, it is bad. It is home, where we struggle and strive to be, to make a living, to raise our family, to build our house, to live best we can off of and with the land. We have been committed. We have remained, labored and strained in the face of family conflict, colts dying, financial woes, and weather changing for the worst.  We have endeavored and dared to make our dream come true.

Now the dreams have changed.  Such is the nature of dreaming.  Such is the nature of life.  Things change.  How long do we remain committed?  When does it turn to attachment?  When is it time to let go?

In attachment, I see a holding on, a taking only. Attachment.  I think of a child clutching to his mother’s skirts, so afraid to let go. Afraid to grow up.  Attached.  Attachment is a needy state. We cling to what we barely hold.

Where is the sense of commitment? There is no partnership with a land from which we only take.  I seek a balance. I must give.  I must work on the land, with the land, of the land. I am willing to commit to the land, but not cling to attachments of a dying dream.

Commitment comes only with a struggle. We button up the coat and pull down the hat and brave the storm because this is our home, and home is worth standing up for. We don’t leave when the weather changes. This is all we have.  We are willing to fight for our home, our children, our lives, our land.

Commitment.  How do I define this?  I see a husband standing beside his wife as the storm approaches.  He reaches out and holds her hand and they know they will manage together.

And yet, here we are, packing our bags.  A bittersweet struggle.  A paradox.

Down in the willows before Ute Creek

Years ago, when I moved to the Pacific Northwest with my baby, I was the caretaker for a remote kids camp.  Closed for nine months of the year.  Only ours.  Ours to tend to, to toil for, to wake in the middle of the night and check on a crying lamb, to stay out in the rain through the last light to weed one more garden bed, groom one more horse, or repair one more broken pipe. And I loved it.  Learned one need not “own” something to make it theirs. We can commit without attachment. As long I was there, I treated the place as mine:  every animal, every pipe, every fruit tree, everything.  I felt appreciated. I felt at home.  I was committed.

Mind you, this was a seasonal camp for kids, and no where did I see the difference between the sense of attachment and the sense of commitment more clearly than I saw at camp.  The campers, or the adults who once had been campers, held an attachment so fiercely to the land, to the camp, to their past.  I saw men and women in their thirties, forties, fifties and older, for one week out of every year regress to their childhood reminiscences and once again “be” campers, holding on to a fierce attachment to memories of a land, a place, a way they once were.  And then they would leave, go home, return to their life for 51 weeks, return to their commitments and count the days until revisiting camp again.

On the other hand, were the locals, folks who were not amongst the elite of those who had been sent away to experience the world in which the locals lived. These were folks committed to the land.  Land on which they struggled to make a living, support their families, raise their children, grow gardens and animals and barns and dreams.  Land they  knew they could not get something out of, be it a safe and warm home, or a crop to sell, or a beautiful view, without putting into it, working for it, fighting for it. Committing to the land.  

And when the weather changed and the mountain threatened, there they remained long after the campers left.  They continued to toil, put up with the harsh winters. Droughts.  Calving complication.  Horse births. Crop failures. Floods, storms, wild fires, children who grow up, spouses that pass away.

Now, the neighbors – a small community of perhaps 200 people spread throughout the mountains – was built with the bricks of some remarkable human beings.  Women like I never had the opportunity to know.  My friends and neighbors were then in their 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. . Most that I remember were amazing women. Strong women.  Women who had homesteaded there. Built their homes. Worked their land. Raised and fed and taught their children there, found a way to scrape by a living, usually on the land. They knew how to work hard, were honest, sincere, caring.  It was not a place to “get away.”  It was a place to commit to, to work and reap the meager rewards. To hope and dream and struggle through hardships.  It was not their vacation.  It was their life.

They were surprisingly open to have someone from the younger generation show interest in the old time crafts, and were remarkably willing and able to share their knowledge with me.  I was lucky.  I wanted to learn it all, and they were willing to share. Many of these women were already widowed.  Since I left, three more have lost their husbands. Most still remain on their ranches.  All still work hard, for the land, or the community, or their families.  Full lives, filled with commitment to a rich life.

Looking north beyond Pole Mountain

I moved away.  I’ve grown.  I’m not the fresh young thing I was there and then.  Now I have a bit of the knowledge they so graciously shared with me. I can bake my own bread, milk a cow, make butter and cheese, grow my own corn.  Maybe now – or next time – it will be my turn to help share knowledge.  I’m not an old lady yet.  Maybe there is stage in between being at the receiving end, and being the teacher.  Maybe I just have to live it for while.

I consider this change, and see a natural pattern.  I try to see my place between attachment and commitment and make sense of it all as I turn to walk away.

There is commitment in community. Here, I think this is what I have missed.  There is no community in attachment. One can enjoy each others company as long as the weather holds.  But when the storm clouds roll in and the leaves blow from the trees, one can walk away, each in their own direction, and perhaps each hold that attachment in the back of ones heart until the next summer arrives.  Attahcment allows them the hold on and walk away at the same time.    

I seek a place to remain.

The irony of it all.

I am not attached.  I am too practical to hold onto the past. I am committed only as long as I am here. But I am not tied to nor bound by this land.  Between the family conflicts and the ensuing wave of discord; a land that has killed my horses and part of my dream… what a fool I would be to remain in a place and position providing for others dreams when mine is only washing away with the heavy rains of summer? Does one remain committed in a relationship so imperfect, or does one strive for more?

I have compromised enough. I feel myself dreaming again.

I long for commitment as I long for a true home. A sense of being, a sense of permanence in an impermanent life. I am no closer than I was when I moved here, and began these years of commitment to a land I am ready to walk away from.  Perhaps permanence, home, commitment, these things are found only within us. 

Where does this leave me?

Looking up at Simpson Mountain

Looking in the east garden, early november, late afternoon.

Outside, the garden sleeps, the raised beds silent as graves in a burial ground, lined up as straight and somber.  Hidden is a promise of life deep with each bed, a challenge here to see what we can grow in perhaps but a month of frost free weather, with the monsoons providing untamed waters to my pleas at domesticating crops in this course landscape.

But try we must. We need our hands in the earth, the cleansing of dirt, of our soul within the soil.  We need to garden.  Is it the tending, the nurturing, the care of a tame and cultivated nature so fragile and unwilling on its own?

Here I have learned to turn my focus inside at times, to satisfy my need of dirt under my fingernails.  House plants are plentiful, it’s a jungle of sorts in our cabin. A bountiful crop of Jade, Philodendron, Christmas Cacti, English Ivy, Aloe and herbs.  In the southern corner of our cabin, a tropical paradise grows.  As a reminder of my summers long ago in the Greek Islands, I once bought a bougainvillea, thought it would be lovely outside a guest cabin, draping down the log walls, showering the cabin with fuchsia blossoms, a vivid contrast to this wild landscape and a refreshing change from the geraniums and petunias I tend to choose to decorate the outside of our cabins.

On the last day of June, it froze.  A heavy frost turned the leaves a dark, liquid green.  I was certain it was all over.  It was my first or second summer here.  I didn’t know better.  I didn’t realize a frost can come about any time here.  When you least expect it. I have learned to expect it.

The guest who had been staying in that cabin was from Florida, where these plants do grow.  She laughed and told me you couldn’t kill a bougainvillea if you tried, suggested I cut it back and try again.  I did, cut it all the way to the stem, leaving a sorry basket filled with ugly grey sticks protruding.  And then a funny thing happened.  It started to grow.  Six or seven years later, it is still growing.  It remains indoors now, and I can’t say it drapes and languishes over my log walls anything like I remember these plants did in the Greek Islands over the white washed walls. But it is alive, and blesses us with bright blossoms quite regularly.  As out of place in these mountains as a tropical bird. 

Now our lettuce has sprouted, our winter crop, beginning its life in our kitchen window.  It will end its life there as well in the spring, yet provide us with fresh greens throughout the winter.  Nothing fancy, no greenhouse, no grow lights.  Just a large planter in the window.  Things will grow.  If you give them a chance, they grow.  

And things will die.  The garden outside is dormant now.  There is not life I can see.  Perhaps an earthworm buried deep beneath the frozen surface. I wonder how they survive the deep freeze.  The beds have been prepared for next year, softly tucked away for the season beneath a blanket of manure, so plentiful here, a pity my crops can not be so.

I prepare it all in anticipation of what will be, yet I wonder if there will be a next year.  I look at these beds, this garden, this soil, and wonder how long it will take to return to the earth from which it all came, to turn fallow and free and forget about my futile attempts.

And still, what can I do but try?

a shock of red rose leaves outside a guest cabin

A flash of red. Not what you expect to see outside as the last of autumn fades a monotone brown into the frozen ground, deeper and deeper, in a quiet anticipation of the long winter to come.

roses in the snow along side a creek just begining its flow in the afternoon thaw

This red is not a blossom, but the color of the leaves turning; the last song of the wild rose, shocking the mountain with her fiery bursts.  Sudden, unexpected, and brilliant. A spark in the snow. 

the rose in the kitchen

Indoors I plant a domestic rose.  Awakening, she is called, and I chose her for the name.  An old heirloom rose from Czechoslovakia, via Oregon, now here in the mountains with no chance of making it a winter outdoors.  So inside we try.  Within the comforts of the kitchen window, we will tend to her, water her, provide sunlight and soil and even temperatures and hopeful gazes.  Nurture her tenderly and see if she will grow, see if she will grant us with fragrant blossoms, pink and fancy, delicate, so distant from her home, so different from the surrounding lands, forced here on this mountain by me, my desire for what I long for.

Yesterday morning on the ranch.

In a once and future day, I had a garden worthy of canning.  At nearly 10,000 feet elevation and with perhaps at best four frost free weeks per year, I hope my current excuse is legitimate. 

At times, of course, I miss it: the early morning calls to the garden to inspect the ever changing challenges and rewards, the extra hours in the evenings pulling weeds and picking at the edge of ripeness, putting up in jars and drying racks…

I believe the soil becomes a part of you.  It binds you to the land.  Here and now, I can leave for days during our summer and ride up to ditch camp to work without fear of the garden missing me.  There is little garden to care for. There is little to do. Even few weeds will grow here. Time for other things, though for those of us with black gold in our veins, gardening is always time well spent. A time gone but not forgotten.

Stocking up for winter here is no less important, though very different from my gardening days.  More vital, at times, with a road that will close in a month or two at the latest, leaving us somewhat closed off, blocked off and inaccessible until late spring when the county sends the dozer to break through the snow banks en route to our ranch.

Folks often ask us how we manage to supply ourselves adequately to make it through the long winter.  I remind them we are not completely isolated. We do have snowmobiles and skis.  In fact, riding along the packed trail or zipping across the frozen surface of the Rio Grande Reservoir on snowmobile is far more comfortable than taking a pickup along the rutted and ripped up track we call a road during the summer.

So, during the winter season, a 6 ½ mile sled ride brings us to our pickup truck, which brings us in an hour of so from there to town. Providing the road is plowed.  Otherwise, stay home and wait out the storm.

But we do stock up. Obviously, we need to.  A trip to the grocery store in winter is an event, usually spanning two days to get it all done. The list gets long.  Talking tends to take up more time than anything when you finally get to town. 

What do we keep on hand? The basics.  A full freezer of meats, pantry of canned goods, fresh lettuce growing in the south window.  And baking goods.  Plenty of baking goods. Sugar, chocolate chips, yeast, salt… and flour. Usually I go through about 150 pounds of flour a year.  That’s a lot of bread and cookies.  For winter, I usually store about 4 25-pound bags of all purpose flour, and we just squeeze by.

You have to be organized.  Keep track of what you have, keep lists of what you need, know how much you tend to use.  That kind of thing.  Get used to doing without or making do.  And if you have an abundance, learn to use it.  Waste nothing.

In my attempt to avoid a town trip and shopping spree to stock up this fall, I sent my boys.  But alas, I did not send a list.  Just general instructions to “stock up”…

What they came home with was twelve 25-pound bags of flour.  That’s a lot of flour.  Nice of them to make sure we would not run out.  Though finding a place to store it all is not a simple matter.

Ah, think of all the baking I get to do this winter.  Just when I was wondering what my purpose in life was.  The answer came to me in 25-pound bags.

At least for now, that will do.

A snowy ride yesterday up the mountain

A storm has come and settled in, blowing snow and strong winds.  Reminding us if we had any doubt that summer is over.  The last of the remaining leaves, brown and tired in the tucked away pockets of Aspen hidden along the hillsides, are stripped clear.  Vehicles can be seen driving down river.  Fewer and fewer drive up.

Despite the weather, not conditions one would choose to saddle up in, we hit the trail; ride up into the Utes to help a friend. It is times likes this I am grateful for friends and neighbors, not because they have given me the excuse to be out riding in the snow. Believe me, it’s cold and wet, and when the third pair of insulated gloves get frozen and soaked, we question our reasoning.  Physical duress is not something I grew up with.  Suburbia was all about comfort.  Being cold and tired and sore and often injured for a living and a lifestyle was not something I considered.  These were things to be avoided.  I have learned to accept them.  And often times, appreciate them.  It is this physical discomfort which allows us to be here, to find the beauty so elusive to the mountain because it’s just a little further, just a little harder to get to, just out there in some nasty weather…

No, the reasoning, the importance, is much more.  It’s that acceptance that you’re there to help out in a pinch.  It’s that underlying knowledge that if it were your leg broken, you might be able to ask for help in turn…   Hopefully that won’t happen.  But you can be sure, it will be something someday. It always is.

In any case, it’s a sense of community, one that is precious to me, and essential to living and working in the mountains.  Not just folks here to get away, but here to be a part. People who come here, stay here, commit to the land, to making it work and making a living.  In these harsh conditions, that means helping each other out when need be.  Riding up to help at camp in a moments notice.  Lending a hand; lending a horse.  Clearing a trail you know others have stumbled on. Little things, usually.  These things don’t need thank yous or repayment or compensation.  It’s part of the deal of community.  Someday, perhaps, it will be you asking the favor, someday me. We both can help.  We both can ask. And in the meanwhile, we don’t need to see each other for months if our lives get too busy or keep us tucked away for the winter. We don’t need to mention it, to fuss over it, to make it anything more than what it is.  A simple sense of community.

There is an incomparable satisfaction in raising or harvesting ones own animals for meat, no different than growing your own tomatoes or wild harvesting mushrooms.  It is a good feeling of responsibility, humility and self sufficiency, and the by-product sure beats anything one can by from the grocery store. I can raise them; I can enjoy joining one on the hunt; I can even lead a bottle fed lamb to the butcher, then help skin and gut. But when it comes to pulling the trigger, I fail.  I know, I know… whimp.

A bonus to Forrest helping out at hunting camp last month was a rump roast from the hunter’s harvested elk. When aged and prepared just right, I know of know finer meat than that of the elk, and nothing more pure and natural when respectfully harvested from our mountains.

Today I share with you a recipe for a marinade Forrest prepared earlier in the week for this meat, and which I repeated for company over the weekend.  We used the elk roast, cut into steaks and then cross sliced into thin strips.  These were put in a bowl, covered with the marinade (recipe following) and allowed to soak in the fridge for a day or two. Then the strips of meat were threaded onto skewers and grilled to perfection.  Although we were lucky enough to use elk meat, any red meat would work, wild game or domestic, homegrown or harvested or even store bought! 

I hope you try and enjoy.

Forrest’s Wild Game Marinade

½ cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons salt

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon paprika

½ teaspoon thyme

½ teaspoon fresh ground pepper

1 pinch cayenne pepper

½ cup balsamic vinegar

¼ cup olive oil

½ cup water

Looking at Lost Trail Ranch under Pole Mountain and a clear blue autumn sky.

Ice has started to form.  First as a film, a thin crust on a bucket of water under the drip line on the north side of our cabin, catching the melting frost each morning as smoke from our wood stove warms the roofline. Last week I could tap the bucket and the surface would crack.  Now it is thicker, more durable.  The bucket becomes a solid, heavy mass of black ice.  

Ice will remain and grow and thicken for many months to come.  It becomes a part of our lives, a semi-permanence in our world for half our days, like snow covering the peak of Indian Ridge outside my kitchen window.  There as I gaze from the warmth of our cabin.  There for more of the year than it is gone, lost in the lazy warm wash of summer, the short season of open roads, seasonal life abuzz on the mountain like ants on a picnic.

The sun still has warmth. We feel it, savor it with long lunches and coffee on the deck in shirt sleeves.  Enjoy it while we can so openly, as it fades to fleeting moments, delicious in its precious glimpses.  Yet no matter how temperate the front of our cabin will get in the protected balmy radiance of the log wall mid day, tucked in the back as a secret from the sun, the ice will remain, solidify and swell.  It will not thaw out completely until at best April when we watch the pasture fade from white to patches of brown, and we can drive the road once again.

Yesterday morning the thermometer read thirteen degrees. Will we no longer see a morning reading above freezing until next spring?  We begin to look around the ranch, our home, our lives, decide what we need, what needs to be done, quickly now, under pressure for time we put on ourselves, the season puts upon us, in the short days remaining before the snow covers us and the mountain.  Stocking up for winter concerns us no different than the Stellar and Gray Jays and tree squirrels, all anxiously stashing their cache for the approaching season.

The ice multiplies, intensifies and spreads in the undisclosed pockets and private parts of the mountain, on the north slopes, tucked in behind the trees, there behind the cabin where the frost line begins to dig deep.  Silence starts to grow. Our blood thickens and slows as we watch the mountain clear and settle, recover from the season, and prepares for the long reprise of winter.

The chickens help weed the garden after a humble harvest.

A temperate spell charms the mountain, warm as the color of the leaves ablaze across the hillsides before us.  We head outdoors in shirtsleeves, allowing the down jackets and wool hats a week of rest before what we imagine will be the beginning of the end of balmy days.

A welcome interlude. The frozen air has already visited us, spreading its frosty silver lace across each blade of grass and the remains of the garden, now barren for the season, awaiting its heavy white blanket tucking it in for the long season of rest.

I envision others elsewhere right now. Overwhelmed with abundance.  Drenched deep within the feast of the harvest.

Consider zucchini. Ah, perhaps you take it for granted, this humble fruit of your labor and soil. But please do not!  Remember it to be the beautiful blessing it is, even if it takes over and seems to besiege your garden and kitchen table. For you, those lucky enough (yes, I really do mean lucky) to have zucchini from your garden, I share this recipe.  Alas, not from the harvest of my garden.  This recipe is from my mother, who also manages to grow this humble vegetable in plenty, and still finds creative ways to use it all. I hope you try and enjoy.

Zucchini Chocolate Cake

 1 c. whole wheat flour

1-1/4 c. all purpose flour

½ c. unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1-1/2 c. sugar

1 stick unsalted better

Recipe called for ½ c. vegetable oil. Instead I used ¼ c. marmalade and ¼. C. applesauce

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla  (I added 2T triple sec, a liqueur)

½ c. buttermilk

2 c. grated unpeeled zucchini (about 2-1/2 medium or one really big like I used)

1 c. semisweet chips

¾ c. chopped walnuts

Butter and flour a 13x9x2 pan.  Stir together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl. Beat sugar, butter and oil in large bowl until blended.  Add eggs, one at a time. Beat in vanilla.  Mix in dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk.  Mix in grated zucchini.  Pour batter into pan and sprinkle chocolate chips and nuts over.

Bake at 325 degrees for about 50 minutes.

Old and new. Forrest doing school work by the glow of the computer... and oil lamp light.

With solar electricity, cloudy weather spells low power.  We learn to do without, and appreciate what we have.  It is easy.  It is simple.  We have lived completely without for enough time to be grateful for the little we have.  We can use it wisely.

And yet, evenings following those robin blue sky days of abundant sunshine, we may flip on five lights.  All at once.  And feel we are living large.  And somehow, take a decadent sinful pleasure in that.  Why?

I read about a family surviving life back in the pioneer days, and considered the hardships, the sacrifices, the lack of luxury.  I looked around my home and my life and felt guilty. I saw unnecessary luxuries. Waste.  Fluff. They keep us removed from the land, from the core of our life.  Removed from what matters most. 

We have too much. The land fill is spilling over with plenty. And our homes? Our fridge? Our closet? Our cars? Our full schedules?

We grab onto more and more and more. We take pleasure in amassing. Perhaps a safety and security. A fear of being without. It seems no matter how much we give away, how right and generous we feel we are being by sharing, donating and getting rid of things… all we do is make room for more. 

We grasp onto labels like “natural” and “organic” and “recycled” and feel we can buy and purchase and support and spent there because they are… better.  It’s still spending.  It’s still getting too much, isn’t it? It’s still more than we really need.

We start small.  Considering what we can give up.  What we can do without.  One thing at time.  One thing that need not be replaced.  An empty space that can remain open, clear, uncluttered.  Slowly, we begin to pare down to what matters most.  And suddenly, there is room to breath.

Horses on pasture before the snow arrives.

Snow settled on the deck outside the sliding door beside our table as we finished dinner last night.  The first of the season.  We removed our socks by the fire and walked outside on the shockingly frigid surface to celebrate its arrival.

This will melt.  Our early autumn storms don’t last.  They bring with them the panic that “this is it” and we remember we are not ready.  We do not have our hayshed full, our pantry stocked, meat in the freezer, horses hauled to winter pasture, tools picked up from the ground that could be buried and invisible until the following spring.

They also bring the peace of the winter season.  The slow long letting out of breath that has been so rushed and panting through summer.  An ease of being.  Long nights wrapped up reading with my boys by the fire.  How I love the shorter days…

The thermometer reads twenty-one degrees on the deck.  It will be colder out in the open, in the garden, on pasture.  I lovingly carried in the last survivors of the potted petunias hanging outside the cabin indoors last as the wind blew with a arctic warning, freezing my hands earlier in the afternoon as I rode horseback in the sunshine with heavy gloves, and still the chill penetrated so that unsaddling became a fumbling mess. 

I try to be out riding as much as possible this time of year.  I know it is almost over.  The image of the cowboy galloping through the snow never rode up here in winter.  Our snow is deep.  I would be breaking the legs of my horses.  We take the winter off.  I brush them, feed them, talk to them, remind them that spring will return, enjoy their rest because then I will have them out working the trails again.  They look at me with their big brown eyes and seem to understand, though it is hard.  Winter is long for them.

In the meanwhile, it is not here yet.  We have time to ride, to rush around and prepare ourselves for the long white season.  We watch the humans leave the mountain, back to their “real” worlds elsewhere, a warmer, busier life far from the mountain that somehow remains with them deep inside to help them get through until they return next year for a week, a month, a season. 

The elk will soon follow, though only as far as the foothills, where they are able to find food to sustain them until next June, when something calls them back up here.  How strong this drive within them.  Silent and unspoken, but they all know.  They all leave.  Often together, in one rapid exodus as a heavy snow thicken on the north slopes and the southern sides no longer thaw out mid day.

We are not there yet.  For now, we will try to enjoy the occasional snow, now so dramatic between  the golden blaze of the Aspen and the crystal blue of our mid day sky. How hard it is to remain present, to enjoy the here and now of such a spectacular time of year, when we know winter’s footsteps are approaching, so much to be done before they arrive.  And yet we do.  We do enjoy.  It is hard to remain indoors amidst such magnificence as the mountain in autumn.

Before the snow arrives...

the best seat in the house

That is my chair, the one on the left.  My chair at my table in my house.  How selfish that may sound.  I don’t mean to be.  I only mean to share with you my favorite place on the ranch.  In that case, it is simple, even humble, I hope. It is a good place.  I can think of none better.

The ranch from the eyes of a fourth grader.  It is compared to a trip to Disney Land.  “So, what is your favorite thing to do on the ranch?” she asks me.  I tell her I love it all; there is no one favorite, but the combination of all that makes it work for me.  She tells me her favorite is riding horses, baking, walking around petting the other horses.  That is good.

“So, where is your favorite place on the ranch?” she then asks.  I find this question remarkably deep, and I have to think about it.  It does not take long.  I tell her it is right where I am sitting as we speak.  My chair at our kitchen table.  Because from here, I explain, I am next to my boys, with my dog by my side, and perhaps a cat on a lap, usually with a simple meal I have prepared before us, always extra and a chair close by for one more to join us.  Here I am surrounded by walls we have built with love and hopes and dreams.  Outside the big windows, I see the fruits of our labor with buildings, fencings, pastures, gardens, chicken coop, cows, and my many horses all around… And beyond that still, I see our mountains, always looming over us wild, durable and intense, like the higher power I suppose them to be.  Indifferent to my presence perhaps, yet untainted and mighty in their existence alone, silently teaching me the most important lessons merely by being there.

I have never been to Disney Land, but I imagine.  Sights, sounds, stimulations, rides… fun, fun, fun!  I need not ever go there.  I have our ranch, our animals, my boys, these mountains.  I may be simple, but there is little else I long for.

Pole Mountain in clouds

Here in the monochrome light of the early morning, the sky just begins to lighten, all color is still shades of grey, including the brilliant aspens across river visible from the comfort of my chair, their silhouettes bland and indistinct against the looming hillside, shaded by the canopy of the heavy, drifting clouds.  The autumn leaves are memories of a spectacle I know is there but does not expose itself to me now.

My morning ritual of both receiving and writing a quick note to a friend so far away and yet so very close, before I open a blank page and begin to write, is interrupted with the power outage, a regular occurrence in stormy weather for those of us with solar power. Take nothing for granted. We are grateful for the abundant electricity and reliable services when the sun does shine.  But we know we can do without.  There is so much we have, we use, we rely on, that once without, we remember how little we need.

Simple things. Like flicking a switch to turn on a light.  We remember we can instead strike a match, light a candle. When was the last time you went without power?  Can you do it by choice? One thing at time… start with the lights, keeping them off. Oh, it is romantic! We learn to see, or not, perhaps go to bed early. That isn’t so bad! Our eyes adjust, then pick up the slightest changes of light, like now, as the sky brightens, noticeably yet so finely, with each minute that passes.

I look around regularly and see how much I have that I can do without.  How much more I have than I really need.  How much of this I do take for granted, and how much is the core essence of what really matters.  My boys.  My animals.  The mountain.  The heat of the wood stove or fire.  A simple meal.  Friendship from time to time.  Good hard work and point to every day. 

What do we do with all the rest of this?

Alan and the mouse

Alan, our shepherd, has learned to tolerate most anyone and anything in his house.  It’s been a required and necessary part of life for a family dog on a guest ranch and animal farm.  Lambs, chicks, cats, lots of other dogs, you name it… at some point or another, it has been asked of him to tolerate them, in his home, often right under his nose.  And because we have asked, and because he cares about his family, he has accepted them all.

On the other end of this story is the mouse.  Mice get the brunt end of things on this ranch.  Between the coyotes out on pasture and the cats around the cabins, mice have little chance of freedom, let alone a long and happy life.  Yet, no matter how hard the coyotes and the cats hunt, the mice remain a stronghold of the mountain. A necessary part of the food chain.

And each year, when the rains begin, they decide it is time once again to move out of their soggy home in the field, and into the warmth and comfort of a cabin.  That, of course, rarely goes over too well with visitors to the mountain. But we all know if you don’t like the heat, get out of the oven.  Mice do live here.  The only way to completely keep them away, I suppose, would be to stay away.  People learn; these are just mice, and they need not be elephants and run in fear from the little critters.  Perhaps one day the same people will learn to love and feed the mice as they do the fellow rodent, the ground squirrel?

In the meanwhile, we rely on our cats to help keep them under control.  And they do.  A very good job.  So good that more often than not, they search and scour about the guest cabins to find a live one… only to bring it back home as a gift.  Gee, thanks.

Well, the other evening we were sitting around having dinner as one of the cats brings a mouse in through the cat door. Alive. We rolled our eyes as the cat played with her catch, so proud and enjoying.  It was just a little fellow, just a baby, I noticed, and the mother in me couldn’t help but be filled with sympathy.

As we watched the cat play, we saw the little mouse take refuge under the leg of Alan, who lied sleeping near by, unaware.  Now, Alan, like many a dog that has lived with cats in his life, has learned to eat mice too.  Small but tasty fare for this big dog.  So when he awoke to find the little fellow right before him, staring helplessly into the big dogs eyes, Alan looked up at me as if to say, “What do you want me to do now?”

I gave him that look that told him I’d sure appreciate it if he’d put up with this.  And so he did.  That little mouse found his big protector in Alan, who vigilantly watched over the tiny creature, who sat in the shadow of the big dog, catching his breath, safe for now from the antics of the kitty.

I thanked Alan, picked up the mouse, and put him back outside.  Only to see the other cat bringing home another mouse…

Of mice and... dogs.

Time and space, to sit and think...

Of all the gifts I have strived to give my child, the most valuable I would say is time and space to think, to dream, to absorb, to be… Time to sit, reflect, see the beauty all around, learn the beauty that is within each of us, perfect beauty in an imperfect world.

Nature provides for us the perfect setting in her constant imperfections.  Beauty breeds and grows from these imperfections.  Silently and quietly we sit and listen. We hear the world around.  We hear the world inside us.  And we are allowed the opportunity to think, reflect, try to make sense of it all.

Sitting by a quiet stream, walking down a tree lined trail or hiking up top a mountain summit, even just taking a moment alone in a city park, the answers come to us.  Sometimes, as a simple surprise. Look around.  Listen.  The answers are there. “Take more time,” the mountain tell us. “Keep on, keep on…” or “time to move on.”  Is the wisdom in the wind that whips across the jagged peaks, or does being there teach us how to listen to the answers within?  I have not figured this out yet.  Perhaps I never will.

As we sit together on a peaceful evening in the high country, watching the sun settle across the valley before us, we talking quietly, staring ahead at the magnificence before us, sharing words yet alone in our own thoughts. I encourage him to find his goodness, strive to cultivate this goodness, to forgive oneself, and leave behind the faults of yesterday. Likewise, rather than finding the imperfection in others, we should work to perfect ourselves. It’s all we really can do, isn’t it?  And this is hard enough. I know of no one yet perfect, and so much of myself that can be worked on.  I remind him we are each works of art, works in progress, beautiful in our differences, our imperfections, like every mountain, valley, hill and stream.

Perhaps no more than a momentary perfection is possible.  But we strive to find, to achieve, to be. 

And in the world around us, the world of nature, we see life and death, day and night, summer and winter.  Ever changing, ever recreating, always reminding us of infinite power and wisdom somehow far beyond our reach.  And in these changes, these constant imperfections, we learn to understand that there is where perfection lies.

Reflecting upon nature and life...