Horizon line in soft snow

Hope.  There is always hope. 

And it is up to you, up to me.  I can’t give it to you, and you won’t pave the way for me.  But maybe, just maybe, we can hold hands and get through it together. I remember running through the sprinkler on the slippery lawn as a child.  The spray of the water was so cold, a thing to fear and desire at the same time.  And my sister and I would hold hands and then it would be a wild adventure we would take on together, running straight at it with the comfort of each others strength beside us.

Yesterday I read, “… fate kicks you in the gut, then turns around and gives you a tummy rub. That, my friend, is life.” (J. Thorson in Horse & Rider magazine)

Unwanted tears swell in my eyes as I read this.  I think about a truth that at times I wish was not. I wonder why life can not be more like a fairy tale.  Think Cinderella; you get the tough stuff over with, and then are allowed to live happily every after.  Nope.  Not in real life. What’s with all these ups and downs?

And yet if I refuse the ups and downs, I refuse the richness and beauty of life which surrounds us, and isolate myself in protection, remaining apart, blind to the brilliance. I consider the splendor of tear descending a soft, dry cheek. The twinkle of an eye with a secret sense of humor.  The gentle curve of a smile, and the intrinsic pull this has on one’s heart.  Life is indeed lovely in all her magnificent moods.

We could play it safe and stand on the shore and watch as the tide comes and goes. Instead, I choose to dive in.  At times, this leaves me drowning.  Other times I am as free and fluid as the playful dolphin teasing the sparkling surface at sunset.  And then silently I sink into the depths and withdraw to the deep darkness like the Sperm whale.

fresh snow on Pole Mountain

After three days of snow, three feet on the ground, having been snowed in for three months, and still figuring on a couple months left to go… the hens begin to lay.  Forrest returns from his evening chores with two beautiful brown chicken eggs.

And this, my friend, is a handful of hope.

Hope.

I want life to be easy some days, and some days it is.  The next day it won’t be. Usually it’s a roller coaster, isn’t it?  At times I feel the best we can do is strap in and enjoy the ride.  (“How do you drive this thing?)

Tres is due to foal in just over a month.  Soon I will lead her off the mountain in all this snow, somehow, perhaps over the packed snowmobile track early in the morning when the snow is still hard.  It will take hours to walk out.  Perhaps all morning. Perhaps all day.  I will enjoy the time with her. I will talk to her and we will walk together, and she will be fine, comforted in my presence as she has trusted me for years. And then, I will miss her, miss her birth, but hopefully allow her a healthy foal.

Crow will suffer more than me.  Of all his mares, Tres is his favorite.  She is everyone’s favorite.  She is their leader.  And she will leave them, temporarily, for the hope of new life. 

Hope.

We do what we have to do.  We stop whining.  We start hoping.

a light load, a heavy load

rock, ice wood and snow

There  seems to be an odd correlation between good luck and hard work, a direct relationship between the amount of risk ones takes and the amount of luck one receives. This is noted by many, except, perhaps, those who attribute good luck strictly to chance, and are still sitting around waiting for fortune to be handed to them.

Bad luck, well that is something different. But good luck, I think it’s something we create. The harder we try, the greater our chances of creating it. Seems to me luck is on par with effort. The greater the effort, the greater the likelihood of good fortune. We build our own fortunes as we build our own futures.

A friend writes to share the news of the ranch her and her husband bought after years of hard work. She has called it the Lucky Girl Ranch. She knows. She has worked for this, is still working for it, and will always work in one way or another to make her dream a reality. She made her own good luck.

When I moved to Colorado, funny how no one told me I was lucky then. Only crazy to leave the comfort of the good life I built for myself in California. And funny once again as no one mentioned how lucky I was when I arrived in California years earlier. I drove from Indiana in a 20 year old Dodge van with my baby and two dogs and a small Christmas cactus growing in a coffee cup. Not much else. The dash board caught on fire on the drive there, minor electrical problems, and the windshield wipers actually fell off when severely tested during a downpour in Kansas. But we made it. I think we must have been lucky.

Oh, I could tell you stories about how lucky I was… In my younger days, I think the risk far outweighed the logic. But I never believed I couldn’t. I always figured with enough hard work, determination, and a bunch of wild ideas, I could. I could be lucky. And I suppose I was.

Though no one told me I was lucky during the cold wet winters where it could rain and rain and rain, over sixty inches in four months time. No one told me I was lucky trudging in knee deep muck to feed the horses and milk the cow each morning. What do “they” know, I would tell myself. I felt lucky.

I learned to love the rain. That is lucky. I remember one year when it rained every day for thirty days. I watched the river rise, a crazy wild brown torrent carrying giant trees of the Pacific Northwest in a bubbling twisting gushing fury over rocks and down this untamed course to the ocean. I would walk down to the mossy silver green banks with my child on my back, and sit, and we could hear nothing else. The enormous sound would wash over even the deepest of thoughts. The most feral beauty I have ever seen. We were lucky to be there.

No one told me I was lucky when I first moved here. We lived the three of us, three dogs and two cats in a little one room cabin with a nearby outhouse, and decided to stay. We would call it our home, and make it so. It had never been a home before. We were lucky… we could make it happen together.

And we did. Now it is easy for folks to look at our almost luxurious sense of comfort and tell me I am lucky. Yes, we are lucky. Lucky we took the chance to try what no one had done before. Lucky we could put up with the trials and tribulations along the way of building this home and life and world. Lucky we could see what was not there and make it happen. Lucky we could laugh.

Our first winter we stayed in a guest cabin with a small wood stove and hauled water down from our storage tanks up hill. The septic froze sometime in the middle of winter so we could not even use the drains, but could unhook the p-traps and set a bucket below.

Throughout the years of building this comfort we now have, we could laugh. Oh yes, and cry. But always return to a smile when the tears dried. Always. We made it the adventure we wanted it to be. It was fun. That may not be the word of choice when it’s the middle of the night and nature calls though it’s twenty below out there. Yet you return to a warm bed and snuggle down under the blankets and are surrounded by good love. And you feel very, very lucky.

Yesterday I helped Forrest put together a listing of morning temperatures I recorded over the past years. A school project for him, finally a use for all those mornings noting and recording for me. We spent hours flipping through my journals. I quickly read out the temperature number. He presses the number into the calculator, and sums up an average for each month, each year, thousands of numbers, thousands of days. For each day my finger points to the number. But my eyes see more. Glimpses of the years here, passing before me in a matter of hours. My stomach tightens as I turn the pages. Yes, I see the good times – the hard work, things we built and made and created together, making this our home, our life, our world. But too often I read of incidents of pain, anger, insult, injury, an unfortunate relationship with a very toxic family. I do not have the ability to tolerate such things as they have learned to or been taught to do. I was not given the history of understanding, accepting, enabling what I was taught is wrong. I am glad. I never will. There are times we are comforted in knowing we are the outsider. Acceptance would be a terrible compromise of character. I see this now. It has been a raw journey.

I read of horses dying, how many in all have we lost? Too many.

I did not feel lucky to loose lives I tried to bring into this world.

I did not feel lucky to have endured the problems of my husband’s family that have tangled themselves to this property and each other like a poisoned thorny vine.

I close the books. I look around. I could be anywhere. Somewhere better. A beautiful home on a beautiful mountain with fresh air and open waters, where the soil won’t kill my horses and the people won’t try to kill our dreams.

I return to where I am, here and now, with my boys, the sky, the mountain around me, and my luck returns. We are lucky to be here now, lucky to be moving onto a new mountain tomorrow. Starting a new. Taking with us our dreams, our laughter, our luck.

Into the sharp night air, we step outside together last night before the moon rises. The sky is black, so black and deep and vast and limitless. Stars seem to whirl around us as we stand still and look up into a world so far, far away. The longer we look the farther we see and we know we will never see it all. There are no limitations. It is before us for as far as we choose to see. It is beautiful. And once I again, I know we are lucky to be standing there, seeing that, together.

And I remember wherever we are, those stars will be overhead. We can take the time to stand in the cold mountain air and stare up at that big wide unknown in awe and remember how lucky we are.

I am one lucky girl.

Gone riding...

“Let us strive to improve ourselves, for we cannot remain stationary; one either progresses or retrogrades.”  Mme Du Deffand

At times, as change is so slow to come, we find ourselves in need of a challenge to push our limits, to raise our spirits and fill us with hope, to lift us above the ashes. And so perhaps creating the challenge is what we are in need of.  Creating the change…

On my fridge is a quote from an unknown author: “You cannot plow a field by turning it over in your mind.”

Around my home, and especially on the fridge which is covered with words of wisdom printed on simple magnets, are quotes of inspiration, little reminders for things too easy for me to forget.  Like bravery, courage, and strength.  I know these things are in me; they are in us all.  But I get too comfortable, and forget to challenge the drive that has got us all where we are today.

Above me desk is a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt:  “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face… You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

That in mind, I head out today for a solitary pack trip. Alone.  Not fully alone, of course. I will have my saddle horse and pack horse to help me, and for me to care for them. But it will be up to me, for four days, riding and camping in the back country and Wilderness.

As I prepare to head out this morning, I am grateful for my horses and the beautiful mountains around me in which I will be able to spend the next four days.  More than anything however, I am grateful for my husband and son who allow me the time and space and understanding to follow my dreams…

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi

This is an Ode to Bud. The wonderful old cowboy I mentioned in a post earlier this week passed away a year and a half ago at the age of 95.  I don’t know if I will ever have the honor to meet such a wonderful real cowboy ever again. 

So I share with you something I read long ago.  Something written to inspire us all, but also in hopes of describing those traits and personal qualities that make someone like Bud so special.  It’s a “code of ethics” of sort, modeled after an ideal of the finest of the cowboys, listing what makes a person a good cowboy, and a good person. Inside. Not out.  I don’t mean chaps and hat and boots. I don’t mean loud stories of wild western adventures horseback. I don’t even mean years of experience of working with cattle. I mean that part within a person that governs the way they live, that leads them to just be good. What I am referring to here is that part deep within that drives you, presides over the way you live, affects your choices in life, and how you treat others. 

This list is nothing new, and I did not write it, but I strive to learn from it and live by it. The first time I read this was on an etched wooden plaque a guest of ours gave us as a gift.  It’s still on our wall by the door and I need to read it over regularly because, I, for one, always have a lot more to learn. 

Not everyone who works with cattle lives by this, of course, just as many who don’t work with cattle do.  In everything, there is something to be learned, an opportunity to be a better person, to make this world just a little bit better.  Bud epitomized this code of ethics.  He lived it, he taught us all by example, and you know what? He had a wonderful time doing it, and everyone around him could feel it.

The Cowboy Way

1.        Live each day with courage.

2.        Take pride in your work.

3.        Always finish what you start.

4.        Do what has to be done.

5.        Be tough, but be fair

6.        When you must make a promise, keep it.

7.        Ride for the brand.

8.        Talk less, say more.

9.        Remember that some things aren’t for sale.

10.     Know where to draw the line.

Above and beyond these ten points, lies one I have trouble finding the words for. It is far more important than each of these points, because it incorporates all ten. It is about how we treat each other. How we treat our brother, our neighbor, the kid bagging your groceries with the bread on the bottom, and the lady in the pick up that just ran into your new truck.

It is the Cowboy’s Golden Rule.  I think you all know what that is.

On the front of the card shared at Bud’s memorial services, or rather his “Celebration of Life,” there is a quote that reminds me of this.  A quote that I know Bud lived by. A quote I now keep on my fridge with a picture of the old cowboy sitting so proud and right and comfortable on his favorite mare:

“A life is not important except for the impact it has on others.”

Jackie Robinson said that.

Artemis, Tres, and my niece Alex, in the snow yesterday.

Artemis prancing alongside her mother.

Artemis meets her family (that's proud father, Flying Crow, across the fence from Tres)

I suppose no words are needed here.  As you can see, Artemis is doing well, and as you can imagine, we are elated.

I look around my home and continue to find little things I can pass on.  Books to a neighbor, clothes to a thrift store, a plate full of cookies from an extra large batch.

That part is easy.  After all, it is just “stuff.”  An ongoing house cleaning, never ending as we always seem to acquire new things as we give the old away. But there is far more to giving than a simplifying of our lives and of the clutter around us.

I suppose it’s just part of human nature, a trait within us all that creates a smile as we give a gift. You know that sense inside. You feel good. I’m not saying giving is selfish.  We are not motivated to do it because of how it makes us feel. But when we do give, there is that special reward that follows. It is a simple way of making our world just a little bit better. One gift at a time.

I do not give enough. It has been a challenge to find ways and means to give, to reach out, to volunteer from such a remote location. Sure, I could send checks in mail or donations over the internet, I know… but what if I want to give the most valuable gift of all: my time?

Last New Years, the start of 2008, the three of us made resolutions not about giving up, but about giving. Volunteering. Finding ways and means to give of ourselves when we live so remotely was not easy. What could we do from such a distance that would still hopefully help in some small way?

The lover of the land that I am, I signed up for environmental program monitoring frogs on the mountain (yes, we do have frogs!).  With a brother serving over in Afghanistan, Bob agreed to mail over packages of our used clothing for the needy over there.

Forrest decided to grow his hair to donate to Locks of Love. He estimated it would take a year to reach the minimum required length of ten inches. It took longer than expected, but this week he finally reached his goal.  We had the cutting ceremony, and then trimmed up what was left behind. The long hair had become an annoyance at times, yet he had a commitment, and a responsibility to fulfill.  He chose to wait it out, and was rewarded by being able to present a gift representing time.

Before...

...and after.

We stress the importance to Forrest of giving, teaching by example and by encouragement of his actions. It continues to be a challenge from up here, but with creativity, he finds ways.  Last winter, he was able to participate in the organized efforts to feed the elk suffering from the extremely harsh winter. This year, he helped out a neighbor, staying alone on their ranch caring for their menagerie. He has written the CDOW officer who covers this area and requested if there was any way he could help out from up here on the mountain. Unfortunately in this case, the CDOW officer has yet to write back. I ask myself what kind of person can ignore a 15 year old kid who writes with hopes of volunteering? There are always disappointments. Perhaps we should be hardened to such. As one friend says, we can expect the disappointments, expect to be disappointed in life.  And when we are not, we can be pleasantly surprised.  I don’t know if I want to go through life like that. I truly believe in more. I expect more.  And I’m willing to give more. So yes, I also may be hurt more.

And yet, just when we are about to give up hope in our fellow man…

A few weeks ago, I lost a two year old horse. A group of very special friends, a volunteer group called Paws to Go from the Fellowship Church, took their time to write me notes, simple words of understanding. When I received each one in the mail, it was like getting a hug or an understanding hand on my shoulder. It was a beautiful gesture and a great help to me to know I was not alone in my grieving. A reminder to me of what positive effects our acts of thoughtfulness and kindness can have on each other. And then, to consider what each of them might be going through?  There are good people.  I do not give up hope.

And so I am reminded of people who can give, even when they may be in greater need than myself.  And reminded what a beautiful thing the gift of time can be – even if it is a simple act of sending a caring note in the mail.

I have plenty to give, though I need to remember to take the time to give the most valuable things I have:  my time

It is so easy to find excuses; I do not have enough time.  Perhaps I do not take enough time.  But when we remember what a difference our time can make…

These are interesting times. Hard times for many.  Yet I see it bringing out the best in so many.  Perhaps we all need a shake up every once in a while to stop and take a look around and remember how much we have, remember how much we still can give.