Saying Goodbye

Its Friday morning, October 22, almost 4 am. Couldn't get back to sleep, so here I am. Its a surreal experience to close a chapter in your life
that is so different from all the rest. I don't think we could have really
guessed what this 6 months was going to be like, and I know we sure can't guess what's next.

Last night we went to Midas with all the gang from the ranch for a goodbye dinner. I'm putting in pictures here of our evening:

Jesse and Ricarda with their kids Maura and Robin. Some of the greatest bosses we've ever had, and now we're lucky to call them friends.

Next picture is Dick and Mary (Ricarda's parents). They have also been a great addition to our

lives, and have a lifetime invested in the ranching community.

Brian with Ty and Adam.....these two guys have done most of the camping with us this summer,

and are the main buckaroos left here at the ranch to finish up the season. Adam is from Riddle, Oregon (cool!), and Ty is the guy who made Brian's chaps that I mentioned in a recent post.

The last few days have been full of packing and cleaning for me (with breaks now and then to

read and "compute"). Brian has spent the last 4 days driving a tractor, disking one of the meadows. The tractor is pulling up much of the sage brush so the grasses will regrow and be better feed for cattle in the future. One of the afternoons I went out to the meadow with him and spent a few hours sitting on the arm of his seat in the tractor. It was a bit of a rough ride, but fun to spend the time together that way.

We' came back to the house to find the horses trimming our lawn. Its a great way to keep the

grass down, but the piles they leave behind may contribute to our fly population in the house. I'm also putting up a picture of a horned owl that landed on the fence outside just a few days ago. You may have seen this picture already on our facebook page, but its pretty cool so I want to include it here too. Brian had seen owls many times out riding this summer, but this was my first view.

Well, in just a few hours we'll be heading home. We were asked a few times last night what we'll miss the most, and what we liked the best. The answer is really pretty simple, and reminds us what is most important in life; people that make your life better, and being able to enjoy and appreciate a whole different variation of God's creation.

Shipping

We have shipped about 3500 cows (steers), maybe a little more, in the last 3 weeks. We ship a different amount each day, mostly depending on how many trucks end up making it to the ranch (it always seems to be a different number than what we were expecting).

The shipping day starts with gathering all the steers and pushing them into the corrals. Once in the corrals, we run them down an alley and onto an enclosed scale. We weigh about a dozen at a time (give or take). My job has been to run the gate on the exiting end of the scale, and count the number of cows that were just weighed so we can get an average weight for all the cows- once the whole group has been weighed. Its a pretty simple job really, most of the time they are easy to count. Sometimes though, a bunch will come running out in a group instead of lining out one or two at a time and I have to think a little harder (hehe).

The challenge comes in staying focused in the monotony of the routine. After weighing and counting hundreds of cows, it is easy to get distracted. That happened to me this week. When I opened the gate my mind was busy adding up some other numbers, and I flat out forgot to count. When I realized the cows were running down the alley away from me, I had to quickly estimate which ones were just coming from the scale and not part of the ever growing group already standing in the corrals. Its nice that this isn't a super high stress operation-you get laughed at long before you get yelled at (which I've never seen happen).

Once all the cows have been weighed, the truck backs up to the ramp and the cows are loaded up in groups to fit the stock trailers compartments (they can all be different). These cows are "Mexican" steers, and heading to feed lots in Texas for the winter, then to your table in the spring.

Only a few more shipping days left, the next one will be on Friday, the day we head home for Oregon. Then, things at Squaw will be pretty quiet until next spring. All the remaining cows/pairs/bulls have already been moved down to the lower end of the ranch for the winter.

So, we've just about seen the "season" come to a close up here at Squaw. I hope you've enjoyed it, we sure have.

I'll likely do one more post before we head home, so hang in there.

Camping Continues

We've done a few more camping trips since my last post about it. This picture is of Sue and I in the side by side, wall tent in the background, and our tent hiding even further behind that. We have been going up to camp on Saturdays (with a few days worth of food and water), the guys gather steers and push them down into the valley on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, then on Tuesdays they push the steers they have collected over the weekend down the long walk into the meadows at the ranch while I pack up coolers, empty water containers, garbage, etc. and drive back to the ranch. For the last few weeks we have followed this routine, then shipped out cows out on Wednesdays and Fridays. We are down to only about 500 or so more cows to find (out of the original 4000), so the end is in sight.

I'd like to say that with all this camp cooking I am perfecting my dutch oven skills, but I'd be lying through my teeth. This last trip I made a blueberry cobbler, which turned out great-(thanks for the blueberries mom!), but the cornbread was horrible. It burned so bad on the bottom and sides that the entire thing lifted out like its own little pan inside the dutch oven. I cut out the middle of the bread and served it with the chili anyways....I didn't eat any (I tried it and thought the whole thing tasted burnt), but everyone except Brian had seconds.....crazy cowboys! Brian is well past the point of eating my cooking just to stay in my good graces, but there's something in Ranch lore about how important the cook is and how much respect they are supposed to get...the poor cowboys (haha).

Deer season has opened down here, so this last camping trip was flush with passers by who wanted to know if we'd seen any bucks, or would at least ask to be pointed in the right direction. The guys had seen some big bucks, but most of the hunters didn't want to have to get out of their trucks long enough to hike into the areas where the sightings were. We did have a handful of sage grouse hanging out around camp one afternoon, and one of them almost became dinner. Unfortunately it just wouldn't cooperate and fly in the path of the bird shot when it was fired at.

It sure has been nice though to have the big wall tent for the whole kitchen set up.....we might have to pick one of those up for ourselves, and then make sure we actually go camping and use it!

This last picture is the double wide trailer we've been staying in since mid August. Out front is the camp trailer we stayed in our first 3 1/2 months here. It was nice having more space and spreading out a bit, and to have direct internet connection instead of the slower wireless connection we had in our trailer. The only disadvantage is now I have to repack our trailer so we can head home next week, only to unpack again once we're back in Springfield. Oh well, I still think it was worth it.

The Driveway

This is a photo of the driveway of Squaw Valley Ranch. The ranch buildings are behind me, and this gravel road goes 2 miles out to another, public gravel road; which continues on for about 50 more miles before it hits the pavement.

In the last six months I have spent many, many hours on this driveway. I have my own private "mile markers" that tell me when I've gone 1/2 mile, 1 mile, 1 1/2 miles, etc. I know how long it takes me to walk to the end and back, to jog it, to run interval sprints on it, to ride my bike on it, and to stroll along it.

I have travelled this driveway with headphones on, listening to the odd mix of music that fills our ipod: Weezer, Allison Kraus, Third Day, Norah Jones, Keith Urban, Beastie Boys, Willie Nelson, Bob Marley, Mary Barett, Jack Johnson.....the list goes on. I have also travelled the driveway in silence; praying, planning, debating decisions in my head, unraveling seemingly complicated human interactions, trying to understand why I, or someone else, did what they did, or said what they said.

I'd like to think I've bonded with this driveway-that when I go home next week, it will miss me as much as I will miss it. I will miss being able to step out the front door with both dogs, never giving a thought to a leash, or a baggie for picking up there messes. I will miss walking in the sun, enjoying the tan I'm getting while getting some exercise. I will miss walking early in the morning, meeting some of the cowboys as they drive up the driveway from other homes on the ranch, heading to the early morning start of their day. I will miss walking in the evening, processing my thoughts as the four mile round trip slides under my feet.

I think most of all, I will miss the "zone" that I get in when I walk this driveway; that place in my head with few distractions, full of honesty, reflection, and clarity. For my own sanity, I'll have to reconnect with a few places in Springfield where I can keep finding that zone everyday.