There are times when I feel the need to go “home”. And this is the place on this earth that’s home to me.
When I was a child, my Uncle Bob and Aunt Flo owned this ranch. My uncle Bob had one hand, and he built these buildings one handed. Tragically, he died when he was a young man and my Aunt Flo sold the ranch to my Uncle Bill. Now, my Uncle Bill has passed on, and his daughter’s own the ranch. At least it is still in the family and still a working ranch. No subdivision’s here!
When you go to sleep at night, there’s no noise except the night sounds of animals, and the sound of the wind in the trees, and the world is peaceful.
This place is home, because so many of my childhood memories are here. Like the time we drove up in the yard, and my cousin was bareback on her horse Queenie. She saw me jump out of the car, and yelled, hey, get on! I jumped onto the fence and mid air to Queenie’s back, I asked, Did you ever get her broke to ride double yet? She said, “That’s what we’re going to do right now!” And Queenie took off bucking around the yard. When she finished crow hopping, she was broke to ride double forever more.
There was the time we came to visit and the grizzlie’s paw print was vivid in mud on the living room picture window.
The time when my Uncle Bill was dying of prostate cancer and he said, I promised Donna she was going to have a ride behind Split Mountain. You guys (meaning my aunt Jimmie, my cousins, and the hired man) saddle the horses today and take her up there. He never forgot a promise he made to me and he kept them all.
When I come to the ranch, the silver ware is in the same drawer it’s been in for more than 60 years. The food is in the same places in the cupboard. There’s an automatic coffee maker now where coffee used to be in a pot on the stove. And every time it ran out, you threw in a handful of grounds and some clean eggshell and boiled it up to have “fresh”. There’s also a microwave now…kind of handy for modern day fast foods. Outside of that, everything is pretty much the same, there’s something to be said for that…for you always feel completely at home when you go there.
The first morning we woke up at the ranch, I got up before daylight and peered out the bedroom window to see if any wild animals were stirring. I saw a little black silouhette in the creek and at first thought, I figured it was a raccoon. I ran outside with the camera to see a beaver there in the creek that runs by the house.
I ran back inside to get Robert. We walked down the creek for perhaps 3/4 of a mile, talking to the beaver and watching him make his way downstream, he was never more than three feet from us, such a passive, cute, little creature!
Stay tuned for more of our ranch adventures….
Donna
©Copyright 2008 by Donna Ridgway. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Donna Ridgway’s website.
