There's some sort of mystical bond between young girls and horses. It's rare to see this in boys, but it often happens early in a girl's life. They're drawn to horses, even before they set their hand or hearts to one. On the outside, especially from the viewpoint of a male it looks like girls can go …
Bringing Them All Back Home
It was a cryptic message, but I knew what it meant immediately. When I read the text, the two-week open window that had been a pesky nuisance in my mind finally slammed shut. I reread the satellite phone message from daughter Linnaea: "Got them loaded and about to drive out." That's it. Out of …
Hope in Fire Season
I bashed my head on the frame of the pickup in an unconscious attempt at sitting up, perhaps dream initiated. This was the second time. Awake, first forgetting where I was, but rudely brought back to reality by unyielding steel on forehead. I'm surrounded by the noise of truck traffic, …
From Oak to Aspen
Three short weeks ago, we woke up to a coating of white on the ranch. Snow blanketed everything. The breaking buds on the willows and cottonwood trees looked hunched and bunched up from the cold, as if trying to stay warm. These species were both used to the maddening duel between winter and …
Welding Friendships
Kimball Oil; Challis, Idaho. I paid Linda, the cashier, the $12 I owed her for the repair tire wrangler Colton had just performed after he mounted the big lug tire on one of Alderspring's four-wheel drive pickups. Kimball's was typical of small mountain town stores; they sold fuel, they maintained a …
Death… and Life in Bear Basin
The wind whipped across the basin with a pesky cheek-stinging flurry of horizontal snow. It was just a week ago, in mid-April. Caryl, border collie Clyde and I were on a quest: to find a sort of black gold, deep beneath the rolling hills of sage and grassland. We were in Bear Basin, and it is …