stella and nell at the ranch
Took Nell out to Chico Basin Ranch last night for a barbeque and to give her a glimpse of expansiveness.... where the land and sky meet in one clear slice across the horizon. Chico Basin Ranch is a working ranch and everything about it is real. The cows I look at eat the grass and then we eat the cows. Cowboys wear boots that are the farthest thing from Santa Fe Tony Lama's strolling round the paseo... these boots are dusty, torn, buffed hard from riding in the stirrups all day. Some wear spurs while others prefer chaps to protect their legs from the miles of scrub oak. All the men wear white woven cowboy hats with an expansive brim to provide a sliver of shade, a foreign concept in this landscape. There are few distinguishing characteristics between the cowboys...kind of like the cows... as if the genetic roundup has found the perfect combination for life on the range: no extra fat, a hardy complexion, rope burn hands and gleaming white teeth.
Chico Basin ambles and lopes along the front range of the Eastern Colorado prairie, 85,000 acres that spans two counties before slamming into the Rocky Mountains. Criss-crossed throughout the property, like a tenderized flank steak, are arroyos that plunge, steep as the front side of a cows face, down into the earth. In the fall, the dried tumble weeds are blown into these crevices, filling them to the brim. One day a woman from the East coast was riding full throttle on her horse and hit that false bottom of weeds and plummeted, crashing. They had to air lift her to the nearest hospital. The horse was put down. That's real.
How many millions of us spend an entire day never touching the earth? It's a morning shuffle on carpet and tile that is exchanged for asphalt and concrete. And this little square dance of dirt-free living is our norm. Tomas, he gets whiney when too many cracker crumbs litter his sheets but out at Chico, the cowboys can go for weeks riding, sleeping and eating on the range. They snuggle up to grit and dirt, heat, wind and dust all punctuated by the pungent plume of cow manure happy as steers at a rodeo. I ask if anyone secretly tucks a cordless battery pack into their saddle bag for that electric toothbrushing experience or if they are ever tempted to sachete down the sleeping bag with lavender to counteract the cattle perfume. They laugh, like this is a funny idea or something.
Most of the conversation is dry.... talk of drought and the extreme fire danger. With so little grass I'd think a fire would be hard pressed to find fuel for its cause but apparently with the wind pushing it along, a fire can plough across a county in a matter of hours...even with little to no grass. Because the vegetation is extremely sparse this year they're bringing in the bulls early in order to get the mating, birthing and rearing over by July....called thinning the herd. In a normal year they thin by August or September. A victim of the Disney approach to animal husbandry, I do a small internal moan, thinking of mama being torn from her baby before ever seeing her go to the prom. That's hard but so is this existence. Yet another glimpse of how inept and desperately dependent I am upon all the comforts of my modern make believe world...I'd rather impale myself on my blow dryer than scour my scorched backyard searching for my last meal. That's pathetic.
Chico Basin ambles and lopes along the front range of the Eastern Colorado prairie, 85,000 acres that spans two counties before slamming into the Rocky Mountains. Criss-crossed throughout the property, like a tenderized flank steak, are arroyos that plunge, steep as the front side of a cows face, down into the earth. In the fall, the dried tumble weeds are blown into these crevices, filling them to the brim. One day a woman from the East coast was riding full throttle on her horse and hit that false bottom of weeds and plummeted, crashing. They had to air lift her to the nearest hospital. The horse was put down. That's real.
How many millions of us spend an entire day never touching the earth? It's a morning shuffle on carpet and tile that is exchanged for asphalt and concrete. And this little square dance of dirt-free living is our norm. Tomas, he gets whiney when too many cracker crumbs litter his sheets but out at Chico, the cowboys can go for weeks riding, sleeping and eating on the range. They snuggle up to grit and dirt, heat, wind and dust all punctuated by the pungent plume of cow manure happy as steers at a rodeo. I ask if anyone secretly tucks a cordless battery pack into their saddle bag for that electric toothbrushing experience or if they are ever tempted to sachete down the sleeping bag with lavender to counteract the cattle perfume. They laugh, like this is a funny idea or something.
Most of the conversation is dry.... talk of drought and the extreme fire danger. With so little grass I'd think a fire would be hard pressed to find fuel for its cause but apparently with the wind pushing it along, a fire can plough across a county in a matter of hours...even with little to no grass. Because the vegetation is extremely sparse this year they're bringing in the bulls early in order to get the mating, birthing and rearing over by July....called thinning the herd. In a normal year they thin by August or September. A victim of the Disney approach to animal husbandry, I do a small internal moan, thinking of mama being torn from her baby before ever seeing her go to the prom. That's hard but so is this existence. Yet another glimpse of how inept and desperately dependent I am upon all the comforts of my modern make believe world...I'd rather impale myself on my blow dryer than scour my scorched backyard searching for my last meal. That's pathetic.
posted by chapter three at 9:57 AM
2 Comments:
My name is Stella Martinez too, I am glad to read your blog.It was a shock reading an comparing ours live, Is all that you wrote truth?
"like a tenderized flank steak, are arroyos that plunge, steep as the front side of a cows face, down into the earth."
Constructed by a real live wordsmith.
Post a Comment
<< Home