One of my favorite places on this Planet Earth is the ranch. That’s what I call it…though of courses there are hundreds of ranches where I live. But when we say “the ranch” that can only mean one place in the world to me.
Its high up in the hills. You get there by a windy dirt road covered with rocks. Sometimes the pine trees clear for a space and you can see the clear drop to the river. It makes your heart race…but only a little.
Then you get there. Pop out of your truck and enter the combination. Swing open the rusty metal gate and roll down the road to paradise.
My kind of paradise.
There are mountains everywhere, covered with evergreens kissed by the sun. There are contented cows watching you from pastures on either side of the road. There is a picnic spot with ancient tables and hand-hewn chairs and benches, and a sink that doesn’t really work, and a counter where we can put homemade salsa and potato salad, and a firepit for roasting meat or toasting marshmellows. And a hammock strung between two trees. Every piece, every item, was hauled up there at some point in the past by one of the members of the extended family who owns the ranch. Ever since I can remember, so many of my memories have been lived out there. Hunting shotgun shells as a child, running to the pond to pick wild blackberries, skipping through the pastures in my little rubber boots, laughing with my buddies, getting muddy and playing “house” under the pine trees.
My friend was married there…at a place now called the “wedding site”. She was married in an open field under the hills and the trees, the wind blowing her white dress and her curls and her veil, but never shaking the smile on her face as she looked at the man she would love “for better or for worse”.
I’ve ridden horses there. Galloped across the fields, my hair blowing. There’s an old Arabian proverb that says, “The wind of heaven is that which blows between a horse’s ears.” On the ranch, I learned the truth of this. Me and my horse swam in the creek, me in old jeans and a bathing suit top, hugging close to the strong, wet neck of the horse, my face buried in her fragrant mane, laughing, feeling the power beneath me as she swam, screaming with my friends as the cold water splashed us. And then we got out and back on the fields again, shimmying out of wet jeans and into shorts, our bare legs clinging to the horses’ sides, galloping with all the freedom in the world.
I spent the night there on my sweet sixteen. It was my gift from my best friends. They brought the horses up there, me blindfolded. When they pulled off the handkerchief, there I was, in my most favorite place in the world. We learned what it’s like for three teenage girls and their horses to spend the night under a sky full of glittering stars and the shadows of the pines and the ancient mountains. What its like to curl up under warm comforters and fall asleep to the sounds of horses. To wake up with the dawn, when the sun paints its favorite colors across the morning sky, just for those who arise early enough to watch.
Tomorrow, I’ll spend my Labor Day at the ranch. My friend who was married there just over a year ago is now pregnant with her first baby, and we all having a barbeque near the wedding site.
What better place to be? This is the ranch…the place I spent as a child sticky with sap, smelling of smoke, face streaked with blackberry juice, lovin’ on the horses, giggling with my friends.
To me, it symbolizes a happy childhood and all that is beautiful about growing up in western America. This is my home. This is the ranch.
