Thursday, June 18, 2009

Ranch News: June 17, NW of Abiquiu, NM















This is land where western culture, specifically southwestern culture, lives on. The land of the Navajo pueblos, ruins from centuries ago as well as small casino’s along Hwy 84; the land of enormous sandstone mineral sculptures marking the territory as some sort of otherworldly Badlands, equally potent as pictures from Mars may seem to the first-time viewer; the land where time moves more slowly simply because there is more to experience, which is the wonderful bonus, the dichotomy, from and about being here (here as we are for the whole summer, working the ranch). The ten weeks will go quickly, I know that, yet the day moves at the languid pace of a French feast, or a pontoon at Hyde Park’s Serpentine, or a great round of golf. Already, after only one full week as a family (me having preceded by one week in order to orient), we have become proficient horsemen, lousy fisherman, dead-eye shots with the Daisy Buck BB Rifle, most tolerant of the bugs, beetles and ants that belong here even more than we, kitchen clean-up, siesta taking veterans of life on the frontier. One can easily imagine a life where time spent regularly here works like an Epsom salt bath for the soul, adding the precious life-strengthening minerals to help replenish what we don’t even realize we are depleting; effects relative to time, space, inner life, purpose, influence, risk and danger. For this is, indeed, a place for forgiving people; in, however, a most unforgiving land. It is simply beautiful here. And being here, in this most honorable way and for this most glorious length of time is the rarest of experiences and opportunities. The reader may feel here that I am searching for superlatives; suffice please to say that we have settled in nicely and, having removed the capstone seal, are peering in to the limitless past and future so prevalent in this country, and find that living in the present here is so very easy to do and comes with great reward.

No comments: