Playing All Day

To listen to them create their own games. To watch their kindness towards one another if one has fallen down into the dirt and rocks & to offer a helping hand. To witness them helping one another work towards a common goal, something that really has no importance to me, but to them, is the whole purpose of that moment. To know that we have no where else to be. Nothing else to “get done” other than what lies before us, the now, this moment. To be a part of the richness present within their childhood~ those are the gifts of today.

I heard Hunter say to Ben “Oh, you sit right here little guy” and outstretch a hand to him to help him climb up the 4 wheeler as they pretended to drive. I heard Hunter ask politely what he could do to help while Katie was digging out a deeper canal for the mountain water to run. I watched Katie rescue Ben after he slipped in the snow, holding him safely, comforting him and helping get the snow out of his boot (yes, there still is a ton of it about 200 feet higher than where we are).

Everyone has adjusted already despite the short amount of time we have been here. The cats are hunting lizards. The kids are enjoying getting back into Nature and finding things to do in it. Katie is running through the tall grass chasing the dog. The dog is running too but I think she is more likely feeling like she is herding Katie than being chased. Ben has spent the better part of the afternoon playing outside in just his underwear. That is a good look for him....mud boots and a t-shirt hanging down over most of his underwear but not quite. Today, we were miles from home in the middle of nowhere and, of course, Hunter has to go to the bathroom ~ #2. So he adjusted just fine to that sort of business. Actually, he had been asking the entire day before if he could go out in nature. I have to draw the line somewhere, ya know? But, there we were, and that was going to be the only solution. Funny how some kids are just born into being a part of nature and adjusting well to that. I tell ya what, Hunter would rather go in the forest than at Target!!

We 4 wheeled up Log Canyon road this afternoon, just me and three kids on the 4 wheeler. We just had to stop as soon as we saw snow we could play in. We must have been there for over an hour; Just stopped in the middle of the trail, skiing down the snow, throwing snowballs, and then stepping one foot over, kicking off our boots and splashing in the tiny little stream created from that snow melting. I just faded away and the three of them all just played. It occurred to me what a gift it is to create NOTHING to do, to have no where to go, to just be able to remain silent and never have to let their play end. I just stood by, thinking, appreciating all the beauty around me and just stayed quiet. They just played and played and it was as though that was all there was, nothing else, except that moment and the “work” they had created for themselves. I felt so blessed to have this day ~ to just be in my own thoughts while they were all so content just to play in the mountain waters and dirt.

When we were here in February, I remember hearing that we were in an avalanche warning. We did not really know what exactly that meant or what we should do about that. So, whatever, just filed that away. But today as we were heading up the dirt road behind that cabin, it was clear the destruction an avalanche can have. Trees were snapped in half like they were toothpicks. Then in other places it was merely just the tip of an evergreen or birch tree that lay across the road. We were in awe with the power, obviously no longer present, but was once there. Eventually, we had to turn back around because there was too much snow and not enough road; just a size of about the width of the 4 wheeler and maybe 12 inches and then the cliff. We were smart. We turned around. As soon as I got the 4 wheeler turned around, Ben shouted, “Mama! You saved the day!” It's certainly nice to be someone's hero!

Katie brought with her a very special “little one”, Sparkle. We stopped to pick up a branch Katie insisted was so beautiful we had to take it back to the cabin and show dad. Suddenly, she screams out, “MOM! Sparkle is missing. I dropped Sparkle.” And then hysterical crying.

Oh boy! Please, please, please let us not have lost her, such a special gift from Granny Evergreen, who brought Sparkle to Katie last year in Kindergarten with Mrs. Cassidy. Oh, not Sparkle, the only special little doll she will most likely cherish and save forever. Not this one. Not today.

So, back up the snowy mountain track we went. Katie crying hysterically, Hunter, Ben & I scanning the dirt road. I just looked up into the canyon, out into the beautiful blue sky and just said a little prayer, just tossed out that energy into the universe, “please”. And before we knew it Katie is yelling out that she sees her, face down in the dirt. Sparkle....no more adventures for you. But, really it has been a good thing. Nothing like the fear of something being lost and gone forever to reignite love and affection towards it~ I think that must apply to just about everything from a little doll to a person. As soon as we got home, she started making a little clay soup bowl, plate, cup and saucer & a spoon and fork. After all, she was hungry after that near escape. I could practically hear Katie sighing in relief the better part of the afternoon.

Scott has been gone most of the day tending to things at the farm. It seems that as soon as we arrive, there is much to take care of, wrap up or initiate. So, although it is bedtime for the kid's, he is still out and about. The machine that cuts the hay is being delivered tonight, the pump is not working, all kinds of good stuff. So, I am just sitting here watching the shadows slowly move across the hills and mountains, listening to the boys playing with their bow & arrow while Katie is still feeding Sparkle.

The Making of Rattlesnake Road

Warning....if you are planning to visit this summer~ you might want to skip this blog.

It rained tonight. The clouds rolled over the canyon behind us bringing a wonderful heavy but short rain. When I tucked Katie in for bed she looked at me and said, "Mom, I am so glad it rained tonight ~ good for the crops." That a girl, Katie!

We all woke up bright and early and set out to walk up the wash, usually a trail of rocks cut out from water that flows down from the mountain. NEVER in all the years we have been here have we ever seen it running, but this year, the water is running like crazy! The dog, of course followed as she usually does, and the two cats actually came too. It looked like a scene from The Incredible Journey, all of those animals sticking together walking down the gravel road setting out for adventure.

As we set out, Katie actually found another shed antler. Unbelievable! That girl has got an eye for nature and she is just so in tune with things. Read on and you will get the full meaning of what I am saying.

Anyway, the kids and I had a great time splashing and throwing rocks. We sang as we hiked, Hunter mostly, singing a song about rocks, Katie making ones up as we went along and Ben just joining in at the last moment. Although it sounds very sweet, it actually most likely stems from "Safety School" - what I have termed our little morning lessons about being smart in Nature. Today's little golden rules were 1) Always stick with a buddy 2) Hike loud. This way you will scare off anything lurking around, like a mountain lion or rattlesnake and 3) Call "HELP" when you need it but at no other times.

The sun was high in the sky and although we had started out with it being rather cloudy, the sun was shining on us now so we headed back to the cabin for lunch. We had lunch at Jesse's Restaurant, the name which Katie created long ago at our little play kitchen at home. I was the cook, Katie was my daughter, Hunter was a cowboy who lived in the mountains hunting all day, and Ben was his horse. Katie and I put on our aprons and served them lunch and Hunter was so into playing, telling us stories of his adventures, his time spent traveling through the mountains and of all the animals he shot, he even offered to shoot a buck for us and let us just have the meat for our restaurant. Of course, Jesse and I were pleased to hear this! :)

Scott and Katie went up to check on generator at the pump house on the 4 wheeler before dinner. There is a little road up to the pump house. We all had been on it earlier today, playing tag, collecting rocks, just running around.

The story I heard about the trip up to the pump house goes something like this...

Katie leans into Scott telling him she sees a snake.

Scott is trying to see it, looking all around and still cannot see what Katie is talking about. In his head, he is thinking it is going to be a blow snake, whatever THAT is, but has seen those up there before. (thanks for letting the rest of us know that!) So, he puts the 4 wheeler in reverse and can see this snake slithering away. Really the only thing he can see of it IS THE RATTLE!!!!

SO when he saw it was a rattlesnake, they stopped and watching it for a second. In Scott's brain, he is thinking to himself that he has a rather short window here and needs to decide what he is going to do about this. So he decides it is better if he tries to kill it than let it slither off into the woods. He tells Katie to stay on the 4 wheeler and picks up two big rocks. He whips it at the snake and it lands hard onto its back and he must have sort of stunned it. Then he threw the second rock and he thinks he actually hit it on the head. After that, he just keeps whipping rocks at it. He said that he could see its fangs and it was just sitting there with its mouth wide open striking at a rock in front of it!!!! Yikes!

Katie is about 20 yards back calling out if she can come and see what is going on. Scott is telling her to stay back. He's just nailing the snake with rocks and can see it is still moving but not really in any direction. So he tells Katie to find a stick and bring it to him. She does. He jabbed it with the stick several times. Then lifts it out onto the road and pins its head down using the stick and gets out his knife and cuts its head off!!!!

I am at home with the boys making dinner. I hear the 4 wheeler come pulling up and Hunter comes tearing into the house yelling how dad needs me for something. I tell him I am making dinner. It's important he says. I step out onto the deck and see them all standing there, Scott saying that he has good news and bad news. I am thinking there was an accident, Katie fell off the back of the 4 wheeler. Then he says, "Well, we had our first encounter with a rattlesnake but we killed it." Then he steps aside and I can see the snake laying all the front of the 4 wheeler STILL MOVING!!! Scott still smiles and laughs when he thinks about what my face looked like. Can I just say I did not know he already cut its head off!? All I hear is rattlesnake and all I see it a snake still moving!!

So, of course, there was the story of this which includes a lot of hovering around the snake, some freaking out on my part as the thing is still moving and then the next step. How to skin the snake, keeping the rattle attached. It was one of the creepiest things I have seen in a long time....Scott is pulling the skin back off from where its head once was and the other end half is still moving. I just had to walk away.

So now that road up to the pump house is called Rattlesnake Road. Ya all can come by and see the snake head on a stick in the tree.

We researched how to preserve it and right now it's soaking in a special little anti-freeze cocktail.

Someone up there is looking out for us. That was EXACTLY the same place Katie and I had veered off for a little hike, where the kids and I were this afternoon, a road we are on all the time! Certainly makes us think about all the adventures we DO NOT want to have. It amazes me that all this time we have been talking about snakes, Katie did not even know it was poisonous until they were leaving. I guess that just goes to show how, as adults, you just think your kids are "getting it" and then maybe they are really not.

I told Scott tonight I was nervous about running in the early morning because that is when I think the mountain lions are out. Ya know, been out scavenging all night and now are headed back to their den. He laughed and told me that the chances of that were "so slim". My comment was, "Ya right, just like the chances of seeing a rattlesnake."

He really did not have much to say about that.

I think it might be time for a little scotch.

PS>Scott has a great video of some of this we will have to see if we can upload. Stay tuned...

Packing Up & Heading West

It seemed as though we had been getting ready to go to Utah for so long. I think we must have started our own little family count down about 25 days ago or so. Each morning the kids would run over to the numbers eager to take another one down. And then, finally, the day was here!

Each time we go, it seems we pack less and less. I find myself asking, " What do we really need?" Our time here is always about each other, nature, peace & quiet and just really slowing things down. So, really, what do we need~not what are all the extra things we think we should bring, but what do we really need? With that being said, packing up still seemed to take longer than I wanted. But off we went, the two of us, three kids, 2 cats and a dog full of anticipation.

We pulled out of the drive-way and we were all giddy with excitement. Hunter announced that this year he was not going to ask when we would be to Utah as much as last year. He actually did a pretty good job. And when he did ask, our answer was "in two days".

We got to the middle of Iowa the first night and just needed to be done. For the most part, Friday was an ordinary day; up early, Scott worked most of it, some other craziness thrown in there, so we were tired and decided not to push it.

We woke up the next morning, had breakfast but before we got to driving the cat started puking. Nothing like holding the cat's head over the litter box to start off your morning with an entire day of driving. I guess she was fine after that but we were certainly tempted to leave her in the Walmart parking lot for someone who had a much shorter drive than us!

The kids and I gathered around the table to start on a few projects while Scott drove. I noticed Hunter not quite acting himself, starting to lay his head down on the table, looked rather flushed....yes, you know where I am going with this. And then, all the color in his face was gone and I asked him if he felt like he was going to be sick and you know Hunter, he said nothing, but then just started puking all over himself. I did not even know what to do, try and catch it all in his shirt, have him do it on the wood floor, see if we could make it the toilet without leaving a fruit snack trail behind, hold HIS head over the litter box. Well, needless to say, we DID need to pull over. We gave him some motion sickness stuff and in no time, he was back to himself.

The cat not so much. She puked AGAIN the next morning. Luckily, it was on the floor mat but cannot say that Scott's pair of flip flops left on the mat were very lucky. They were deserted somewhere around Rawlings, Wyoming.

We stopped at a Pioneer Museum as we were traveling through Wyoming. It's called the Archway. It is approximately where the Mormon, California & Oregon trails all met. It is also 1,733 from Boston as well as from San Fransisco. Interesting. We seemed so far from Boston.

We went on a tour and learned all about what life was like if you dared to travel west in those days. Before the railroad was connected (which, by the way, took 6 years to do) the only way people could get out west was to simply walk. Many were not wealthy enough to afford a wagon and numerous families just took a hand cart. A hand cart was like a mini-wagon with two wheels that you just pulled. Imagine pulling your meager belongings into the unknown in search of a better life! Each person was allowed to take about 17 pounds. Everyone had to walk. If you had young ones, that you would have to carry, you simply could not go. One account was that while traveling, a herd of buffalo came, crossing their path, they waited 2 hours for it to pass. He estimated that there were 2 million of them! At one point, the Pony Express could travel 2000 miles in 10 days!

People who could afford wagons initially packed up all kinds of things~organs, fancy furniture, books~only to later leave them along the trail. It became known as the "Prairie library" because so many had left their books, which, at one point, were too important to leave behind, but later to realize they were worthless out on the trail. What good would they do to help save your life? So, in so many cases, by the time you did actually get to where you were going, if you were so lucky, you essential had nothing. You just started living that dream with nothing but the dream itself and the hope that the life you will now make would be better than the one you left.

Later as we continued to drive through Wyoming, I just could not help myself looking at the landscape and thinking about all those people. How spoiled we are to have had someone carve out a highway for us, how easy & worry free. Here, in a place where you do not see a tree for miles and miles, all these people just set out to cross this land vulnerable to the elements. It is just so vast! And there in the distance lurk these snow capped mountains which you will need to somehow get around. Or over. In one case, the men on a wagon train actually dug through instead of going around and that was actually faster!!

To never lose hope and be so determined to keep keepin' on, to hold onto whatever dreams you believed would come true "out west" and just continue on despite death, disease and extreme hardship truly amazes me. I just cannot think of anything comparable today to what that must have been like. Such a driving force.

As we drove out, I think Scott and I both pondered why we love it here so much. How can it feel so different than life at home. I am not sure if either of us came to any real conclusion about that, but do know that there is something about being here- together, some days only seeing and hearing one another- that fills us with a joy we have not experienced elsewhere. This, to us, is a place to become truly grounded in what we value most, to just slow down, to make the time to really look & see each other and what's around. Katie , Hunter & Ben wake up each day believing the world is at their feet, that anything is possible. And as the older, sometimes jaded adults, we cannot help but get on board with that. And so we all wake up feeling that way. It must just be something about the west~ that anything is possible.

We pulled in this afternoon and are unpacked and settled in. Katie already found a shed antler ~ something I have been looking for for years and she just came upon it, right in front of her, of course, not looking for it at all. But isn't that the way it goes? When you look too hard for something, it just may never come to you. And think of what you miss looking at in the meantime.

Tracking Tracks

It was Scott's birthday yesterday and it was a wonderful day. Hunter was so excited to be able to share the whole day with his dad while the other two and I stayed home at the cabin and did some birthday preparations.

Poppa Joe flew in yesterday and Hunter and Scott headed north to Salt Lake City to pick him up. While they were gone, Katie, Ben and I baked a cake which Katie decorated (and Ben helped eat the frosting), cleaned the cabin and made several birthday decorations which included a giant 'Happy Birthday Dad' sign and numerous paper doll people that we strung along the mantle. The shadows of their paper legs were just dancing on the ceiling tonight while the fire roared. I think the paper dolls are here to stay.

All the kids painted their very best picture for Scott and I framed them. Katie painted an outdoor scene with a fox, several birds eating bird seed, a lovely sky and a bright shining sun. Ben painted three giant red flowers, a blue streaked sun and clouds. And Hunter painted the BEST buffalo you could imagine! Horns and all! Katie traced Hunter's hands and feet, cut them out and glued them together making a butterfly, another gift for dad. And Katie spent the better part of the day (and I felt like I did too) latch hooking a rug. It has two bunnies in a flower garden and she had the best intentions of finishing before he arrived back at the cabin with Poppa Joe. But we still have a lot of work to do on it.

Poppa Joe arrived safely and we enjoyed a wonderful birthday dinner together and "trick" candles on the cake afterwards. Such great memories.

We lost 4 calves since the last time we blogged. So we talked about what life on a farm is like and what can happen. The kids stood by while Scott and the other Farmer Scott hauled the two dead calves over and loaded them into the truck. That needed to be done right away to defer any coyotes or cats coming around.

There was no real reason and we are perplexed as to the "why". However, today was good and all babies are well. Katie DID get her wish to give a calf a bottle. There was one that was not nursing from her mom so well so we had to supplement a little. Actually, that little calf sounds a lot like Katie did. Hunter helped too. It was new for both of them, but they each did great.

We snowmobiled up past the ranch. Scott and Poppa Joe went up to check a pond which gave the kids and I a chance to do some exploring. Katie spotted some coyote tracks and crawled along side of them for what seemed like a 1/4 mile. She called me over and we all began to follow. Along side those tracks appeared some rabbit tracks. And we soon approached the area where the rabbit tracks were no more. It was weird though because there was not a bone left, no blood, nothing but fur. Katie was saddened and said, "Poor bunny." and my response was "Everything needs to eat." She walked off down the road as though she was contemplating this.

I looked one last time down at the fur scattered around and there, in an imprint in the snow, was the rabbit tail! I reached down to grab it and stood up to find Katie standing beside me asking what I found. When I told her, that "circle of life" sadness was gone and she looked up at me with excitement in her eyes and asked if she could have the tail for her treasure box. It made me smile to think of her treasure box in ten years, completely forgotten about, shoved over her bed in the dark abyss of who knows what. And there within that treasure box will be these memories of her times here. That rabbit tail will help her recall this day and I wonder what she will say about it when she's much older. And I hope that those things that she (and her brothers) recall as their real treasures will be the experiences they have here. Right now, it looks like a rabbit tail, but in twenty years, it will look like a deep love and appreciation for what surrounds them, the excitement there along with wonder and to always believe in the 'magic' of the world.

We continued onward on the snow mobiles and there, right along the side of the road, were more coyote tracks, sometimes more than one! Then there would appear more rabbit tracks and then the tracks would disappear and a little ways on down the road just the coyote tracks would reappear. Katie was like a tracker! She was riding on the back of the snowmobile with Poppa Joe and she just kept pointing out tracks with the walking stick she acquired.

Scott and Hunter went back over to call coyotes while the rest of us stayed back at the cabin to cozy in by the fire. Poppa Joe fell fast asleep on the couch while Ben, Katie and I snuggled and read stories. Katie and I needle felted a little red pony for our puppet play we are planning for our show.

After Scott got back with Hunter, my dad and I went snow shoeing. We saw a ton of tracks...a bull elk, coyote, something that looked like a bobcat cat and some mystery tracks that I named "the one legged coyote." My dad said to me that he would not want to be in such a beautiful place with anyone but me and that made my heart sing.

I put Hunter to bed tonight and he drew pictures while I read to him. The picture he drew was of his dad, three coyotes, the sky, a happy sunshine......and a rifle. So, the day had an impact!

Scott and my dad are hanging out by the fire, talking, drinking scotch. Scott just ate a little something chocolatey and said, "Scotch and chocolate ~ there is nothing better." Just telling stories & laughing.

On the way up the mountain.

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