Home Sweet Home

In 2004 when we built the cabin at the ranch I really wanted a big mesquite mantel we had seen outside of San Antonio at a place that made them. But it was outside our budget and we were running out of money.

We cut an old elm tree down on the ranch but the one we tried turned out to be dying inside. We didn’t have many trees that were straight enough and long enough so we gave up on that idea. Rickie decided to go by the main lumber yard in Austin of the place where we had looked at the mesquite mantels and see if they had a more affordable option. They used a lot of different woods. He happened to catch them when they were unloading unfinished mantels that were returning from being kiln dried. The owner gave him a bargain price on a mesquite one. 

He was headed to the ranch alone that trip and in spite of the mantel being heavy he unloaded it himself. He sanded it and finished it and got it on the two cedar support posts he had bolted to the framing when we were building the cabin. 

And there it set for almost 13 years. I told him several times over the years that if we ever sold the cabin I was taking the mantel. It was my favorite thing about the cabin and you don’t often find a mesquite tree that big anymore. It signified Texas to me and to all the hard work Rickie and I had done over the years to get our place to where it was. It meant home to me.

So in spite of the ordeal it was, the mantel made the trip here. I’m grateful to my neighbor Tim who singlehandedly moved it to the shed for me; to John, Austin, and Natalie who moved it from the shed to the storage unit in Austin; to the movers who moved it to Pagosa; to Natalie and Leslie who loaded it in my car to take to Denver; to Sarah and Justin who unloaded it in Denver and then took it off their wall there for the return trip here; to the movers who brought it from Denver to Pagosa; and finally to Sarah and Justin again who just put it on the brackets I put up this morning. And to the blacksmith in North Carolina who made the brackets for me. 

I don’t have a fireplace in my remodeled space and the cabin fireplace here already has a mantel custom cut to fit it. And it has its own story. So we put the mantel on the wall as a shelf. 

And it feels like home.