The Final Frontier

I took a drive to Durango today. It’s a beautiful drive and I was thinking about living in the West and how lucky I’ve been. 

In 1989 Rick and I bought a little portion, 54 acres, of a former ranch in the middle of Texas. It was in that strip of land where the Texas Hill Country winds down and West Texas begins. 

With my move to Colorado seven and a half years ago it makes 35 years total that I’ve been able to live in the West, a dream I had since I was about 5 or 6 years old. It was sometimes part time and sometimes full time. It took a lot of hard work, a lot of sacrifice, and a lot of struggle. But when you really want something you find a way, if you can. Sometimes you can’t. You have to factor in some luck along the way. 

I love everything about the West. The mountains, the desert, the history, the wildlife, the plants. The clear rivers, the climate, the types of people that inhabit it. I love the bigness of it, the wide open spaces. The dark skies with more stars than a person can imagine, seeming so close you could reach out and grab them. I love the artwork depicting it, the beautiful jewelry with stones dug out from the mountains. I love the log cabins and the adobe houses. I love the light, the way it hits the mountain tops each morning and evening, the pink sunrises and the orange sunsets. I love the conifers and the aspens in Colorado, and the live oaks that were in central Texas. I love the way the dry wind feels on your face, the way the snow makes everything quiet. I love the food and the beer and the whiskey. 

I love the traditions and the cultures here. The stories of the indigenous people that lived here before Europeans. How they are still here, still living their lives as we all are. How they are so much a part of the area here in Colorado as they have always been. Signs marking when you enter their land. You don’t see that in the places I lived before here. If there were any Comanches in Kimble County, Texas I never ran across them. 

But life is full of stages and changes. And for many reasons I’ll be moving with some of my family. It’s not somewhere I thought I’d ever live. But I’m fascinated by the idea. I’ll be living about 4 hours south of Canada. I can hardly imagine it! That’s a day trip for us who grew up in Texas. And a long way from where I started out in life, and not just in miles. 

Barring any unknown circumstances, I expect this will be my last move. As long as the family stays there I will too. And at 75, let’s face reality, I don’t have that many years left. I expect this will be my final frontier. It will be a strange land for me. But the wilderness is all around there and there are new adventures to be had. I’m slowing down but once I get this old back repaired, I hope to be out on some of them. Stay tuned!

“Ain’t nothing better than riding a fine horse in new country.” ~ Augustus McCrae, Lonesome Dove

Broken Glass

“If We're Broken Glass

I'll find the pieces back to you

And if this Broken Glass

Won't pull together I'll turn to glue

And if this glue won't hold

I'll turn to gold

And shine for you”

It’s been 9 years now since Rickie died. And we were left with a world of broken glass. We tried to leave our world as it was when he was here. But it became apparent after a couple of years that the world as we knew it wasn’t going to shine without him. 

So 7 years ago the decision was made to leave that broken life and embark on a new one. And my kids and grandkids and I, along with other family, and people that joined us on this journey and became instant family, embraced this new life with gusto. 

We’ve had so many adventures since that decision was made. Rafting, hiking, tubing, skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, train riding, kayaking, horseback riding in the mountains. So many meals and drinks at local breweries where the kids shared their stories. Stories of coming down the mountain in a blizzard, Wolf Pup lessons, learning new skills, 4’ of snow in one week. Bear sightings, hiking in the forest while the snow falls on us, standing high on a ridge looking down at the river below. Sitting in the hot tub with all the stars in the universe above us. Campfires with Christmas music and s’mores, bundled up in our new jackets and boots. Sledding down the hill at Turkey Springs and up at Wolf Creek. Making snowmen and snow angels. We’ve been to Creede, Winslow and Sedona AZ, and Las Vegas NV. Going to the hot springs and smelling like sulphur, walking the river downtown with all the Christmas lights, riding in a hot air balloon. Dancing and theater and live music. Driving scary mountain shelf roads to Ouray and Silverton, trips to Telluride and Palisades. Trips to the Great Sand Dunes, Mesa Verde, and the Ghost Ranch. Visits to Santa Fe and Albuquerque. And to Crested Butte, Denver, Taos, and Roswell. 5K walks, drives to see the golden aspens and where the last grizzly in Colorado was killed. Jeep rides to Imogene Pass and tours of mines. Cutting our Christmas trees down in the forest as an eagle screamed overhead. Herds of elk, one time walking single file through a snowy field on the way to the Piedra River. Shopping in Durango. Walking dogs and watching the Cowboy Poetry Gathering parade. 

And we’ve marveled at everything we’ve done. And marveled at ourselves for doing it. We’ve not taken one moment of it for granted. It’s all been magical. 

When I sold the ranch I promised the kids and grandkids we’d have adventures. We wouldn’t lose that place we all loved and replace it with just something ordinary. We’d be bold. As Rickie would have expected of us. I always thought he’d be a little disappointed in us if we didn’t take the opportunity we had and make something of it. The small acreage and tiny cabin we struggled to pay for and worked so hard to make into what it was from the empty ranch land it was with trash everywhere, was what enabled us to live this life. 

And I’m so proud of us all and how we’ve shone. We shine for you, Rickie. And because of you. 

Broken Glass by Mayaeni

I’ll Fly Away

The Durango airport is like a step back in time. It has one concession store and one gift store. There’s a baggage area, a few ticket and rental car counters, and a waiting area. And one “gate”. When you get on and off a plane you walk on the tarmac and climb stairs. As if you’re leaving on a private plane or Air Force One. There’s the small TSA screening area between the front area and the “gate” area. And double doors that are opened when people get off an arriving plane. 

I took Kathy and Ali this morning for their return trip to Houston. We hugged and said our “I love you’s”. As they got in the TSA screening line I stood off to the side trying not to cry. It’s been a rough week for the family, especially for Kathy. We lost one of our “anchor” people, the ones that keep us rooted. Behind Kathy and Ali a woman was in line for screening. With her was a huge bear of a man. He wasn’t fat, just huge. Bear size with a blond beard and a ball cap. I’m guessing the woman was his mom. They hugged and said their “I love you’s”. 

Then he came over and stood in the small area I was in. His mom turned around and threw him a kiss. We both stood there until our people were out of sight, focused on them as they moved through the screening. Ready in case there was a problem. Ready in case they needed us. 

In the old days before bad people realized you could use planes as weapons for chaos and destruction we would have been able to sit with the people we loved until they got on the plane. And watch out the window until the plane took off and was out of sight. Our people hanging up there in the sky for hours on their way home or on an adventure or responding to a call from someone who needed them. Come here, come now, my world has taken a hit. We need you. And we go, we don’t make excuses, we don’t say it’s too far, we have obligations. We just go. We might designate the one to go as the others take up the slack at home but we go. 

It’s hard watching someone fly off. Wondering when we’ll see them again. Knowing sometimes we never do. And so the younger Bear man and the older gray haired woman stood watching our people until they were out of sight. Hoping the love we send them off with gets them safely to where they’re headed.

Musings When I Turned 67

I ran across this I’d written on my 67th birthday, almost 7 years ago, and I wanted to add it to the blog. It’s good to look back on your life sometimes. 

Today I'm 67 years old. Closing in on 70. The 60s never seems that old to me but 70 does. Maybe I'll change my mind if I get there!

I've been thinking about all the changes my Mamaw saw and how that's different from what I've seen. She lived the longest of my grandparents. The whole world changed in amazing ways for her. From horses to automobiles to planes to spacecrafts. She walked down a country road to the store and lived to see men walking on the moon. She lived through the Korean War, both world wars, and Vietnam, and all the smaller fights around the globe. She buried a son killed in WWII and a 13 year old daughter who died from heart disease. 

She was born into a country where women couldn't vote. Where people of color couldn't eat and drink where white people did or go to the same schools. Where they were hung without trial for looking at a white woman and sometimes for no reason at all, not that that's a reason, but sometimes no one even tried to think of an inexcusable excuse. 

She had no contact with Arabs, Hispanics, Muslims, Hindus, Asians. If she knew any LGBT people, she wouldn't have known it because they kept it hidden. She didn't know many people that weren't Baptists and even then, if she did, they were likely to be Methodists. 

She lived before telephones and television. She never learned to drive. She worked outside the home when I was a kid and had been a farmer's wife before that. But mostly she took care of our family, cooking and taking care of things at home. 

She saw the world change in more ways than I ever will. We had all hoped we would soon be living as the Jetsons did, but it seems we've made slower progress than in the time of my grandmother. Our biggest change is the Internet. It's an encyclopedia at our fingertips and a way of instant communication with our family and friends and even those we would never meet otherwise. It inspires revolutions, for good or bad, and it educates us on what goes on around the world. It teaches us and shows us how to repair plumbing leaks or frame a wall. 

We have an international space station but it doesn't seem like we've moved as fast as we thought we would once we walked on the moon. We never went back and there's no space travel for humans easily available. We send satellites up for communications and spying but we've not managed to use that avenue for weather control or harnessing energy. 

We still rely on fossil fuel for energy, and renewables are in the baby stage and much of that in other countries, not ours. We've made no progress controlling flooding and droughts. We still have epidemics in diseases that could have been eradicated years ago if people would stop their mistrust of science and if countries would fund it. We've made some progress in recycling what we use but we still toss out unheard of amounts of trash and building materials. And in some countries people are still digging through dump sites to find something to eat. 

Though we've come a long way in accepting people that are different from us, many people want us to go backwards. Some even calling for our country to break up, as if our country didn't learn a lesson in heartache and horror from that last civil war. I see a lot repeating from the 1960s when I was young. Riots, blaming, hating and mistrusting on all sides those that are different, even trying to pass a slew of unconstitutional laws to make us all believe the same. The open-mindedness that people fought so hard to achieve, even dying for, is being pushed back against. 

And a see a lot of cries for isolationism. We can no longer follow that path. That's one thing the airplanes, satellites, and internet ended. Our world is smaller and what we do in one place affects all of us. Just like we get the smoke from the rainforest burning in South America, we can get something worse from a tiny nation (or big nation, even our nation, as we aren't immune to power hunger) with a crazy leader and nuclear capability. We're still seeing what can be done by a small group of people with explosive vests or assault rifles. What someone just as crazy can do with a nuclear weapon is unbearable to think of. 

A woman I don't know told me a few years back that her only concern was that she didn't want the world to change. Well, the world's gonna change. How it changes is the only control we have. We can go backwards or forwards. While there are some things I don't want to lose, like porch swings and cheese toast, we have so much room for improvement, so much good that can come out of our advanced knowledge. We've got to move forward in our education and not slow down and for that we need it to be a priority and it needs to be funded. 

I hope my grandchildren and their generation aren't content to let things carry on as they are, and certainly I hope they don't want to go backwards. I hope they accomplish what we couldn't. I see some of my generation and the generation under us raising their children to look backwards and not forwards. But I have hope that most of them don't and that among those who are raised that way, many will think for themselves and look ahead. 

Just some musings on my 67th birthday. Looking out my window, it's a wonderful world and looks not that much different than it would have looked 50 or 60 years ago. But outside my view I want it to move forward. And move forward at the speed it did for my Mamaw, and all in good ways. I know some people want things to stay the same for their grandkids, and as far as having clean rivers and wild places, I do too. But on other fronts, I'm like most parents and grandparents and I want it to be better. 

"It's your world now

My race is run

I'm moving on

Like the setting sun

No sad goodbyes

No tears allowed

You'll be alright 

It's your world now.

It's your world now

Use well your time

Be part of something good

Leave something good behind."

~The Eagles

I Kept the Roses

I watched a Hallmark movie this week called Time for Him to Come Home. 4th in a series of “Time for someone to come home”. It’s based on a song Blake Shelton and his mom wrote and a book his mom wrote. It’s a nice feel good movie, as all Hallmark ones are. It has a bit of a mystery. It has the very handsome Tyler Haynes with the kind eyes. Kind eyes being the key to being handsome. And it has an adorable Canadian singer named Tenille Townes. She’s singing the title song with the line “Mama called and said it’s time for me to come home.” Bringing tears to the eyes of all of us who wish our mom was still around to call us and say the same. 

Then I found this song of hers. For all of us who know what it’s like to have a broken heart. And what to do with all the things remaining when the one we love is gone. I’ve found people do it differently. Some never change a thing. Some toss everything out the first month. Some, like me, keep a lot, but “give up that bar on the East side of town”, or in my case a tiny house on a tiny ranch because the memories are too painful and the dream has died. A lot of us give up friends, or more accurately they give us up. But I think everyone keeps something. And it’s often surprising what we choose to keep. 

The song is about a love that didn’t work out, but the sentiment of what to save is sometimes the same. 

🎶I tore all the pictures from all of their frames

And all of your T-shirts, I gave them away

I gave up those friends we both hung around

And I gave up that bar on the east side of town

I quit driving by to see if you're home

And I took your dead number right out of my phone

I came to my senses and I gave up drinking alone

But I kept the roses 

Right by my bed

And they should make me lonely 

But I'm smiling instead

'Cause you weren't the one, babe

But you were the closest

I let the rest of us go 

But I kept the roses🎶

I Kept the Roses

What is the longest project you have ever worked on?

This was one of the questions on a StoryWorth book project my daughter and son-in-law gave me. I’ve shared some of the stories here and this is the latest question.

I did two long projects. One was the garage conversion at the first house I bought in Colorado. I did the floors, the painting, and some of the insulation. And demo on a lot of shelves. I also assisted as the carpenter’s helper on removing windows, framing walls, and hanging doors. And I handled the whole permit and inspection side of things. The first time I’d ever gotten building permits and had inspections.

But I did the most work on the other big project, the one I did at our tiny cabin in central Texas. It’s the project I’m most proud of. After Rickie died I moved forward with adding a bedroom and bathroom with laundry area, a project we’d hoped we might be able to do when he retired.

The original cabin had 464 sq ft. After the addition the total cabin area was 809 sq ft. I had the same company that did the original cabin shell do the addition shell. Because of the way the chimney was positioned the addition was connected to the original cabin by a hallway with small outside decks on each side.

The ceiling in the addition was 12’ tall at the peak. The carpenter tried to talk me into letting him add a drop ceiling because he thought it would be easier for me to finish. I had told him I was going to try and install the tongue and groove planks myself. Rickie and I (mostly me) balked at doing that in the original cabin and only did the walls ourselves. We hired someone for the gable ends and the high 13’ peaked ceiling in that original cabin room. The carpenter told me that there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that I could do that ceiling but if I decided I needed help to call him and he’d come help me. It’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me!

The carpenter had been an accountant in Mexico and we talked a lot while he was there about life and about what I wanted to do myself. He was very kind to me and told me how to make frames to do the metal skirting I planned to put on the addition. His son was also a carpenter and helped with the shell project. They were only there a week building the shell and they stayed in town. One night I cooked some soup and cornbread for us and we shared a meal.

They did the addition shell, including metal roof, and the small back deck and stairs. I did the front deck myself. The biggest part of the project was the tongue and groove planks for the walls and ceilings. I had to cut lots of angles for the gables. It took me some thinking to figure out how I would do the ceiling. We had a tall stepladder that would just allow me to get to the top. I had bought a cordless nail gun and hung it from a belt on the ladder. I’d cut each piece, alternating lengths, climb the ladder and install it, then back down and do the same. Moving across one side and then the other.

I had to rip boards at the top of the walls and the ceiling peak. I was not comfortable using the table saw we had. So I cut them with a cordless jigsaw. I also had to cut some of the back part of the “tongues” off when I used different planks. We had enough left over from the original cabin to do one wall but when I changed to the new planks they didn’t fit tight. So I had to cut the back part off to force them to fit. And I had to do this on others that didn’t mesh together well as I got to planks bought at different times.

I framed out a drop ceiling and installed planks on it over where the bathtub would go because I knew I would have a hard time finishing the ceiling once the tub was in. I couldn’t do the whole ceiling until I finished the walls. And I couldn’t do them until the plumber and electrician did their work. After the tub was installed I framed up an end wall as the space for the tub was about 8” longer than the tub.

I improvised a lot as I went along. Sometimes I’d have to tear something down I’d just finished. Like the first framing for the drop ceiling over the tub when I realized I didn’t support it correctly on the side walls. I used coffee can tops and other odd things I had on hand as patterns for some of my cutouts.

I unloaded and cut and installed the plywood subfloor. The 4x8’ sheets are heavy and hard to handle but I managed to get it done. I stained the ceiling planks before I put them up and painted the walls and trim after they were up.

I bought, loaded, hauled, and unloaded most of the supplies myself. I’d transfer things to the Kawasaki Mule, which was lower than the pickup truck. Then drive to the side of the front porch and unload them there. The tub was very heavy and challenging. At some point I went into town and just had the lumber yard there deliver the last of the planks I needed. I moved the planks around so many times during the process. I had the compound mitre saw set up on the front porch for most of the project. Sometimes I had it inside when there was room.

After I had finished the planks on the walls and ceilings, I did the trim work, including window sills and trim. Then I installed the vinyl plank floors (LVP). I didn’t do any electrical, HVAC, plumbing, or the tile work around the tub. I installed the hardware for a sliding barn door for the bathroom. Then I built a barn door for it out of leftover corrugated metal and the pine planks. My neighbor Scott ripped the two side pieces for me on that so I’d have a smooth even finish. And he helped me lift the door into place. I had to make some adjustments on it as we discovered when hanging it but it all worked out. I made a door handle from a piece of a tooled leather belt Rickie had.

John and Zac came out one weekend and they helped me put the framing together for the metal skirting. I finished the frames and installed most of the corrugated metal panels. Caleb and Cameron were out hunting one week and they did some of the metal skirting on the front. I knew I needed venting for the crawl space so just left spaces that I filled with vents and trimmed them out.

A lot of the project was just figuring out how to do things as I went along. 

I had room for a washer and dryer at one end of the bathroom. I installed some shelves over that area. After the addition was finished I put some roofing shingles under the skirting to keep skunks from digging and spread granite gravel all around the cabin to cover this and for xeriscaping. I had a door to the small new back deck and I painted it pink.

There was the original back screen porch this new deck connected to. I’d removed enough screen to make room for a screen door to go from that new deck to the old porch. I put a 4x4 post in and put a screen door so you could access the old porch and new deck.

The whole project took about 8 months. I learned a lot about myself and what I was capable of doing. It got me through that first year after Rickie died and life as we knew it came to an end. It gave me confidence that I could handle anything thrown at me. And confidence to tackle projects I’d never done before. To never let the fact you didn’t know how to do something stop you. That was always Rickie’s motto, a variation on “just do it!”

Ironing - A Family Tradition

I was a young mother of two boys, 20 years old, when my cousin Tommy was killed in Vietnam. The Marines came to tell Aunt Margie her middle son wouldn’t be coming home, or at least when he did it would be in a box, his body frozen for the two week trip home. 

We were a close family, cousins as close as siblings, aunts and uncles parents to us all. We all lived in the same area and not a week went by that I didn’t see my grandparents and parents and usually an aunt or uncle or two. Calls were made and one by one, or two by two, or in small groups, we all made our way to Aunt Margie and Uncle Bob’s house. They lived about two blocks from my parents. 

Everyone was stunned and pretty quiet. It wasn’t that we were shocked something like this could happen. Our family had experienced death before, and more often than most people I knew. An uncle killed in France in WWII. An uncle killed in Korea. Various other deaths unrelated to military service; a baby brother who didn’t make it past 3 days, an aunt who died at 13 years of age. A family friend shot by his girlfriend. As far as military service, we knew full well the cost of going to fight America’s wars. So we lived with the thought Tommy might never make it home.

As we all arrived, someone every few minutes, at Aunt Margie’s, hugs were given but I don’t remember that anyone really told her or Uncle Bob they were sorry for their loss. It was a communal loss, each member loved by everyone. It’s that way in close families. He belonged to all of us, a member of our tribe as we say today. Family as we said back then. 

I settled on the sofa and watched Aunt Margie iron clothes. She wasn’t crying or screaming, as I’m sure she felt like doing. She just quietly ironed. Jeans, shirts, pants, anything she could find to iron. Someone told her not to worry with that, just to come sit down. But she said she couldn’t. She had to stay busy. She said it quietly as was her way. She was a pretty, quiet woman and she’d had a hard life. Of all the women in our family, she was the one who seemed to me the most fashionable with an understated, classic style. Her thick black hair cut in a short bob at times and piled on her head at other times. She wasn’t too big or too small, just the right size. She had a lovely soft laugh and an easy smile. Rare in my family of loud, boisterous people. 

Watching her calmly iron clothes as her son lay dead on the other side of the world broke my heart. And it still does. I’ve seen people scream and cry and fall on the floor upon hearing bad news, of facing the loss of a loved one. But I’ve never seen anything more heartbreaking then Aunt Margie quietly ironing clothes as the family who loved her and who loved Tommy sat all around her. I’ve seen that same strength and calmness in others of my family, facing the loss of stillborn babies, of husbands, of children, of parents. And each time I think back to Aunt Margie and her quiet grace. We all learned from her and from others like my own parents, and it’s passed on to the generations that didn’t even know her. 

I rarely iron anymore. I choose to wear clothes that don’t need ironing and I’m not a fussy dresser. I’m retired so I have a boring wardrobe. Once, years ago now, when I was going through a life changing period in my life, I faced depression and despair. My best friend, who was worried about me, made me an appointment with her therapist. It was a week later before I could see her. In that time I managed to shake it off and I was much better. Because I had the examples of plenty of strong women in my family. When I talked to the therapist I jokingly told her the terrible thing about my being so down was that all my clothes were permanent press, as we called them back then, and I didn’t have anything to iron. I said if I’d had some clothes to iron, as was our family tradition in times of great stress, I’d be ok. We had a nice talk and life went on and so did I. 

I ironed a few clothes today. Not mine. I own two shirts that need ironing. I seldom wear them, and when I do I take them to the cleaners 45 miles away in Durango. Today I was helping out a loved one who has no time to iron. And as I do every time I run the hot iron over the fabric, smoothing out the wrinkles, Aunt Margie comes to mind. She’s there in her sleeveless button shirt and tan “pedal-pushers”, as we called cropped pants back in 1970. Ironing her family’s clothes, looking up every so often to ask if any of us need anything.