Endurance doesn't always shout.
There are times
it is simply that soft voice
There are times
it is simply that soft voice
you hear with each new day,
quietly stating "never give up".
quietly stating "never give up".
- Brigid
Home on the Range just hit the ten-year mark. It feels like I've always done this, as natural each day as breathing, but somewhere since 2009, when the stat counter went up a year into it, some 12 million people have wandered by to say hello, including a better part of a year I went private.
Seriously, you could replace a picture of ANY President with a picture of bacon and his approval ratings would go up.
My recipes archive runs from 2006 through Feb. 2008, simply to have a section of the blog that's just recipes for the sidebar links, but the first public post was this date in 2008. In these years since a lot has changed, and yet it has not.
The biggest changes, I gave up living in a semi-rural area to move to a huge city. I did this, for one reason. I married one of my readers, who first became my best friend, and then my husband. I'd follow him to Mordor (which is sort of what I actually did). There were naysayers -" he's half your age", "he lives in Chicago", but I found my hearts twin and when he made me a dozen roses out of duct tape on our first Valentine's day, because I told him real roses made me sad because they died, I knew I was in this for the long haul.
Tam, having an aviation background, I knew before this blog. But through her, I met Roberta X and many a grand adventure was had before I married and moved north. I miss Indy, but I love the life that he and I built and he has his dream job up here, something I'd never ask him to give up for me.
Then there were the losses, my stepmom of 30 years, Barkley, my brother, friends who left too young, such as my pilot friend Neptunus Lex. (to which my fifth book on the philosophy of flight will be dedicated). Such things deserve more than a blog post, but lasting dedication to maintaining those memories.
Abby Normal, our Senior Rescue Lab Mix.
The second is on the urging of my readers I wrote a book, then another, then another, then another, an anthology with other authors with the help of my friend of 30 years Jim Curtis. I honestly don't know if I would have - had not Barkley and my brother died within just a few weeks of one another. I wanted to capture their stories, hoping it would at least momentarily purge the grief. So I began to write, the words filling their void. Five weeks later the words and the tears dried up, remaining forever as traces upon paper and skin, visible only to me.
All were amazon best sellers, 2 hitting the #1 spot and staying there. The book of Barkley as of last week, four years in, is still #14 in genre at Amazon. I've won two major literary awards, been on the cover of a literary magazine and was interviewed by NPR. Then there was that time that Partner was in London on business and in a fancy brick and mortar bookstore saw TBOB in a table display, with a sign that said: "also by this author". At the time, Saving Grace wasn't published and was still in draft. He called me and told me and I said: "what book is it". It was a book by a Dr. L.B. Johnson - on erectile dysfunction. Quick a phone call to my publisher and publicist!!!
I got letters from people that loved them, through my publisher and through a P.O. box my best friends set up for me so I could mail out autographed books without giving out my home address. All were people I'd never met, simply telling me how my words soothed their own personal griefs and helped them grow and remember. Those letters are all contained in a small box in which Barkley's old orange collar lies. That meant much more than the fame, though having Chewbacca read my book and post it online was cool as was The Piano Guys inviting me to help produce a video with some other fans.
Then there were all the animal rescue people I met, as all the book proceeds go to them. So many dog lovers, probably too many barbecues, and beers but great fun, in numerous states.
And of course Midwest Chick, Mr. B. A home I spent many a weekend in with Barkley before I met Partner in Grime, forging friendships that last to this day.
All things that never would have happened had I not started this blog. I'd probably still be single 30 years now, not 20. I'd probably have too many rescue dogs, and I'd be living off the grid somewhere in Indiana, with probably at least one book on my shelf with a pirate with six-pack abs and a panting maiden. My table would be pretty empty most Saturday nights.
I'm SO glad I started this blog.
Another evening in a quiet house, with a cup of coffee and the computer, and the need to simply write about my day, my thoughts, sharing with those who have become part of my daily life. Reaching out to like spirits, those of us that love the shooting sports and the outdoors, our indomitable desire and will to pursue and grasp beyond all limits of flesh, of the outdoors, teeming with life. To defend and protect and teach. To share a simple meal, the renewing power of family and a belief in a way of life that goes back to our forefathers.
What has changed are those souls that share this space with me, some now, only in memory, waiting at the Rainbow Bridge and beyond, others tethering themselves here, with only love.
Though many people have come and gone through this small space, the quiet has not changed. I'm often amazed how very quiet it is around the Range as I sit at the computer. Here I am, all said and done, after almost 60 years of roaming this planet, a wanderer, an adventurer, on this tiny piece of land, in a small state, finally stationary, easing into quiet.
The years have been one of change, of brutally hard decisions and mistakes, of happiness, winters of cold and seasons of astonishing rain, falling like coins onto parched earth. But even the rain grows quiet now, the earth soaking up only the sun, the corn turning, dying slowly, the cool, solacing stalks spinning the last of golden radiance from a white-hot sun. I will arise early, the smell of biscuits baking, the land beginning to stir.
I wish I could sleep in, but too many years of living on a small farm broke me of that. A reader commented early on that farmers are all basically on government welfare, the small family farm dead, and I looked down on calluses that remained after the work on that farm ceased and didn't know whether to laugh at that or cry. Tears won out, splashing on hands whose last grasp of that family farm were as they lay on top of a coffin, a touching goodbye to someone who in defending that way of life lost his very breath.
Still, years later, on a much smaller piece of property, within a small and quiet village within a huge city, the sun draws me up, Abby, our senior rescue Lab snoozing on the little futon in the office on which Barkley will be forever imprinted, barking silently at ducks still floating on dreams. The coffee has perked, and the world falls into still again as memories of youth come unbidden, stories I do not write about, but that stay with me.So many memories, ones I hope you will share.
The early ones revolved around aircraft. I still remember the sounds of a flight to Ireland, a small fuel stop on the way further on. A cockpit is rarely quiet, but it's a symphony of familiar sounds. The voice of the air traffic controller, a reassuring sotto voice confirmation that two minds are in agreement, and all is well with the world. The clatter of a trim switch and the beep of an altitude alerter, sounds of warning that the earth is approaching. The ground. It's solid underneath you, and hard, and if you flared too high you'll break your aircraft against its incontrovertible passivity.
Aloft and level though, airplane sounds stabilize into a gentle song with just the occasional background chorus of the controllers, and you would have time to think and perhaps chat a little. We rarely talked about the mission, but like pilots everywhere we talked of everything else. We talk of the spiritual and we talk of the mundane. We talk about families and jobs, spouses, children, food, politics, food again and surprise, we talk about airplanes.
Then, with the remark about someone we knew, lost in combat, flying more dangerous work than we'd ever know, that familiar awe-filled sadness enveloped our little space and we grew silent, remembering him, sounds of mourning and respect. Airmen, like Patriots, are a small community of thousands, and we never forget our fallen.The descent and the landing were at hand and the day was drawing towards sunset, or would if we could see it through the prevailing overcast of our world, so we paused. The sound of conversation ended there. We simply basked in the hum of the engines and the view out the window to our world, clouds disbanding with the disinterest of late day, and the contrail of another aircraft 1000 feet above, vanishing upward like smoke as we descend for landing.
The First Range Dinner Party- Shooty Buddy, Barkley, Roberta X, Turk Turon and Tam (playing with my Swiss K31 in the other room)
Only a handful of them are pilots, yet all are of the same cloth. Determined, strong, traveling great distances within themselves to find the life they wanted. Things are never the same, yet they are. We all blog, but for many of us, that is not how we met, just a trait we share
Airborne or earthbound, some things just do not change.
Home on the Range. Days of work and weekends of sharing bullets and beer with those who believe as I do. Late evenings spent in front of the computer, writing, a post, Internet letters to my daughter, writing to you, as you chat back with me like the air traffic controllers of years ago, giving me guidance and encouragement, propelling me onward into this life that I lead, now shared.
These weekdays fly by, but I'll get out Saturday morning, like most, and head out walking, passing gardens past their prime, and flowers still unfolding in lush morning dew in defiance of their season. I move quickly forward, gun on my hip, black lab by my side, watching city life scuttle out of my path. Walking onward, out through pavement unmoving and shallow in the great streaming light, out towards the trees and towards the train tracks.As I wander these trails of history and sound, I look around my world, changed, yet unchanged, a scattered mosaic of leaves and broken flowers, the small bones of a broken bird laying among dried needles of pine, footprints of invisible deer. The hushed sound of my breathing, thoughts of a hand on a pine box, thoughts of another hand on my skin, tracing a scar that stands in stark relief to white skin, fingers kind, strong and forgiving.
It's a different life, yet the same. Days of hard work, countless days marked with bitter cold and radiating warmth, monotonous wonderful days of work and friends that I love, of water, woods and sky. Countless days here retreating like fields of corn, replaced by the city, leaving their mark on the landscape even when they are nothing more than dust.
Things that were worth waiting for.
Things that were worth remembering.
It is not the life of spoiled subsidy, it is not the life of an adventurer that I once led. It is my life, strong, quiet, true to myself and joined with those who hold not just my values, but my heart. It can't truly be judged by those who have never spent time with me. It can't be totally understood just from some words on a page. It is simply my life.It is tending a garden in drowsing sunlight, wrestling life from the ground in a flaying of green, sore muscles, mending heart. It is soil and sweat; it is books and reports and hours spent looking at the smallest of life's tragedies through a microscope. It is a life of putting together the pieces of shattered lives, pieces of me. But it is that life that all those contrails led me to, and I thank those of you, who have shown nothing but kindness, for sharing it with me.
