A Cowgirl Without a Cow



I love to wake up to hear the sounds of grass and tree leaves rustling, mixed with the song of the western meadowlark and the wind whistling through the crevices in the wood and steel outbuildings.

Out of necessity, I must listen to the sounds of car horns, airplanes, and dogs barking, and have done so for well over a decade.

The hardest thing I have ever done is to walk away from the farm and ranch, knowing it would not flourish under my hand.  I still think of myself as a cowgirl, but I find myself without  a cow.

Perhaps that's why I write: to take myself away from the scent of refineries and pavement and back to, as Tolkien puts it, "good clean earth."  But dreams only last as long as sleep, and one cannot sleep forever.


As I step forward in my life, I often wonder if my footsteps will ever be able to turn toward the Badlands, and I pray that God sees a path that I cannot.

But for now, trapped near pavement I must be, but I long to see scoria roads and cow paths.  Some day.

Comments

  1. ChristianJKApril 23, 2021 at 8:18 PM

    The Badlands are magical, but I felt, while I was there working the kitchen at Cedar Pass Lodge, that civilizing the place was a mistake. EVERYTHING went wrong that season, and employees dropped like flies. I maintained the detached luck I always do with my "one-foot-out-the-door" approach to White Man's world. I'm sure it holds me back in some respects, but The Call of the Wilde is a hard thing to shake, despite our best, most-Martian of efforts...

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  2. ChristianJKApril 24, 2021 at 9:49 PM

    I forgot to mention... Your existential plight here reminds me of the story of Spider Jerhico: He is a famed and defamed news man...a fellow writer. After his successes reached their perceivable peak, he retreated to the mountains and locked down his home with all manner of security measures, I'm sure due to his overexposure to human filth... However, it's that very filth that fuels the man. He couldn't stay on that serene mountain. His calling screamed at him from the dregs of the city, from every bloodstained alley and corrupt town hall... The man had a job to do...... Just food for thought. No path is alike. But the Muses hide in very strange and, of course, unexpected places.

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