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 six 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, some 8.3 million people wandered by to say hello.
My first blog post was on food. It had about 15 visits. The second was a simple post on the Heller Decision and it garnered over 2700 visits. My audience was pretty clearly defined at that point. But I had started this to write for my daughter, so she could get to know the woman who gave her up for adoption. I wrote for my Dad and Big Bro who were so far away. I wrote for me, to let things out, things that, like water, gather in all the light and the cold and the darkness, then release it with a torrent. And there's bacon.
Seriously, you could replace a picture of the President with a picture of bacon and his approval ratings would go up.
It would have to be a lot of bacon though.
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.
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 50 some 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, 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 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 touch goodbye to someone who in defending that way of life lost his very breath.
Still, years later, on a much smaller piece of property, the sun draws me up, Abby 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.On the desk is an author's galley of a book, to be published within a few short weeks, the one you all said I should write, and I didn't think I could. Then came the month I lost not only my four legged best friend but my beloved big brother just 3 weeks later. As they left me, 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.
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.
Home.
It is a place, now 16 years later, where the world is simpler, quiet, the only motored hum I hear that of a tractor or a small tailwheel plane. I still travel, my work takes me around the world, but it's done from the back, not the cockpit. But there are many more mornings tending the earth, afternoons tending to myself. Quiet gatherings of people I trust over for food, wine, stories and laughter.
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 in common. It is simply that space where we share about families and jobs, spouses, children, food, politics, food again and surprise, we talk about firearms even as we stop to remember a comrade gone West.
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 week days 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 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 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 stalking a deer 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 showed nothing but kindness, for sharing it with me.
