The Cowboy Bar and Grill

.
This is the continuation of our 'big night out' tale from the previous post.
.
Above is a better view of the adobe walls and beams for Mushy and thud. In this photo, you can see how the thick adobe walls support a healthy beam across the large opening to the kitchen. You can also see the hand adzed marks on the central beam holding up the long main beam running from the back of the kitchen to the front of the house. The plaster finish on the walls attests to how solid this building is; almost no cracks in the wall finishes other than in a very low door header for which Slim claims responsibility in the course of a previous 'relaxing' evening. He even lifted his hat and showed me the original contact point on his forehead. Sold.

I was pleasantly surprised that I also captured a glimpse of the brick floor in this shot. Adobe buildings of this age were generally built directly on dirt; walls, floors and all. These dark glazed bricks were stacked together tightly without mortar in the last decade over the original age-hardened dirt floors. They are beautiful!
.
. Slim returned from his grill management duties and settled into the dining room with his pile of spuds to peel with his picket knife. Without the young Tyrell here to help out, he surveyed the remaining help and decided that he was best suited to the task. Mark had already found some armaments annual to become engrossed in and clearly placed himself outside of the labor pool for the next hour.

Somewhere in all this, I perked up as I heard planes overhead. Slim looked up and grinned "Yep, that's some of your military birds out there." He knows. I looked disgustedly at their two dogs who did not warn me as Brou would have and then ran outside. Cool! What was taking place overhead was an aerial refueling! I had watched a mid-air refueling from the boom pod before but never got to see one from the ground so I ran back in to get my camera. Sigh, the photo sucked SOOO badly (likely caused by my buck fever moment) so I won't even post it here.

Meanwhile, back in the ranch house, the conflict of the chefs flared continually over when to put Clay's burgers on the grill. I sided with Slim in that rushed and raw potatoes would assail my sensitive stomach in horrid ways, and for several days to follow. With that thought in mind, Slim soon took to munching on raw potatoes, making sure to stand near-by to let their raw crunch ring in my ears as I sliced up his various peppers.

Somewhere in there, an impromptu auction banter was set up by Clay over the contents of the pass-through shelf to the dining room. I knew better than to stand in front of Mark and accidentally up his bids so I played ring man instead, responding to bids and calls for half-price and choice and yelling "Yep, yep!" and pointing to either Mark or Slim. Okay, so now you are getting an idea of why these suppers are not exactly drive-through fast food events. And maybe that is the whole idea - anti-rush.

Probably, oh, an hour later, we sat down at the table and had supper; Clay's burgers and green beans and Slim's canyon-famous grilled potatoes. Awesome good, all of it! Then it was time to head out and up to the bar, up those exterior stairs which I swear will kill one of us eventually. My gimpy knee likes neither the first nor the very last step spacing but, so far, so good (touch wood).

The pool table got a work-out that night. While Slim and Mark had a round of pool, Clay beckoned me over to the round poker table in one corner as he laid out cards and chips. ???! "You talkin' to me, bud?" "Well, of course! Sit down here!" "Uhm, I don't play poker ..." "C'mon .. five card stud?" "Nope". "99?" "Nope." He went through the litany of possibilities without a taker until I feebly offered "I can play solitaire ... ?". I gathered that this was the wrong answer as he let his head hit the poker table with a painful-sounding thud and sighed loudly, the cards sprawling out from his limp hand.

Meanwhile, Slim had donned his bright yellow flannel gloves gained from the kitchen auction. He would hold court at the long side of the pool table for the rest of the evening, holding up a hand in over-sized yellow flannel and offering guidance to the current shooter such as "Ohhh, Big Bird here wouldn't go for that shot, nope, unh-uh." As the evening progressed, he would admit his declining skills by placing his cowboy hat on backwards, putting his dark shades on and singing "Se-e-h-ven Spanish A-a-a-n-gels!" a la Ray Charles before a shot. Clay, on the other hand, and despite some heel teetering which I expected to turn into a backwards collapse at any minute, became more lethal in his shots as the evening wore on. Go figure. This was a vast improvement over his earlier flat-out-on-his-back sprawl after he had scooped up the supper condiments and then tripped over the low step into the kitchen. All four of us were suspended in amazed silence until (you know that someone had to break the shock and decorum here) I broke out in loud hysterics. At least it got everyone moving and abusing again. And poor Clay would wear and bear the abuse of being covered in condiments for the rest of the evening.

Other than that and my own gastric indignities suffered later on (I WARNED you that I had a sensitive stomach, didn't I?) which involved a short but brilliant aria from the second story balcony and some too curious ranch dogs below, the evening went splendidly and memorably. We followed Slim back up the canyon at a fairly safe distance until his turn-off and flicked the generator on back home at the Rat by 3AM. Wow! What a memorable evening out!
.
.
This unimpeded view of the cowboy bar is for Buck. You can now get a better idea of the woodburning finesse of the young lady who sketched in the steer and the bucking bronc. Two of her prints were hanging in weathered window frames around the bar room as well ... VERY talented.

The face of the bar was built with new 1 bys and framed in weathered boards, a well-used rope edged the top, welded half-horse shoe brackets held up the rail at the bottom. You can even see where one brand was held in place a speck longer than necessary and flared a little. All in all, a very unique bit of work. Now I can't wait to start on our own saloon some day!
.
.
.

An Unexpected Invitation

.
What started out last Wednesday as a rare supper get together with the cowboys became just the beginning of four days of separate social occasions. This is unusual not only here in the canyon but probably set a twenty year record of some sort for us. And despite the utter enjoyment of it, I seriously doubt that us two cloistered old farts could survive a steady diet of it.

I also didn't realize that such a full slate would completely trash my normal blogging and e-mail time ... but it sure did. I am hoping to catch up on those lagging activities this week. Both of us have pretty much recovered from that nasty bug but one of my molars decided to give out last Friday and may throw everything off until I find a dentist to relieve this pain and fix the problem. In the interim, I won't be looking forward to meals no matter who cooks them and may have to rely heavily on the aluminum can feeder system while others pig out. ... grin
.
Thursday's invitation came after Mark drove out to unlock the far gate for Slim and Clay. They had been out driving around on our isolated mesa to check out the pasture conditions and plan how to best drive some of Slim's cattle over there. These cowboys love driving around and planning almost as much as they love cattle. After checking out the water and grass and adding a little plinking brass to the road substrate here and there, they dropped down off the mesa and stopped by the Rat. "Supper over at Clay's place tonight? You bet, just say when!"

This time I would make sure to get more photos, too, because it is a pretty cool place that you might enjoy seeing. We waited until the appointed time to head over there and I forgot that taking photos so near to dusk would be a challenge. I tried to lighten up the color in some of the photos for you. Same for the interior shots.
.
We drove along the main canyon road, taking in the big views ahead and all around us. I enjoyed these fading skies since it brought back memories of a day's end on the ocean where breezes would cool warmed, reddened skin and the salt water had already soaked the tenseness out of every muscle. It was that kind of comfortable and content feeling.
.
.
I had to paste together two photos to show you the ranch. Even at a fair distance, the cameras could not capture this spread in one take. You can see the peach-colored bunkhouse at the left and the peach-tinted lowers with brown second story main house on the far right. The second story is home to the infamous cowboy bar and pool room of our tales. The airstrip and concrete pool lay somewhere in between it all. I wasn't kidding you, it really is a cool place.

So cool, in fact, that when the owner recently considered selling it, he was besieged by offers and backed off to reconsider its place in his holdings (and this wasn't even advertised!) i.e. ain't gonna be a steal if he does sell it off, i.e. Mark and I probably won't end up buying it either...(big long sigh here)...Probably the very best we can hope for now is that someone with a notch or two above rudimentary social skills and looking for a personal year-round home will end up with it. That would be a great blessing to our life out here.

So many really great ranches never hit the open market but remain within the old rancher network and change hands without public fanfare but that will be changing as demand from outsiders (like us) tempt the old boys to not leave any money on the table. Traditional ranchers and farmers are finding themselves priced out of new land due to development pressures. Their own existing land values also put them under pressure - continue a risky but much beloved lifestyle or sell out and retire comfortably. Wall Street's portfolio crowd and trust fund babies have added serious weight to the tipping scales (just to keep the records straight, Mark and I fall into neither of the previous categories). I have no doubts that big government's lucrative subsidies to not grow various commodities have enticed the former group to swallow up ag businesses and their lands by the greedy mouthful. I am inclined to forecast a sub-prime type fiasco in our food supply chain down the road as a result. Expect stunningly higher prices for anything involving meat, grains and vegetables on the grocer's shelves as just the starter. Don't get me going on the great pork barrel bio-fuel farce in contributing to this likely scenario because I try to stay away from touchy issues on this blog. But such frustrations are one of the reasons we get together with 'da cowboys' - to forget about all the pressures of the moment and the near future. So let's get on with the tour.
.
Here is one of the original homesteader buildings. I fell in love with it and had to click a photo before darkness set in. Apparently cameras hold a different idea of darkness so I had to lighten this one up considerably as well. Look at the sandstone walls, the original small timber bough roofing, the rough door and window frames. Is that cool or what? And tell you what else; after New Mexico Magazine farted off my Rat entry for their schmancy Home issue, I'm not telling them about this one either. Hmphhhh ... yeah, would you believe they passed up on the Rat without so much as a polite 'get real, get lost' e-mail reply? . Hmphhh ... I have been thrown out of much better places ... so there.
.
.
Here is a photo of the main room in the original adobe ranch house. The doorway on the left confesses to how thick the walls are. Genuine adobe works so well here in the desert. When we were here in the 90+ degree swelter last year, this dwelling was still invitingly cool by day's end.

I also wanted you to see the hand cut beams which support the roof. Slim and I boisterously argued semantics over 'hand hewn' versus 'rough cut'. I am funny about such things and these beams had been laboriously hand worked down to roughly square using an adze. To me, 'rough cut' refers to lumber which rolls off the end of a mechanical saw mill but not mechanically planed afterwards. To call such beams as these 'rough cut' would discount the hours upon hours that someone spent hand whittling down round logs chip by small chip. These particular beams contain the history of much sweat, blisters and ambition. They are simply gorgeous. I will show you a slightly better detailed photo of these in the next post.

At the back end of this view, you can see Clay starting prep on our cowboy supper while Slim is out fussing with the grill. This will be Clay's short 'quiet time' before the other chef and associated help turn the kitchen upside down with teasing banter and horseplay.

To be continued!
.
.
.

Our Big Night Out - Part 2

.
Here is today's view of the sun setting. It appeared as though the sun had nested like a platinum egg inside the lower clouds and was lighting them from within. Just an hour before, the clouds had been unleashing small opaque hail upon us. Just the night before, the clouds had left us a half inch of snow before morning which the new sun soon dappled into a vibrant pinto print of white on the brown soil. We are not done with winter's last little pouts.
.
.
So back to our big night out:
.
With the goat path now a super-highway, we were soon crossing the bridge to civilization in record time. The setting sun began to break through the overcast skies as we rumbled over the cattle guard and through the gate to motor up the long drive to the host ranch. No less than eight dogs surged forward to bark, inspect and greet us as we pulled in behind a cattle trailer. One dog shouted guttural warnings from inside the house; a less than friendly and predictable hound that the hosts considerately decided to shut inside. That was good since I have had my fill of Kujo critters and stitches.

Slim met us on the flagstone patio and escorted us up the exterior stairs of a separate two story building. I made a mental note that the stairs were not always at constant and predictable heights, a situation which could be disastrous for those with abilities impaired as the evening wore on.
.
We found ourselves in a delightfully dedicated bar room and soon at home with 'da boys' which included our hosts Clay (behind the bar) and his young ranch hand Tyrell (who was prepping food and readying the grill down at ground level when I took these photos).

The rustic bar in the left corner was a recent addition and very nicely done; a combo of new and weathered wood and branches, rope and old horse shoes. Its front panels were decorated with burn-ins from area ranch brands and two well-executed word-burned sketches.

It took all of about 5 minutes before we were comfortable and settled in like this was a second home with nonstop laughter and teasing being the order of the night. I can't imagine a more pleasant way to spend an evening anywhere.

Slim slipped away long enough to prep and grill his famous canyon potatoes after a boisterous competition over who could better peel a potato with his pocket knife. Mark and I restrained giggles at some of the very small surviving spuds. But this is a ritual, you see, part of the entertainment and it doesn't matter if you start with five pounds and end up with two, that's simply not the point at all. The point seemed to be that we were going to hang out like kids without a care in the world, far away from feed and fuel prices and just have fun for the evening. Count us in!

Pure devil as always, Slim took advantage of my concern that he had thrown the steaks on with the potatoes that half hour earlier. He knows we are staunch 'medium rare' fans. "Yep, I threw them on, heck, had to be an hour ago! What ya don't eat, I plan on making some fine bridles with so no big deal."

With a clockless instinct that defies logic some time well into our bar reverie, Slim stood up and announced "Well, it's time to eat!" and led the grateful stampede down the ill-proportioned steps to the main house. We milled around the kitchen until each of us was outfitted with a full plate and found a seat at the big table. Tyrell had cooked up bacon to a crisp and diced it into a big pot of French-cut green beans and let it all simmer long and hard, DEE-licious! Then he fried up mushrooms in butter to top over the steaks. Slim brought in his famous grilled canyon potatoes - ultra thin slices done up with bacon, jalapeno dices, spices and butter, wrapped in double aluminum and set to grill away until soft and browned - heavenly tasty. He returned with a big platter of his own rib-eye steaks and pointed out which Mark and I would like for doneness. Spot on - juicy, tender and so tasty. The only background noise was old Kujo who had been sequestered to a back bedroom before we came down to eat. The banter and laughter continued on through dinner and saw us back up in the bar in due time.
.
.

Slim spinning a classic cowboy yarn
.

Mark and Clay interspersed the evening's philosophizing with a game of pool, mostly drawn out by Clay forgetting that it was his turn to shoot between his bartending duties and subjects of conversation that especially sparked his interest. Yep, we solved a lot of the world's problems that night.

I wish I had taken photos of this ranch for you (Mark is ordering a larger memory card for the new camera as I type). The main house is a 100 year old adobe structure with immense, dark hewed beams running here and there atop thick interior support walls. It is even on the grid and has the semblance of genuine limitless running water! I was enjoying every moment of this and even felt compelled to use the porcelain throne ... if only 'just because'. It is simply a gorgeous and comfortable place to call home.

We so regretted how soon time had passed and finally got grown-up enough to head home and let these cowboys get their beauty rest. I stopped by the kitchen to retrieve my left-overs and dishes. I had forgotten about ol' Kujo. He hadn't. What a charming pup, a short-haired muscular and fawn-spotted biting machine; reminding me of some odd and accursed mating of a dingo, a ridgeback and a hyena. And he was now giving me (who was too far in to run) 'the look' and the talk. I thought back briefly to the hound who had ripped up my face twenty years ago. No, that wasn't something I wanted to deal with again. The cowboys were up in the bar, Mark was pulling the truck around. Well, it's just you and me, Kujo, huh? Lovely.

As he closed in on me with menace and malice in mind, I decided to do my best Miss Romper Room personae. "WELL! Aren't you SUCH a GOOD boy?!" He paused, as such dogs often do, to mentally crunch this strange and unexpected input. I wasted no time and turned, my only concern being that he might be a butt-biter as I stooped to grab the leftovers from the fridge. So far, so good - buttocks still intact as I straightened up and spun around towards the door. "Well, yes, oh, you ARE such SUCH a GOOD boy!" I tried to ignore the ample salivation from curled lips revealing serious fangs and took heart in the twitching of his eyebrows from right to left as he crunched this strange input once more. I managed to slip out the latching screen door before he decided that he had been duped. And, honestly, that's all I cared about at that point. I nipped out to Mark's waiting truck to a background of maddened barking and lunging at the screen door. Ya-hoooo! Kind of put a satisfying closing edge on the evening!

As always after our rare social outings, we nattered enthusiastically, playing back all the highlights of the evening as we drove along in the dark. The canyons were now black velvet dark except for what a toe-nail moon offered through the occasional break in the mesa walls. Even the goat path turns and miles were now ticking by without effort. At this late hour, we had the roads to ourselves. Well, not quite. From what seemed like 50 feet away and emerging out of solid rock, headlights suddenly split the darkness just ahead of us on this largely one lane road!

The beacon lights of this new intruder stopped in their advance and we decided to creep around the corner of this rock-curtained hairpin to investigate. The alternative was backing down the narrow road behind us to a wide part which may not have even existed within the last quarter mile. Tall lights staring through the dust blinded us as we made the turn. Oh great, it was a water tanker, one of the bigger gas field vehicles! Wisely, he had stopped at one of the only spots big enough to allow both of us to squeeze by, but barely. Both trucks had to carefully inch into the wider space abdicated by the other.

But it worked out as it most normally does out here and soon we were back on our last miles to home with only a coyote pursuing a cottontail charging out just 15' in front of us. We got home to the frantic fawning of Brou and Daisy and simply had to sit and chat for another hour before the joy of the evening would let us sleep.
.
.
.

That Sinking Feeling

.
Mark got a call from Slim last week. He was in the canyon and ready to do some fence checking and repair down this way before bringing more cattle down. "If you care to come along, I'll help you unload that fancy new freezer when we're done." What a deal! I certainly wasn't looking forward to the prospect of moving the freezer now perched in the back of Mark's truck. So, pretty soon, Slim arrives in his 'scooter' (don't ask me why a cowboy would call an ATV a scooter but cowboys have a strange way of looking at things sometimes). Three dogs, fence posts, wire and tools and ready to roll. Mark hopped in and they disappeared eastwards in no time flat. They were going to check the fencing which spans creek and washes out on a regular basis. Given the sandy nature of the creek bed, there is no fence designed to survive its running, eroding waters so you just have to keep up with the repairs.
. . .
Above: Slim shuts down the ATV and they tackle the freezer move in short order. That story will be covered when I do a post on how we keep things cold off-the-grid.

As soon as they were done and Slim was settled into his customary roost on the chesterfield, he announces loudly "Well, we almost lost Mark today." You know that's a teaser for a new cowboy story. "Awww ... you didn't lurch him out of that infernal 'scooter', did ya?" "Hell no! I'm talking serious here!" I wasn't sure if I wanted to hear exactly what serious was but I knew I was going to anyway. There was a slight hint of a cat's grin on his face and this tale was going to be too good to hold in any longer.

They had found a well-worn cattle and game trail down to the creek bed and headed to the fence line straddling the creek. Sure enough, the fence had been flattened, probably by a big cottonwood limb, so they stopped at one end of the fence and walked out to the flattened spot.

Mark was slightly ahead of Slim on the quest as they made their way across the damp sand bed. All was going well and then, according to Slim, Mark stepped in a spot that looked as firm as any other and sank "... darn near to to his thigh!". Then he stopped to admonish me "Those fancy rubber boots you like so much? Well, if he'd been wearing those, he's STILL be there - I ain't kidding ya!" At that point I glanced over at Mark now slouched comfortably into his wing chair. Without a word of protest or self-defense, Mark sighed ever so lightly and pointed down to the mud and sand still clinging to his shoes and well up past his knees.

Quicksand! Who would have thought? The only time we had encountered quicksand was in old Westerns. Seemed like every other episode involved someone falling into quicksand and fighting for their lives, so much so that you'd think it was everywhere. Eventually you thought "Yeah, another non-existent legend." Well, what a way to find out that quicksand does exist.

So Slim, not done with his story-telling, related the story of going down to another neighbor's ranch that week to round up strays. He said "So we rode the horses down across the big wash and darned if Ruby didn't sink in up to her shoulders in quicksand! I kicked out of the stirrups and dropped to one side of her and she sort of rested on me - which kind of kept her from sinking any deeper." Mark, now consumed by the excitement of the tale, exclaimed "Wow, so you being nearly under her is what saved her?!" Slim, being quite pleased that someone bit at his story bait, then said "Nah, but don't it make for a great cowboy tale?" That's our boy. And thankfully, Ruby did make it out on her own.

But he continued on the serious side, noting that being caught in the stirrups or having a horse get caught up in the reins is a sure way to get yourself killed while they are panicking and struggling to get out of the quicksand. This particular cowboy is not helping any desire on our part to pick up horses for ourselves in the future - and that's a fact.
.
.

*******************************************

.
.
And now to address a flurry of birthday wishes:

To Mark, who you can see in the ATV photos above. He's still looking good as ever and STILL getting carded! I suspect that he is really Dorian Gray and I am his portrait - that's all I can figure.
.
.
To my sister (above). Enjoying retirement now but was a securities desk trader for years and eventually one of the first woman stock traders on the exchange floor. I even kept her magazine interview on the subject - my, how times have changed.
. .
To my nephew (above): the BIG Dallas fan. Just an all-round decent kid and my former carousing buddy when I went home to visit, often to the chagrin of his mother (already shown above).
.
.
To my buddy Sinclair (above): SUPREME gearhead. Retired CEO of Saab NA, has owned just about anything really cool with two or four-wheels and a motor. Even ran the Baja with Malcolm Forbes. Here is a guy with tales to keep you around the campfire all night. Shown here with his Kawa-based Harris from England. He's having some health issues right now that I hope he can kick in the butt. He's been a loyal friend through much adversity and I have a long memory.
.
.

A Great Ice Breaker! Part 2

.
As promised, you are now headed into Part 2 of making the morning rounds of the range with Mark. It's still chilly out there but Mark's been working up some body warmth with his ax and shovel and the truck heater is being backed off incrementally as the morning progresses.
.
.
This is work place scenery that both of us find easy to live with.
.
.

This is stop number 5, the second to last. Another set of Slim's ladies anxiously mill around as Mark pokes a hole through the ice for them in an old stock tank. His cows really are lovely and well-mannered. Some out here on the range are not.
.
.
Final stop! Unlock the gate and wander up the road into Slim's cow camp. I tried to get a photo of Slim's four horses with my ailing camera options. I had a great shot framed of all four and then the camera shut itself off. With the prospect of their breakfast at hand, you have to be quick with shutter. By the time I had reached into the truck for the other camera, all four had closed in on me tightly and the most congenial of them was snorting sweet nothings into my ear; giving me goosebumps and raising the hair on the back of my neck. At that point, all I could have photographed was a very large and friendly horse eyeball so I gave up.

They were not interested in Mark's ice breaking at all but fell in behind him like kids chasing the Good Humor man when he headed to the trailer. The hay is kept behind an inner gate in the trailer. After his first day on the feed and water run, he learned to swing the outer trailer gate shut behind him. By not having done so on the first run, he turned around with the hay bale and ran into a solid wall of exuberant horse flesh which had followed right in behind him.
.
.
Above and below are more views from up top as he went from one location to another.
.
He'll trade these work day views any day for one of smoggy skyscrapers in the distance.
.

-----------------------------------------------------

.
Heads up: I might be somewhat sporadic in my postings over the next little while. I don't feel so good right now and the writing does not come easy. If I attempt to do forced production writing, it will lack that element of joy that this place holds for us. Part of that joy is in not feeling pressured to please anyone outside the canyon and, you, my blog buds, have been so good about understanding that pressure. I will certainly write updates when the good days are front and center - I just can't count on them - so please understand that I might disappear for longer than what has been normal up until now .

.
.

A Great Ice Breaker! Part 1

.
Mark has recently found one of the few jobs in the world where everyone is elated to see you show up. Although jobs have found both of us since we arrived, his actually has not inspired stress-related gall bladder attacks early every morning on the days he has to show up. His new venture all started during one of our delightful evenings with Slim. Rather than pay someone full time to keep the water supply open for his cattle, Slim was hoping that us semi-retired old farts might just be able to do the rounds when he was up north tending to the rest of his cattle business. What the heck, we're willing to try anything once as long as it isn't a net negative experience. Some endeavors aren't worth any amount of money in this life but you don't know until you try.

Slim took Mark around on one of his infamous 'drive-arounds' and showed him the route for six water sources which had to be cleared of ice every morning for the cattle to drink. With our high desert temperatures in the winter, there WILL be ice every morning which needs to be broken up and removed.

It was a week or two later that I decided to go along for the ride. It was a great excuse to go 'up top' and look around at parts of our ranch which we would rarely see otherwise. Digital camera problems reared to the fore early on as usual. The new camera with the intentionally small memory card filled up quickly. It wasn't long thereafter that my original battery-eating camera began pouting for lack of power and shutting itself off. These devices are NOT helping my transition into this new age of convenience at all.
. From this, our first stop, you can see part of our ranch in the background. As you can see, Slim's ladies were already rushing to join Mark with the prospect of water to drink.

* Explanation of the asterisk in these two photos: Try as I might, Mark was determined to be as camera-elusive as I. When he saw the few photo views I had been allowed, I was severely censored by the head of the Rat Politburo. "No butt shots!!!" he proclaimed as he slammed his shoe down upon the podium. "But ... but you purposely turned your back to the camera!" I retorted to deaf and determined ears. Hmmppphhh! Ve haf vays! Hey, I'm the cook so he can't stay mad for TOO long although I am definitely not asking him to proofread this entry.
.
The ladies had already gathered by the time he took the first few swings with the ax. He found it disconcerting to swing the ax full heft, full arc when there were so many soft noses diving in towards him and he found it nearly impossible to dissuade them. They barely waited for him to scoop out the 3 to 4 inch thick blocks of ice before taking over.
.

Shloooooooooooosh!
.

I really enjoyed watching them take their first drink of the new day. As you can see, some nearly submersed their muzzles to above the nostrils, each making a long shlooooshing noise like a rowdy kid consuming soup as they sucked up the soothing water.

.

Here is one minor view from up top. There is something immensely invigorating about standing there alone in this complete silence and not being able to see another house in the distance. I told you there were reasons for our determination to stay!

I will finish my tour of his rounds on the post coming up next!
.
.

Privy Counsel - Strangers in the Night

.
Retrospect: September 2006

How did that Sinatra tune go?

Strangers in the night,

Two lonely peepers

Staring at the sight ...

...... ... or something like that

Okay, so I left off the potty tales with noises in the bushes around the outdoor throne, followed by the recent story about strange noises in the barn . These events were within a couple of days of each other and both occurred after darkness had settled in. I'm thinking that commenter JennyE came the closest to guessing the identity of the unseen culprit(s) but we may never know for sure one way or the other, quite thankfully.

A day or so after those events occurred, I headed out for a walk and stopped by the little forever puddle about 30 feet east of the moving trailer. I noticed an unusual splat of dark in the grass and took a closer look.



Hmmm ... juniper berries and all sorts of half-digested things that gave some wild diner a real good run for their efforts. I immediately thought of raccoons but this offering had a little more serious volume to it.

I took a careful hop over some open water and came around through the sage to the mesa side of the bog. What's this? Look at that heel! That was certainly no coyote passing through nor was that scat anything passing through a coyote! Fortunately, this was long before Brou and Daisy had come to live with us.



Before the next rain could obliterate the tracks, I brought some plaster of Paris over from the Rat and made castings of the prints. I decided that if I ever get around to casting my own stepping stones someday, I wanted to include those prints in some of them.

Virgil and Earl both stopped by that week and confirmed my thoughts - that we had been visited by a bear. Earl was very concerned that it had made itself at home so close to the Rat. He suspected that it might have been a nuisance bear which had been relocated from a populated area. Fortunately, that was the last time we saw or heard anything of the like again. T-o-u-c-h wood.

If nothing else, it made for great conversation when Slim arrived back that winter with his cattle. And as usual, Slim was up to sharing a good story of his own. Now you gotta know Slim to really appreciate the telling of it. He's got that charming boyish intensity that takes you right along with him. He leaned forward, elbows on knees and looked at each of us intently eye-to-eye as he began:

"Yeah, I had me a run-in with a bear once. Had cattle up in the mountains, noticed something not right and promised myself to check it out first thing in the morning. Well ... I had too much of a good time that night and woke up a little ... you know ... under the weather? So anyway ... I haul my draggin' butt into the pick-up and head back up there. I get out at the gate just about the time a big ol' bear wanders out from the trees, couldn't a been 30 feet away! Well, I'll tell ya, I never lost a hangover so fast in my life as when I realized that I had only one bullet in my pistol and a pocketknife and that was it." We fell into uncontrollable hysterics when he did a quick wide-eyed double take as he concluded "Just then the bear took a couple of steps in my direction and, I ain't kidding ya, I sh-t mehself!!!"

Now here's the strange part; it wasn't until trying to write this down tonight that I realized that we never did hear the end of that story! Last thing I remember about it was me sliding down the wingback unto the floor, holding my aching sides and wiping the tears out of my eyes when suddenly I smelled the lasagna and garlic bread in the oven and realized that supper was probably ready a long half hour before. At my mention of food being well beyond ready, they stampeded past me to the table and the story got trampled along with me in the rush. Remind me to have him finish that story when he shows up for the winter again.

Next story? It'll be back to current events (as in - "there's never a dull moment around here"). This little photo snip below is a hint for Bruno of what's coming up. We're talking SERIOUS guy fun plus ... sigh ... the usual "Whuh, Geez, who woulda thought THAT would happen?"


.