It was hot. Now the cool has come and it’s so lovely it hurts. I made a promise to myself to savor every single day in September and now it's the 25th. What?
We’ll remember this summer. The one where Seth broke his collar bone just as we were getting started. The one where Mark brought an orphan lamb home for Emma from the mountains. The year of water curtailment.
Both Anna and Leah were pregnant this, the summer of ’24. We had Ruthie, Em, Louis and Freya and our world felt complete. Then Anna and Cole’s Inez arrived 11 days early (in the car, on the way, to the birthing center) and now this is our new wonderful normal!
This was the year of Izzy, our lively apprentice. She’s tended cattle all summer on the home pastures, started her horse, Vudu, flood irrigated, fenced (both permanent and portable, barbed wire and electric), and destroyed enough weed seeds to fill a bus. She tested her limits of endurance over and over. She still claims that starting the ditches, the heavy pitching of debris carried by the first stream in the spring, was the most challenging job. I don’t know - that was before it got really hot and Izzy melts in the sun. She always has snacks with her and a giant water bottle and often some sort of hydration supplement. She’s been a breath of fresh air when things got stale and bedraggled. She has a ready smile and enough enthusiasm to get you off balance and back in a good mood. We'll say goodbye too soon and wish her God speed.
This was the summer the wind energy developers came for our range. And as a consequence we explored a conservation easement as an alternative. There’s a line in a Brandi Carlisle song: “There’s more than one answer to these questions.” We’ll keep searching for those. We know we love our land the way it is. I have a large watercolor my Mom painted of the Blackfoot River with my Dad riding Buck along the canyon. If there had been wind turbines in my Mom's time, would she have painted them in? I don’t think so. I keep pondering this.
I turned 65, and Mark turned 60 this summer. That’s enough to remember a summer by itself. Mark’s milestone birthday was not much fun. He has much to be thankful for, yes, but it’s tragic to realize he’s leaving his little sister behind. She died of cancer in December and won’t be celebrating any more birthdays with her grandkids around her like Mark did. This is heartbreak.
It’s quiet outside. The birds have mostly moved on or fallen silent. As much as I love autumn, there’s a sadness to it that hangs over the beauty. Something about saying goodbye, about moving on, about missed chances and the unrelenting march of time.
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| Emma reading to Shadow |
