Wednesday.  Mid-week at the ranch.

This was THE day, my favorite day.  (I think.)  So exploding with perfect moments.

It started early.  Again, because of the gift of my father being along for the ride, I had the freedom to take advantage of an early morning guided hike while the kids slept in.

 

 

6:45 am.  You know I don’t like early morning wake up calls.  So obviously I really wanted to do this hike.  At the lodge it was just me and Amy and our guide Campbell.  (Another fine LVL employee from our side of the states – a Georgia boy.)  I had literally wrangled Amy into joining me on this steep adventure – it is only .9 miles to the top of Sheep’s Rock, but it is the highest point at the ranch.  A hike described as steep and rigorous.  Sounded perfect to me.  I had actually put climbing this little mountain on my bucket list for 2017 because I was unable to do it on our last ranch visit.

It was a beautiful morning.  The day before I had asked Campbell if he thought sheep would be up at the mountain’s top – and he said he had never seen any there since he had been working, but he’d see what he could do for me.  (That’s guest service done right.)

 

 

We hiked on a trail for a little while.  And then we climbed.  Up.  And up.  Up and up.  Then we crossed over one rock face.  Then we faced a choice.  In order to get to the next rock we had to either A. Crawl up a crevice in the rock or B. Climb up a dead tree with pokey branches as a ladder.  Amy quickly picked crevice and I stood at the base of the tree, which won’t look all that remarkable in this picture, but which felt like a personal challenge for a person who actually is rather afraid of ledges and cliffs and such.  It looked tricky.  Scary.  Hard.  And awesome.

As we caught our breath I shared a short version of my story and of how there was a time that I decided that I would approach more of life with a “yes, you can” attitude.  How so many circumstances in my life left me feeling like “no, you can’t”.  Left me thinking “can I?”.  And how I started to respond instead with “yes, I can”.  That was the year I ran a half marathon and figured out I could homeschool my children and be a single parent and run a business.  Yes, I can.

I guess I had already made my choice.

I chose the tree.

 

 

As I climbed my friend Amy offered me such lovely encouraging words that I wrote them down when I returned from our hike.

“I didn’t know the other you,” she said.  “But I like this version of you – the ‘yes, I can’ version.”

(This week has been full of that, uplifting words, encouraging conversations, kind gestures.  It fills a person up in all the right places.)

We climbed higher, the three of us, comfortable conversation and stories and although I’m sure Campbell could have reached the summit and hiked back down twice in the amount of time it took the two of us forty-somethings to get to the top, he was a gracious and capable guide.  We scrambled across rocks, bouldering, which I remember fondly as my favorite from my own Colorado summer life once upon a time.

Then we passed through a “window” in the rocks and I stared at my beautiful mountain, Pike’s Peak.  I know she’s my mountain.  We’ve come to agree that’s true.

 

 

And – guess what was right on the mountain top?  Three big horn sheep.  Waiting for me.  My requested sheep.  Campbell delivered on his promise.

 

 

I don’t know what forty-three is supposed to feel or look like – and I don’t have any idea what people actually see when they look at me – but I don’t feel middle-aged.  Whatever that means.

It was a glorious morning hike.  I loved every minute of it.

 

 

We picked up our pace on the way down.  Amy was eager for breakfast and it did not disappoint – for me it was egg in a hole, hash browns, a single strip of bacon and orange juice.

Wednesday morning is the Family Ride and the seven of us gathered at the corrals, the kids and I and Dad, along with two wranglers.

It was a breezy warm morning, so lovely and sweet I could cry – just watching my children ride horses under a Colorado sky with dad and all the trail before us and all the trail behind us.  We loped and we trotted and who would have ever known that a ranch in the Rocky Mountains was going to become our family’s place?

 

 

After our family ride, Zach, one of the wranglers working with Otto’s age group this week and our family ride wrangler, pulled me aside.  He told me, “I love your family.  All of you.  Your kids are just great – creative, respectful, kind, inventive, not whiny – just very good kids.  I really do love them all.”  And I’m sure he sees a lot of kids and a lot of families in his summers and I’m confident he loves lots of them.  He’s one of the kid-magnet kind of wranglers – funny, light-hearted, quick with the jokes, calm under pressure, capable and engaging with all of the kids.  They love him too.  But oh – to my momma’s heart, how kind it was of him to take the time to tell me those thoughts.  How glad I was to hear them.

 

 

At lunch we were regaled with stories from some former wranglers who worked at Lost Valley when the fire broke out.  It was a privilege to hear the stories of that first hand experience.

When the afternoon ride came along I had to make another decision.  The rides are categorized by the ability of rider you feel you are.  Last year I only made it as far as intermediate, but this summer I was determined to give advanced the old college try.

I’d already climbed across a tree today, so it seemed as good a day as any.  When Anthony asked for all the advanced riders to head to the corral, I thought, “Yes, I can.”

It was everything I wanted it to be.  And more.

Longer.  Faster.  Trickier.  Tiny trail on the side of a mountain.  Water flowing below.  Marmot.  Mule deer.

Kansas, my horse, was a controlled tornado – she jumped a log, leapt across a stream and loped with the best of them.  She was steady and sure-footed and I couldn’t stop grinning.  (Also, one time I guess I squealed.  It was during the jumping across the stream – or maybe the log.  It wasn’t a scream of fear, it was all delight, but I guess maybe both of those sound the same on the back of a horse.)

We rode to places with cool names.  Helen’s Rock.  Government Bridge.  I watched Pike’s Peak appear and disappear.

Uphill.  Following cowboy hats and fast horses.  Loping so fast, my smile so wide, pebbles flying up, smacking my sunglasses and my grin has left me open-mouthed and I’m tasting rocks and eating dirt and I could NOT be happier.

Later that evening, after a night of fun and entertainment and an outdoor meal down at the jail, we all rode wagons back to the ranch.  Halfway along the route, I couldn’t help myself.  I hopped off the slow moving wagon.  Just to walk the quiet road back to the ranch.  Just to help the night linger because the sky was just beginning to turn pink over Sawtooth Mountain and I needed to try to Slow It All Down.

As I walked, I thought about the week.  About random bits, letting the ideas float and drift like the clouds across the pink.

I miss hearing my name.

Does that sound funny?  Silly?

My children call me Mom/Momma/Mommy.  Do my friends say my name?  I guess.  It’s not feeling familiar somehow.  I like hearing my own name said out loud.  This week I’ve heard it.  It sounds nice.

It reminds me that I’m real.
That I exist.

I should remember this for other people.  People who may feel lonely, unnoticed, left behind, out of place, discarded, looked over.

People who only hear one version of their names.
One version of themselves.
People who may be in danger of forgetting that there are alternate versions of themselves.

It’s wild what a walk in the night can make you think.  What a week unhindered by Phone can produce and create and stir up.

It is wild, actually.  And beautiful and rare and worth all the work to get there in the first place.

 

 

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