You have to remind yourself that you are here with a mission for a reason. And you must find ways to re-inspire. And you must make art: as sculpture, pictures, words, dirt drawings, or flashes of beauty as form. Anyway, all that just to say that we did a little exercise tonight in remembering the naivete that we knew we would lose! We were always honest with ourselves about that, and perhaps a little too honest. The fall has been a little less far, but I feel like we are a tad out of gear because of it. But oh well. We are where we are, doing the best we can and it’s not too shabby at that. Our list, that hopefully will take shape into a concise mission that a bank will want to fund (even if it does take us months to try)!!

MISSION (seemingly impossible)

▪ lightly tred, heal the lands scars, and conserve the integrity of the land
▪ protect the work of those that cared for this land in its modern history
▪ don’t live so isolated
▪ see clearer, more openly, with hope in what we can actually do
▪ live a life that we believe in
▪ work as a laborer as humans have done in the past
▪ integrate within the cycles, working together with animals in a synergetic relationship
▪ produce that which we use, survive because of, and eat
▪ build a space to exist that is comforting and spatially aware (not self-centered)
▪ choose to live as healthy a life as possible: food, water use, animal protection, stress reduction, reality of that which is important, emphasis on community and learning and teaching and accepting and countering
▪ use less plastic
▪ share with others a whole foods system based on living with and on the land, outside of a commodity market without losing the integrity of our time, family, and interests (we can’t just give the shit away)
▪ fight with experience and kindness the industrial food system
▪ become a resource
▪ spend our time on that which we love or at least find it to be worth the effort
▪ balance. keep art in the picture. make a system of producing food… Art. The communication of that which is life’s reason, is time spent daily, spelled out letter by letter through art. In whatever form we feel completes our wavy and crazy heads.
▪ this is why we live with gramma. in a pink room with shag carpet.
▪ and the stars are pretty great.
▪ and the 9 bovines out there are pretty darn happy.
▪ i just don’t want to have to kill coyotes. or prairie dogs. or rattlesnakes. but who keeps the balance? learning the balance of the land…. a feat worth pursuing. a reality worth keeping our eyes wide open to, a travesty that we choose to not pretend away.
▪ partnerships with animals is another study worth pursuing
▪ thanking the land on a daily basis for existing. Just as it is.
▪ better knowing our native peoples who lived before the extermination of buffalo.
▪ accepting that which is not understood in nature and trusting that it just might know best.

Before we came to Wyoming, in the midst of saying goodbye to what we had learned to know so well, we came up with this original mission statement (to be edited soon due to a heavy emphasis on one topic):

“To live in a world without acknowledging that which makes us human- food, water, and shelter- is to choose to scar the earth and selfishly live until we die. We live once, and in this living we impact all life, be it bug, plant, micro or macro. Our interaction with food links us to an earth that has embraced our beings, creating us as humans until maternally absorbing us back into the earth once our hearts no longer beat.

The food we eat spiritually grounds us as humans into the cyclical earth rotation. We embrace this concept by choosing to simplify our lives with a focus on food, antithetically opposing the profit-driven and consumption-fueled cultural mindset of conventional factory farming. In the life and death of animals, we choose a project that will consume us as consumers nurturing both art and food, seeing eating as art and knowledge; to be stewards and not excavating capitalists of the land. Changing the definition of profit, we will not be foreign to these cycles. We will know what we put into our bodies, into the bodies of animals in our care, and the food that feeds the earth we borrow. In this, art and food will remind us of what it is to be human.”

I think it might behoove most people to occasionally write a mission statement based on goals. It’s good to be able to see it evolve and then learn to say you’re still okay, even if you are unstable.

It seems that last week the honeymoon period here on the range had a not so smooth crash landing. My spirit broke daily from having to walk into work at a steakhouse, and Josh’s spirit desperately choked from this dusty barn that can’t quite seem to make sense yet as a shop. And these overwhelming feelings of heaviness in the brain continually reminded us that: We Need A Yurt. Stat. Winter looms, the mornings already falling below forty degrees; the frost predicting flowers that have bloomed six weeks before frost for decades and decades last week began showing their yellow blossoms. Lovely.

And then we had the opportunity to attend a conference within the Wyoming state line called Living and Working on the Land. We drove four hours over a remote and beautiful highway, eyes peeled looking for bighorn sheep (to no avail), reaching a delicious evening of acoustic music, local food, and our very own hotel room. The two days that followed were full of amazing speakers, wonderful local farmers and ranchers, and great time spent thinking that perhaps this ranching project of ours might have some validity to it after all. You know, it can be real exhausting to think to yourself hour after hour, day after oppressing day, that you are an anomaly, a being of extraordinary strangeness that will just not ever fit into this wild and rustic west. But we met others who’s eyes shine when you say the words, “diversity!”, “sustainability!”, and “rotational grazing!”. And now the real challenge comes with finding a way to remember that we are not alone, we are not being unreasonable dreamers, and that we just might be able to be successful with ranching while simultaneously bringing greater health to this soil and all who subsist on it.

We met Joel Salatin, leader of all things unconventional and diverse in farming. All ears perched as the audience took in his every authentic word, spoken with the unapologetic intensity of a robed and animated preacher. Who knew in this contemporary day and age it would take a farmer to stand up and speak the truth to the connections of health, food, government, politics, family, and land values. One of our favorite topics addressed by Joel was about how new ideas and growth come from disturbance. He speaks of not only how disturbance of the soil brings new growth (thus the importance of grazing animals on the land), but how allowing our false economy to crumble, thus using human capabilities to exercise and design a higher level of ecology. Innovation will arise. Joel’s Polyface Farm in Virginia works to improve the soil while providing food to a great number of people in his local community, all while teaching and employing a substantial number of well-compensated young people; young people who will take this knowledge and exponentially touch cities and rural lands alike. And as Joel said at the conference, “We are all more similar than we are different. We all eat.”

We also were fortunate enough to have an engaging conversation with rancher and writer Diane Peavey. On an evening trip to Table Mountain Vineyards Winery, we waited in the buffet line for locally produced burgers on a stick (for real) with Diane and heard some of her amazing stories about her sheep ranch in Idaho. She listened to our bit of bitchy banter about the struggles involved when two young people leave a yuppy university town and end up in a western town with the state’s severest reputation, all while not having a very good plan for how soon and very soon a yurt will be built. She thought it was hilarious and hopeful, repeatedly saying that the best marketing any of us at the conference could possibily do is to tell our stories. Tell your stories. And ah, if there’s one thing this Wyoming family has, it’s stories. And if we can only hold on to our wacky sense of humor, oh the stories we can tell of this beginning, slightly ungraceful and definitely uncomfortable, period of learning to walk despite the badger holes at our feet and battering wind at our backs.

Elk, mule deer, antelope, rattlesnakes, all kinds of unidentified (by us) birds, jack rabbits with ears to compete with our dingo, fox, horny toads and coyote- creatures that seem to be brimming with activity every evening. Tonight we took the four wheeler up over the horse pass and spent time bouldering as the sun was setting. It was an unusually less dry day, and as we climbed from 7,100 feet to 8,000 feet, the sky illuminated itself with patches of glorious sunset reflections and stretched clouds of color. It was at that moment, reaching the top and panting from such close grip on the rocks, that we looked out upon that completely open sky and wondered what took us so long to get here.

I suppose every transition comes with hilly moments, your stomach fluttering from the rise and fall of the movement. It’s not easy to be without our own space, but yet one thing that we do have here is completely open space. It’s amazing to be staying with Gramma, continually experiencing history and relics in forms the like of a history museum yet so much more personal.

There hasn’t been nearly enough time to tug at decaying door frames, kept at bay with ages of dirt on its doorstep, but today I peeked into a shed that lives in the yard. The small four by four foot building was patched together from found wood and mortar and really is quite beautiful. I turned the wood lever keeping the door closed and creaked the vertical boards away from the place they had been stationed for so many years. Inside was a wonderland of Ball Jars. I have a bit of a fetish for ball jars. I love drinking from them, canning with them, storing dry foods in them, using them as packaging for gifts- I love ball jars. Literally the entire floor was littered with glass relics, the walls papered in their stories. As lightly as possibly I began removing any of the larger ones I could find, picking my way gingerly to the back shelves, stepping directly on years of chaotically collected containers. The last jar I grabbed was labeled 7-72- July, 38 years ago, the month and year my parents were married.

There is such beauty in what this place is, and so much gravity in the work that lies before us. But I find such peace in waking to the sound of a gentle cow outside the window, peace in seeing nightly sunsets and starlit skies that reflect so many loved souls on and beyond this earth.

Yesterday we made it to Laramie to find phones that work and can provide us with internet. We ended up at a great brewery, some extremely stocked thrift stores, a vibrant farmers market, and an amazing store that sells grass-fed buffalo and specializes in wind and solar building options. We dream of building a yurt that is powered by this Wyoming wind, build on a foundation of rocks from the ranch and floored with a simple cork. So many dreams to prioritize- living space, horses, wind power, barn/studio set-up and renovation…

When all seems a bit daunting, we head for whatever spot of land our cows have found themselves grazing. We reach them, Diego circling the grass with her nose down and face a-smiling, and we count them. We recount, saying their names and feeling oh-so-grateful for this years giving spring rain and the abundance of grass.

“A man in Afghanistan once told me that a third of this planet eats with spoons and forks, and a third of the planet eats with chopsticks, and a third eats with their fingers. And they’re all just as civilized as one another.”

From an interview with Rick Steves, travel journalist, found here.

My dad sends both my sister and I flowers for Valentine’s Day every year.
It’s nice to be loved.

Love has a hem to her garment
that reaches the very dust.
It sweeps the stains from the streets and lanes,
and because it can,
it must.

- Mother Teresa