Settling In

January 17, 2021

Hello all,

Well, it's official! We are open for business and can take visitors because our moving truck came on Wednesday and we have furniture again! We even broke our bar down today into five pieces and got it back here in two trips in Erin's awesome car! I am no longer sleeping on the floor, but on our cool couch, although I still have to muscle my way in between all the dogs. We didn't leave the ranch much this week, other than a trip into Las Vegas to go shopping and a spin up and down the interstate yesterday, to blow some soot out of the engine. Still, we've fallen deeper and deeper into a pattern. Erin's learning not to spend the entire day over at Kim's cleaning, since she's there every day and still needs time to organize the depot and get her garden started. I'm learning the horses inside and out and have them literally fighting over me for attention, brushing and petting. I was massaging and brushing Freedom(the big White) the other morning for about five minutes before I switched to Nanette(the big Gray) for about the same length of time. Pretty soon Rosie came over and wanted to cut Nanette's time short and butted in front of her, so I switched to her for a little bit. No sooner did I do that than Nanette grabbed the brush that we clean the buggy out with and pounded against the side a few times, snorted and then chucked it over her shoulder, ears pinned back flat...so, I switched back to her. Now that we have all of our stuff, we are feeling much better and much more at home and it's been a blast to turn our little cottage into a really kick-ass living space. And, Kim keeps proving herself to be one of the coolest folks ever, looking out for us while giving us our space..she even brought roses home for Erin one night this week, which totally made her day!

I'm also starting to learn more and more about the flora and fauna around here. We are in rattlesnake central, but it's a limited season over the summer, shorter than ours back East. We are also in the path of the tarantulas' yearly mating migration to the plains of southeastern Colorado in the late summer/early fall. It wouldn't be weird to see a scorpion or two, so we're going to have a lot to learn when it warms up. Still, it's terribly exciting to be in such a wild place! And, the dogs are our big concern, but even if I have to separately leash-walk them all summer long, we'll figure it out. They're super smart and have incredible noses...

And, I most definitely have a new, favorite bird. We have Pinyon Jays out here, who live in a symbiotic relationship with the Pinyon Trees. They're in the crow family(corvid) and are flocking and super smart, even helping to plant new Pinyons every year! I've copied an amazing, short article from Cornell about them below. Both bird and tree are struggling to adapt to the changing climate out here, but we are littered with them on the ranch. Otherwise, I've been hiking all over the property, finding imaginary Cliffdweller sites(?) all over the place, learning our boundaries and the lay of the land. Now, that our truck finally came, we've been running over daily to the nearby storage units, trying to figure out which boxes contain what stuff. It's all labeled and numbered and categorized, but, still...

So, now to the pictures as there is not much more to report! The first three are of my growing collection of artifacts, flint, pottery and suspicious-looking stones(clearly ancient and magical). The next three are of the birdseeding stations in Kim's backyard, complete with a waiting flock of Pinyon Jays(aka Blue Crows...great name!). Next is a shot of me pulling into the hay barn, after the evening feeding time, followed by a shot of Rosie and the Girls. Then, two shots of home: one of our beloved couch in place of the sea of dogs beds; then a cool carving we found here and are using at the front door. The last five shots are from my morning walk with the dogs this morning: a prickly cholla basking in the winter sun; an amazing bluish, pie-shaped rock right where it laid; a view of Rowe Mesa from where I was poking around; the same spot but looking in the other direction, up to the top of the eroded arroyo; finally, a crazy, worn, old stone that I've already counted about a dozen faces in...once again, clearly ancient and magical.

So, that's about it. We have to go into Santa Fe this week to get some banking/shopping done that can't be done in Las Vegas, so that's the big-doin's for this week so far. We get holidays off, so we'll spend tomorrow running back and forth to the storage unit a bunch of times. I'm finally going to start working on the Kioti tractor and change all the fluids and filters...which makes me yearn for my two old cars. I will totally bribe any of you reading this, with whatever it takes, to drive, tow or haul one of both of them out for me. I need my tools and my old diesels back at hand. Everything's diesel on the ranch, it's a dream come true! Plus, I have all the tools to work on the tractors because they're built just like my old Mercedes...diesels, diesels, diesels!!! Speaking of Santa Fe, I had mentioned that we had to hit 10,000' in the pass to make it there. I was a little off, for the record's sake, I-25 topped out at 7600', although the mountains there on all sides go up to 10,000' and higher. Pretty damn high for living at 500' elevation for all of my life until now!

Pinyon Jay article: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/jay-and-pine-intertwined/

Be good, everyone.