The Ranch

It is still funny to me that we called it "the ranch" when it never really had any animals on it.  But that is what all my cousins and Aunts and Uncles called the place where we all got together.  Sometimes two times a year.  I have such good memories of riding 4 wheelers bare foot and getting a blister on my big toe from shifting.  I loved and feared the crazy thunderstorms that you were sure were going to dislodge a boulder and send it crashing into the house (that later burned down anyway).  Showering in the waterfall daily singing over the roar of the water.  Sometimes just because it was fun not because anyone really needed a shower.  The smell of the russian olive trees, and the smell of pennies when you did the dishes.  I loved how we crammed as much family as would come into a pretty small space with only three bathrooms and no one complained.  Three sets of bunk beds seemed like a lot of beds but someone always ended up sleeping on the floor.  I remember the anticipation of the cousins coming and aiming the telescope onto the farthest spot on the highway for the first sign of them.  Then welcoming them by racing out the the 4 wheelers and dusting their poor car.  It was always a treat when one of the cowboy Uncles (John or Jay) would show up with horses and take us on long rides.  You really felt like you fit into the landscape, and there was something about you that belonged there.  With the cousins there we would build and defend forts, with cow patty's, all day long.  There still are forts all over the cliffs and rocks from us kids.  We would find old pioneer cans and kettles and clean them out down by the river then play house.  Jared's fort is probably the best preserved because he left it too early.  Some of the forts fool my Mom's guests into thinking they are indian ruins.  There are a lot of those too.  We were always on the look out for flash floods.  Which my Mom and Dad drilled into us were very dangerous.  So when the river started to look like chocolate it was time to run to the house.  We only saw one once.  But there was evidence that they happened in our absence because you could find pine cones in the river bed from the mountains above.  And where the mud dried there was clay that was fun to crack under your feet.  I loved sitting around the big table, my Dad had carved all our names on to the bottom of, and listening to everyone's adventures of the day while drinking tang.   Some how the town handy man, Syd, and his dog always came over.  He must have loved grandma because he kissed her right on the lips when he saw her.  It shocked us all but was kind of cute too.  I was always too young for what I now realized was cousin hazing.  It happened when all the older kids would camp out over night at "Clack-a-later," (we still don't know what the name means or who made it up) and make each other do crazy things just for the fun of it.  My Dad loved to scare the big cousins sleeping out with a random shooting of the rifle into the air.  I remember climbing the cliffs for Grandpa's Birthday and looking down at the number 70 spelled out on the field in lunch bags with candles in them.  Then walking down the dark uneven trail wrapped in a blanket with a cousin tripping and laughing in exhausted delirium.  It was magical to wander around all that land as a kid.  It still has the same feeling for me.  So when I see my kids, the second generation in my family, loving it, it makes my heart happy.