Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.

Monday, July 8, 2013

You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Thanks to our early morning flight Saturday, we had our feet on Montana soil by lunchtime.

Ranch life is so amazing to me and also so foreign. I was a city kid through and through.

There is a symphony that plays out day after day in order to keep things running. There are no weekends or days off for a rancher.

I've never been more dirty, tired and scraped up than I am after a day spent on the ranch. Despite liberal applications of bug spray, 75% of my body is covered in bites. My skin imparts a golden brown hue. Some of my clothes will never be the same.

I love it.

But that wasn't always the case. Over the 10 years I have been visiting The Ranch, I have often found myself bored. Listless. Unsure what to do with myself. While my husband went out and relived his ranch kid ways, I would sit around wondering when he would be back and what we would be doing next.

This visit is different. I'm seeing this awesome place through the lens of a camera. I'm coming a more fit, strong version of myself. A person more comfortable in my own skin. That has made all the difference.

I didn't just stand there and hand my husband tools while he changed pivot tires. I got in a CrossFit workout... loosening bolts, heaving giant tires around, and wading through waist-high wheat. Mastering the four-wheeler controls and driving over pivot trenches all while standing (thanks to the two hundred pound tire balancing on the back).

Kiddo and I have been on several long, discovery-filled walks.

I have taken almost three hundred photos in less than two days.

This is the place where I saw my first shooting star. Where I came to understand my husband so much better. To see where he came from and what elements shaped him into the incredible, kind, strong man he has become. The man who can seemingly do anything.