Where Cowboy's Tilled

I'm that kind of person wanting to step back into the past just for a moment. Taking in what used to be. This kind of thinking is partially due to my grandma sharing her stories of how she lived on a ranch built by her father. Even today I try and remember her stories. Like the few she told us of how she and her younger brother would walk for miles just to get to school. Or times they rode on a cart and horse to town to get supplies. But the one true story I wished I'd really heard was how she and her family were part of a wagon train paving the Oregon Trail. Yup... many times I have wondered what it would have been like.

Its only been a little more than 100 years ago were the west was full of charm, new discoveries, hopes and dreams. Many families gave up comfortable lives on the east as they heeded the call and ventured out west. Thoughts of hitting it rich filled their heads with the California gold rush. Wouldn't you like to be able to take a step back into the past just for a bit to see a glimpse of the way the west was? A day? Several hours? Or just a few moments to visit? The moment you realize you're standing in a place where life once flourished. Where the very ground your standing on corralled cattle and ranch hands mended broken fences. Were money wasn't the object of greed and working the ground and reaping what you've sown was your reward? Knowing the kind of living back then really meant something to the entire family? I never expected to stumble upon something rare and just a few hundred yards from a busy highway. To venture upon ground where cattle and ranch hands labored all day long. To let my imagination run with the unlimited possibility of how the west was just below my feet, until I did just that... stumble upon a forgotten place, somewhat frozen in time.

I can say without a doubt I was on a adventurous unforgettable motorcycle trip late summer. It is in that time I came upon decaying and weather worn structures on a remote piece of desert not more than a few hundred feet off N. Hwy-395 somewhere in between California and Oregon. Being able to stop and feel what kind of place I was revisiting swept me off my feet per say. Seeing remnants of broken down fences where onced calloused hands set fence post with a hard days work. Imagined and seeing in my minds eye, as I walked, thinking that from sun up until sun down every ranch hand and family member knew the rewards were in sight from a hard days work. I don't know exactly how much time I took that day to strolled among the decaying rumble. Nor how long I stood and stared at the once standing strong secure structures erected in days past, now sitting, broken and withering away in the natural elements. Or how long I pondered over the fence materials awaiting to be erected in a place close by where they might have held prized cattle. Simply knowing I was having the time of my life exploring the small outhouse still standing close by. Visualizing just how the rusted steel washbasins were being eroded away by sands continual blast by the wind. All the while as the wind slowly and methodically carried a little away with each breeze.

It is a time, a visit, a place in my physical memory which will forever stay with me. Between imagination and reality coming together to settle in me. An intertwined place of wonder making what seemed to be a dream, but knowing I was experiencing an adventure come to life in the real west that day.

I can say without a doubt I was on a adventurous unforgettable motorcycle trip late summer. It is in that time I came upon decaying and weather worn structures on a remote piece of desert not more than a few hundred feet off N. Hwy-395 somewhere in between California and Oregon. Being able to stop and feel what kind of place I was revisiting swept me off my feet per say. Seeing remnants of broken down fences where onced calloused hands set fence post with a hard days work. Imagined and seeing in my minds eye, as I walked, thinking that from sun up until sun down every ranch hand and family member knew the rewards were in sight from a hard days work. I don't know exactly how much time I took that day to strolled among the decaying rumble. Nor how long I stood and stared at the once standing strong secure structures erected in days past, now sitting, broken and withering away in the natural elements. Or how long I pondered over the fence materials awaiting to be erected in a place close by where they might have held prized cattle. Simply knowing I was having the time of my life exploring the small outhouse still standing close by. Visualizing just how the rusted steel washbasins were being eroded away by sands continual blast by the wind. All the while as the wind slowly and methodically carried a little away with each breeze.