My Favorite Place in the World

I've been MIA from this blog for just about a month and an awful lot has happened. The school year ended and I have been officially hired on for next year. I'm out in California for the summer with the boy and have been having a blast relaxing and doing a bit of sightseeing (but mostly just relaxing). I have been meaning to blog for a while, but wasn’t quite sure where to start.

I think one of the reasons my blog was on hiatus for so long is because I wasn't quite sure what I wanted it to be. Most blogs have specific niches - a wellness blog, a teaching blog, a running blog, a baby blog. I didn't really know what I wanted my focus to be. So from here on out, I'm just going to talk about me and my life in general, however uneventful it may be.

I figure a great place to start would be with my favorite place in the world, a place that if you spend any time with me you will find comes up in conversation an awful lot and that I simply refer to as “the Ranch”. I have to admit that I’m a bit pleased that while I am enjoying my stay in California it still doesn’t hold a candle to “the Ranch”. The Ranch is Triangle X Ranch, a guest ranch in Moose, Wyoming (just north of Jackson) that I first journeyed to on a family vacation back in 1997. My family of six returned every year, though the number of people dwindled each time. First my oldest brother opted not to return, then my dad decided a week of horseback riding just wasn’t his thing, then my sister went out there to work (she never left and is now married and about to start a family there), then my other brother could no longer take the time off. All in all, I came to the ranch as a guest for seven years before I started working out there myself my junior year of college. I was a glorified toilet scrubber and bed maker, but I loved every minute and returned after I graduated. I loved it so much that I stayed out there through the fall, winter and spring.

Pushing out the herd in the summer (photo courtesy of John Schairer)

The herd moving across the pasture in the fall

The ranch in winter

That summer I was promoted from toilet scrubbed extraordinaire to "teen wrangler" whose job was to teach every teenager that was a guest on the ranch (like I used to be) how to ride a horse and to make sure they had a fabulous week. I had always been a horse lover, but never rode seriously so it was a dream. My biggest problem of the day was whether or not to take my ride into the mountains or down to the river to swim with the horses. I stayed out there for two full years after graduation ‘living the dream’ before I decided to move on and go to graduate school. Sometimes I wish I’d stayed a few years longer, but I’m grateful for the time that I had out there. I look at my boyfriend who went right from college to his job in the military or my friends who went right to a full-time job and I realize how lucky I am.

This horse was my best friend for 2 years

The Ranch is and will always be my happy place, my own personal paradise. I know if life were ever to get rough or I were to get fired from my job that I could return to the Ranch and have a place there. I have family out there now, a sister and brother-in-law (and soon a niece or nephew). Just last week I received a phone call from my former boss offering me my old position. I turned it I down simply because of logistics, money and the fact that I already planned to spend my summer out here with the boy. We won’t get many opportunities to spend time together like this so I have to take every opportunity I can. It’s nice to know that after almost 3 years they still remember me. To this day they say I was the only teen wrangler who ever enjoyed being around teenagers that much. I talk and think about the Ranch all the time so it is comforting to know they think of me too.