Corinna
Imagine my amusement at this quote from the Washington (state) Trails Association:
"Enjoy starlight like you’ve never seen it before. The satisfaction of cooking a delicious meal 20 miles from the nearest supermarket. Waking up to the sounds of hermit thrushes echoing among the cedars."
The cedar trees were actually cottonwoods, and it was usually a huge flock of blackbirds that woke me up...but I went to sleep with the gentle clop, clop, clopping of shod horse hooves echoing through the little valley oasis created by the irrigation water in the ancient flood plain meadows nearest the ranch houses. I'll never forget that sound. And bull frogs. Giant bull frogs. Probably grew so large because they ate the equally giant mosquitoes, despite the aerial mosquito spraying done every spring. Some good that did.
A large portion of my childhood and many of my cousins as well was spent eating delicious meals 20+ miles from the nearest grocery store....with food grown in our "back yard" i.e. the ranch my grandma and grandpa worked on as permanent hands. Every single one of their kids worked on it at one time or another. I worked a couple summers there too if you can count making lunches for hired hands, cleaning the bunkhouse and cleaning the ranch boss' house.
But I am that strange oldest child (of 8 sibling's) oldest child whose youngest uncle was only 7 years older. My first memories are of the ranch, lived there my til I was nearly 6, spent every weekend I could there, and spent entire summers there until grandpa got too sick to live that far out of town (in my mid teens).
As kids we ran pretty much free on literally hectares of land. We ate foraged foods like dandelion greens, wild onions, current berries--Grandma's current berry jelly, what I'd do for some of that, and I'll never forget the time the boys tried to make dandelion wine! And wild food like deer, elk, antelope, rainbow trout, jack rabbits, and of course the ranch staples of beef, chicken, eggs, veges, unhomogenized and unpasteurized milk and milk products--what risk takers we are!
Lets be real. The true risks were the gophers and rattle snakes; getting thrown because your horse shied from what might have been a rattle snake, but just as likely was a gopher, or having your horse step in a gopher hole and break it's leg. All the years I spent out there I never saw a rattle snake. Getting gored by a large, angry bull was a much more likely event, if you were stupid enough to get in the same pen as he. Or kicked in the head by a calf during branding season, or falling in the river when it was flooded, or through the rickety old barn loft floor. I wasn't allowed up there but I'm told most of my aunts and uncles jumped from the loft to the ground. Pretty sure I would have never tried that. o.O Getting lost? Never. The Rocky Mountains were to the west, with Jelm mountain being the most distintive mountain of the bunch, having a solar observatory perched atop its apex. Of course we knew the entire Rocky Mountain profile and thus knew which direction we were headed by looking at them. If you're really confused, Red Mountain was to the south--a day's ride on horseback. You're not gonna get that far walking on your own two feet in a day. Should you or your horse step in a gopher hole and break your leg, prickly pear cactus can be eaten and will provide enough nourishment and fluid to keep moving towards home.
As good as I had it, my mom Pat Veretto, and her siblings Ken Pantier, Charles Pantier, Jim Pantier (RIP '68 Vietnam) Beverly Browitt, Rick Pantier, Terry Pantier, his wife Judy Pantier, Mark Pantier, spent their entire childhood and some of them a good portion of their adulthoods as well living in that place in that way. Nothing in this life is forever.
