Life on a Ranch

 I’ve taken hundreds of pictures of flowers this year. The pink petals of many a Cosmos graced the lens of my iPhone this summer. Before the first freeze, I had Dahlias of all sorts, shapes and sizes still blooming in full color. My raised beds didn’t follow a pattern or any sort of organization at all. In fact, there was absolutely no method to the madness- it was nothing but a wild cacophony of blooms, just what I like. I prefer to think that because my professional life consists of policies and procedures and strict adherence to both, my flower life is the opposite- I do whatever I want! I’ve taken pictures of Snapdragons, a couple Hollyhocks (that are finally getting established and have given me all sorts of delight), a variety of different colored Cone Flowers, some Foxglove and a cute little yellow flower. I can’t remember the name of that one, but I do remember the sweet friends who gave it to me last spring to remind me of sunshine, when life was feeling extra heavy after our friend Bodie died. But today. Today the fall weather was incredible. The sun was shining, and the Union County wind wasn’t blowing and outside was the very best place to be. I pulled annuals and cut-back perennials. And as I pulled, I also needed to dig Dahlia tubers. Digging my way through the raised bed, I thought about my Grandma who sent me my very first Dahlia. Then I thought about the Dahlias and how pretty they had been throughout the summer. I tossed them all in a pile. At which point, I stopped and I did what I often do- I observed. I observed the mess of dirt and tubers all grown together. Roots were sticking out in every direction, and the remnants of stems were still attached to the tops of the clumps of tubers. And that’s when it hit me: the flowers get all the glory. They get all the pictures with the inspirational quotes, all the frames, all the cards, all the paintings- all the glory! But you know what that ugly pile of tubers is? It’s a big ol’ pile of hope. Hope, I've decided, should be shown with framed pictures of the process, not the final product. Hope comes in a wide variety of forms and the truth is, it’s usually kind of rough and kind of ugly instead of pretty or picture worthy…. This fall, Buck drilled seed for future feed. That’s just a whole-bunch-of-hope covered in a whole-bunch of-dirt. When the first little signs of life come up in the spring, we’ll hope for rain and sunshine in just the right dose and ultimately, we’ll hope for a good hay crop. How about those bred cows? Old ones, running-age ones, young ones… they’re all carrying the hope of new life, the hope of a nice set of calves, the hope of a future paycheck. We have a couple of young horses in our herd. Every round pen session, every ride, every non-glorious, consistent correction is just hope- hope of a finished bridle horse, one we can rope on and throw a kid on and ultimately, use to get a job done. Besides our agricultural existence, Buck and Cooper are currently out in the Minam unit somewhere, hoping to find a bull elk or two to fill their tags. Cooper is not the first, but is the final family member to shed tears from the kind of exhaustion that comes from hiking with his dad. Growing up in the canyons gave Buck some serious muscle memory for hiking. More than once his abilities have caused the rest of us to lose all hope of ever making it to whatever distant ridge he thinks we should climb to. Nonetheless, our young teenager is realizing what he's capable of and he has had a lot of fun, too. Cooper's friend William spent one day hunting with them and he took this picture of Buck and Cooper glassing together. I’d say there’s a whole lot of hope looking through those spotting scopes! In addition to hunting, our kids are knee-deep in sports practice. Cooper finished foot ball and has moved onto middle school basketball. Katelyn is wrapping up her first cross country season. A state berth was sealed on Friday with a second-place team finish at the district meet in Pendleton. The daily grind of practice, at its simplest level, is just hope, isn’t it? Hope that through enough work and enough consistency they’ll see improvement, they’ll get the PR (she did!), and they’ll step into a victory built not out of luck, but out of the culmination of consistent and dedicated training, good coaching, and hope put into action. I could give so many examples of hope. But for to day, the last but certainly not least example is my work, where hope is our cornerstone. A nursing care plan sums up what I assess and how I plan to intervene, and that plan is the kind of ever-changing-wave-of-hope nurses get used to. Our work demands that we cling to hope because more-often-than-not, life presents to us in its most raw and most vulnerable ways. Here’s the thing. I stood at the flower bed, staring at the tubers, looking at that pile of hope. And I realized: there’s no guarantee. There’s no guarantee for any of the hope we hold onto. I don’t know for sure if those Dahlia tubers are going to bloom, or if the seed will sprout, or the cows will calve, or the horses will turn out, or the hunt will be successful, or the sports will end in victory, or if my patients will heal. But still. I’ll separate the tubers and tuck them away. I’ll spread mulch on the flower beds and I’ll stay steady and keep living life while I wait until the frost is gone and the soil is just right. And when spring comes, I’ll put those ugly ol’ tubers back in the ground and I’ll give them water and fertilizer, and I’ll nurture them along in the best way I know how. And I’ll refuse to give up hope because I trust that eventually, in each of these circumstances, I’ll get the privilege of watching some of that hope bloom. ~Chelsea