The Feel of Freedom
At this time of year most dude ranches are starting up for the summer and preparing their new staff for the months ahead. This land draws people to it; its beauty, vastness, solitude, and sense of freedom brings people from every walk of life. Many who’ve come to work at dude ranches come because their parents worked at one. These ‘second generation’ staff were intrigued by the stories their moms or dads told them. My mother talks about coming out to Colorado when she was in her twenties, the same way her mom did before her.
A little bit of play before the work begins. Wrangling in the horses.
This land and this life was so intoxicating that she knew Colorado had a hold of her heart. She worked at a ranch for several summers, but in the winter when she went back to college, she told that she used to shut herself up with her guitar and play songs that reminded her of being out west. After graduation she got a job teaching in Florida, but she was drawn back to Colorado within a year. Not only did she keep in touch with many of her friends from the ranch, but she ended up marrying my dad who was the manager at her old ranch. Twenty-two years and three kids later, she never regrets that she stayed in Colorado. She has raised her family here with love, in freedom.
To describe this freedom is difficult; you feel it when your horse bunches his muscles under you while the wind combs through your hair. When you stand among the aspens as they raise their white limbs in praise to their Maker, or when you smell mountains and trees washed clean by rain, so pungent and so pure. To look across the sun speckled hills and valleys that are still wild and unchanged by time brings about awe and wonder. There is great satisfaction when you finish a job done well; it resonates through you when you work as a team… true freedom. Life lived to its fullest. This feeling is what brought the men and women who settled this land. And this freedom lingers in the air, like the perfume of the sagebrush… hundreds of years later, it still captures the hearts of those who come west.
