Another Year Bites the Dust

Last time we talked, I was complaining about things breaking. They continued to break; I fixed the Kawasaki generator, it ran for awhile, then it broke again. Finally, I broke down, drove to town, and bought a 2^nd generator like my reliable (so far) Honda-engined “Master” brand. That was a good move and I made it thru the summer with 2 working generators, happily pumping water. A few other things broke along the way, but in the end, we got our cattle shipped and ended the summer.

Cattle-wise, it wasn't that bad. The cattle gained good weight and my numbers came out almost dead-on, meaning that I didn't have any unaccounted missing cattle. That's rare and great. I took a little video of the shipping process:

Moving Cattle the Slow Way

We also used a helicopter again, to gather the north side of the ranch. Here's some footage from 2006, to illustrate what it's like using a 'copter to gather cattle:

Moving Cattle the Fast Way

Ranch-wise, we shipped a little early because the grass is pretty much gone. This is the worst drought period since the 1930's and we're fighting hard to maintain as much cover and stability as possible. It is DRY out there. Last year, I was flying my falcons on ducks, this year there are no ponds.

Financially, it's been a tough year. For a single reason that I still can't talk about, we're spending a lot of money. As a result, the ranch couldn't pay my salary for 3 months. I was too busy with the ranch to get much guitar work done and a job opened up in the local school district, so Georgia went to work. This lead to me taking full-time care of our youngest son. It's hard to work on guitars when you're cooking, young son sitting, and home-schooling but with cattle finally gone, we're getting into the swing of it and with cattle gone, we got our final payments, which allowed the ranch to start paying my salary again, albeit at a lower rate. We're pulling thru but it's been a little shaky. On the upside, Derek and I are spending a lot more time together and I think he's matured a lot in the past few months. He always looked up to David and now he has to be his own man.

Otherwise, things are okay. I'd be lying if I said that David's death hasn't affected us. When we're busy, we don't think about it but it's the quiet times in the evening and morning that are the worst. “Ambushes” occur in conversations, things that spark memories, and so forth. This is common and it happens to everyone. The things that help me the most are to go back and re-read the things I wrote immediately after David's passing. That makes me re-focus on the amazing things that happened before/after his death and gives me assurance. I've also been doing a lot of reading about life after death, both from a Christian and non-Christian perspective. The Bible is the authority- sola Scriptura- but even though “Scripture Alone” is sufficient, it is not a “Scripture that is alone”; there are confirmations out there. So, when I read from scientists that life after death is a recognized phenomenon but they just can't explain certain parts of it, it's just fuel for the fire. Applying Scripture, I think I can explain the parts they don't want to touch, but, in any case, reading philosophy and scientists on the topic has gone a long ways in giving me comfort. Among the books I'm reading are:

Dinesh D'Souza

Chris Carter

As well as this article:

Scientist Rethinks Life After Death

What's striking about the last article is this paragraph:

Very early one morning four years ago, I awoke with an extremely intense headache. Within hours, my entire cortex—the part of the brain that controls thought and emotion and that in essence makes us human—had shut down. Doctors at Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia, a hospital where I myself worked as a neurosurgeon, determined that I had somehow contracted a very rare bacterial meningitis that mostly attacks newborns. E. coli bacteria had penetrated my cerebrospinal fluid and were eating my brain.

This is very much like David's death and “meningitis” was an early diagnosis, changed to “a bacteria”, and finally to “I've never seen anything like this”. A friend sent me the above link and it not only struck me in its parallel to David's death, but it came at just the right time. Anyway... I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking.

As winter moves toward us once again, I'm getting back into the swing of working on guitars, reading, training my prairie falcon, and moving on into my typical winter stuff. I haven't' hardly touched a guitar since David's death. Instead, I've been playing mandolin and I've been playing Celtic stuff where improvisation is not encouraged. On guitar, I'm all about variations and improvisations, but my creative juices are at a low (witness my lack of writing here....) and playing Celtic stuff on mandolin is kind of therapeutic. 

I guess that's it for now.  Next time, I'll tell you about our new Subaru, trout fishing, and- hopefully- have another successful elk hunt to recount.