Late Winter--January-February 2007

Calving season started for Michael and Carolyn in late January 2007 and the weather was cold. Ice on the creek built up dramatically and it was a challenge to chop down through it to create drinking holes for the cows. They often had trouble with slippery footing, so Lynn hauled some old straw to the water hole on Heifer Hill to create better traction for the cows.
During January we were trying to finish up the "Fall" projects we never quite got done--tagging and vaccinating our heifers, hauling hay, etc. We helped Michael and Carolyn work their cattle and ours--running them all through the chute for their pre-calving vaccinations, and branding/tagging the new heifers they bought. Young Heather and Nick helped, too.
]

Lynn was driving to town every day to check on his Mom, who had a bad fall and was in the hospital for several days and then in the care center. My parents were still managing to live by themselves at age 88, though Dad was becoming more frail and forgetful.
Our little herd wasn’t scheduled to start calving until March, but Michael and Carolyn had their first calf on January 16. They had a set of twins a week later, but the first one born did not survive because the amnion sac around the calf didn't break and the calf suffocated. The other calf was ok but it got very cold by daylight (nighttime temperature was down to zero) and when they found it in the morning they had to help it nurse.
One night about midnight we heard a wolf howling on the hill above our house, near where a couple calves were being born, but Lynn aimed a spotlight at the hill and it left. The year before, wolves killed one of Michael and Carolyn's newborn calves so we’re a little nervous when wolves come around. A few nights later 3 wolves ran across the highway in front one of our neighbors and he struck one with his pickup. We are getting too many wolves! Michael got a shot at a wolf that was right in the middle of the cowherd one night, but missed.
Coyotes are always a problem, too. Michael and Carolyn lost several calves during that calving season to coyotes; the cows get upset when coyotes are trying to kill a calf, and run around bellowing and chasing the coyotes, and newborn calves sometimes got trampled.
One morning in early February three coyotes were trying to kill a newborn calf when Michael drove into the field to feed the cows, and he was able to shoot one of them. He took the carcass up to the haystack where dozens of whitetail deer had been eating the alfalfa bales at night. The smell of the coyote deterred them for a few nights, but then they got used to it and came boldly back into the haystack to eat.
Another group of deer were eating hay every morning and evening with our weaned heifers, chasing the 25 heifers away from the feed. In spite of the coyotes and our increasing wolf population, we still seem to have plenty of deer!
One of Michael’s heifers stepped on her newborn calf’s hind leg, breaking the bone midway between stifle and hock. A cast wouldn’t work, that high on the leg, because it’s impossible to completely immobilize the leg between those two joints. So our vet put a dog splint on the leg, held in place with wraps of adhesive tape. Within a few hours the calf learned how to get up and down, and walk with the splint. The fracture healed.
]




In February I got a long letter from one of the people Lynn and Andrea met at the Burn Center, the summer of 2000. Fay was there that summer, with her brother, who had been severely burned. He did not survive, and that was a really tough situation for Fay. We’ve kept in touch with her ever since and keep sharing ideas and thoughts about life, and death.
I sent her a copy of an article that appeared in the Burn Support News, and told her, “Whoever goes through a life-changing event like cancer, a severe burn, serious injury, or loss of someone you love, can understand what this man is writing about. Indeed, these "tragedies" and trials are what carve and shape us and make us more fully aware of God and His love, and the need for loving one another. Most of us do not truly understand nor appreciate life until we run into the rough spots. The blessings and beauty that can eventually evolve from pain or tragedy take us so much farther in our journey than an "unscarred" life can take us. We are truly blessed by things that happen to us, especially the "bad" things. What a paradox. But it's really the only way that God can touch us, transform us, get through to us. We have such a thick veneer of unawareness otherwise... it has to be deeply scratched or broken to open up our view (to really see other people, and God) and let Love pour in.”
We also got a letter from Liz—whose son was burned that same summer. She had recently lost her mom, and she sent us a copy of the obituary (what a wonderful, kind, loving, exceptional, strong person her mom was!) and a copy of a letter she had earlier written to her mom. Liz said that slipping out of this life was a blessing for her mom--to slip free of the bonds that tied her to a narrowing and increasingly unacceptable existence.
Lynn and I could understand. There comes a time, as we age and our bodies fail us, that we are very ready for the next stage--moving on into an expanded unknown, just as a baby is full term and ready to be expelled from the womb into a bigger but totally unknown phase of life. The "birth" from one phase to the next is painful, and some transitions take longer and are more painful than others (we all hope for a quick and easy "birth" and not have to spend too much time in the painful prelude of getting there!!) but I am sure that what awaits us at our emerging is wonderful beyond our imagining. We get a glimpse of Love, here in this life, but I am sure that we can experience it more fully when we shed these rusty old clunker vehicles we travel around in and our spirits are free.
Lynn and I very much appreciated the letter Liz wrote to her mom--observations and reflections on their relationship. It's hard to capture in words the emotions we feel when saying good-by to someone so special in our lives, but Liz did it so well.
Life is fleeting, so frail, yet so wondrously strong and enduring at the same time. The people who make such differences in our lives are ever with us, in life or afterward. The human spirit is a miracle, and we are so loved--to be able to share our journeys with other spirits like mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers and special friends who make a lasting impact on our lives and our perceptions of life and love.
The hardest part is letting go. We all expect to lose our parents, but it is not "real" until we do. Liz was ahead of me on this road, since I had not yet lost mine. Lynn lost his real mom when he was a small child, and that loss had a harsh impact on his young life at that time; we seem to need our parents for security for quite awhile in our lives. He lost his dad in 1997, but he'd lived a long and fruitful life, dying just before his 91st birthday. The toughest thing is losing someone long before we can even begin to imagine such a thing--like Lynn losing his mom as a little boy, or a parent losing a child. I am so grateful that Liz and I did not lose our burned children. Even though we went through a long and terrifying minefield of anxiety, we were ultimately blessed. I cannot imagine the pain that Laurel went through, but I am happy that she is coping with it and moving on with her life. By 2007 her letters were so much more open and flowing--a definite difference. Even though she will never "get over" her loss, she was getting past it and moving on.
Loss is devastating, and only Love can carry us through it--Love and trust, trusting that we are all part of something greater. Love is a great blessing, because it is so simple (yet so all-encompassing and profound). It can take us by surprise, full bloom, or slowly grow from a tiny seed (that we didn't even know was there) until we suddenly become aware of it being there.
I am continually amazed at how fundamental Love is. Love needs no words, no explanation, no wisdom, no logic. We don't need to be intelligent or wise to understand and comprehend it. Love just IS, and I think it's God's greatest gift to us, and certainly the only thing that can sustain us at certain times of our lives. It's the only thing strong enough to begin to compete with the devastation that engulfs us after a loss. And then, as it grows, it starts to filter through into our everyday lives, to change and color our perception so that we can appreciate the many small things that bless us--and experience Love in more ways than just the necessary comfort that holds our souls and sanity together when we thought we couldn't go on.
And so, in those weeks just before we started calving, I corresponded with several of our very special friends that we encountered in the Burn ICU. Laurel wondered how I managed to write so many letters, and I told her: “The letters I write in my "spare" time are accomplished only because I neglect other things. You said you were amazed that I want to write in my "spare" time, but I accomplish it only because I feel it's one way I CAN connect with other people (and I do so in gratitude for the help other people have given me in my own journey) and also because I let other things slide. I have energy for extra writing only because some things in my life (like housekeeping) have very low priority. I "cheat" by channeling whatever energy I have into writing (whether articles, books, or letters to people I care about) and leaving none for keeping the house in order or even clean--and Lynn, bless him, is very understanding and doesn't mind the chaos we live in. There, you know my nasty little secret! World's worst housekeeper. In fact, I won a messy desk contest years ago (sponsored by a regional newspaper). All it took was photos of what used to be our living room, totally buried in an avalanche of papers that had overflowed from my desk. The desk was so buried you could hardly see it.”
In early February 2007 our granddaughter Heather (age 15) had surgery on her knee. She tore some ligaments playing basketball that winter. She had her leg in a brace for several weeks and was on crutches for while. Lynn drove to town daily to take her from school to physical therapy and home again, since Michael and Carolyn were busy calving.
Andrea's kids were keeping her busy; Emily and Charlie had been ice-skating since December and Em was on the grade school hockey team. Lynn and I went to one of their tournaments and it was great to how well Em was skating, being so new to this sport. It's fun watching our grandkids grow up. ]


Andrea's youngest (Danielle, 2 years old) gave us a scare Feb 19 when she tumbled out the door of their pickup. They'd stopped at a friend's place in town and the kids were getting out, and little Dani fell out the door onto the sidewalk, on her head. She lost consciousness, and Andrea rushed her to the emergency room at the hospital, where they did a CT scan. She had a concussion, and cracked the bone over her eyebrow, but there was no bleeding on the brain, so they let her go home. She seemed ok, so we were very thankful. Even though she fell several feet (from a tall, 4-wheel-drive pickup), her fall may have been broken a little by the blanket she was holding, and a can of pop (in her other hand) that was totally flattened underneath her. Life can certainly change in a heartbeat, so we were thankful that she was ok.
By late February Michael and Carolyn had less than 50 cows left to calve (out of 280). But they were wearing out, after more than a month of being up nights and taking care of all the calving and feeding chores. They camped here in an old trailer house during calving. The bull they bred their heifers to was supposed to sire small, easy-born calves, but his calves were all big and they had to pull most of them (and lost a couple that were malpresented because they were too big to fit easily through the birth canal).
]

One Sunday Lynn and I helped them move some of the cows and calves to a different field. The cows readily followed Michael’s tractor and bale of hay, but the young calves were running around, confused. With 4 of us in the field herding them, to help funnel the calves through the gate, we finally got them out on the road. One calf kept running back and forth along the fence, trying to go back. Nick finally tackled the calf just as it was about to crash through the fence, and held onto it while Carolyn made a halter from baling twine. Three of us dragged and pushed the calf back up the bank to the road. By that time the herd was gone, up around the corner—following the tractor and hay. Carolyn put the calf across her lap on the 4-wheeler and hauled him up the road a mile to catch up with the herd as the cattle were going into the next field.
]

Lynn and I brought our little herd into the "maternity ward" March 5. Even though they were not officially due to start calving that spring until March 14, a few cows always calve ahead of their due dates. We wanted them close to the house so we could check on them easier at nights (with spotlight and binoculars from our window). We never want them calving up in the fields, or we'd risk losing the newborn calves to coyotes or wolves.

Early Winter 2006

In November we had several inches of snow and then the weather turned cold. Andrea drew an elk tag for the hunt in our area, and Lynn went hunting with her, making a 7-mile hike in Mulkey Creek, which is very steep terrain. They saw lots of elk tracks, but no elk. The tracks were all heading down out of the high country. One of our neighbors had more than 100 elk grazing on his ranch and eating in his haystacks.
Andrea finally got her elk on one of the last days of hunting season, after hiking all day on our cattle range and catching up with the elk just before dark. This was the most hiking she’d done since her burn injuries 6 years earlier. Lynn helped her cut up the meat to put in the freezer. After getting a deer earlier in the fall—that she shot from her back porch one morning—she and Mark had a good supply of winter’s meat.
Also in November Andrea took Emily to her team’s wrestling meet it Rexburg, a 4 hour drive. We kept the younger children here for 2 days. They “helped” grandma. While I worked on the book I was writing, they did lots of games and artwork, drawing about 30 pictures—some to take home and some to put up on our walls.
Lynn and Michael (and 13-year-old Nick) made numerous trips up the creek to get firewood, salvaging some of the burned trees in the burned area on our cattle range, from the fire in 2003. We finally had enough wood to get through the winter. The-fire killed trees make good firewood; they are dry and well seasoned--but very black and charred on the outside. The guys came home looking like coal-miners after handling the charred wood. Sawing up the burned trees created a fine dust of soot in the air from the chain saw. This irritated their lungs and made them cough, and they got respiratory infections. Lynn's respiratory problem turned into pneumonia, so he had to go to the doctor for antibiotics.
The cold weather and snow made it impossible for the cows to continue grazing, so we began feeding hay.
The sub-zero weather also created a lot of ice in the creek and it was overflowing and making ice flows down across several of our fields. Michael used our backhoe for a couple days to work on some of the frozen ditch heads to stop the flooding. With the cold weather, deer came into our haystacks to eat. They also started coming onto our feed grounds and chasing the heifers away from the hay we fed.
One of our “fall projects” that we were slow to accomplish was to dig up a water line and replace the leaking hydrant by our calving barn. The previous winter, it froze up during calving season. The “fall list” of projects is always too long, but we finally started working on the water line. Michael dug it up with the backhoe and we replaced the leaky hydrant. They had to bury the water line very carefully so frozen chunks of dirt wouldn’t crush the plastic pipe.
In mid-December Lynn and I helped Michael and Carolyn try to save a cow that had a serious problem after losing her 7-month fetus to a very unusual condition. She had too much fluid in the uterus, distending it grossly and putting pressure on the digestive tract, which shut down her gut. We had to give her massive doses of mineral oil and castor oil to get her gut working again.

Then we had to pull the dead fetus, which was a tough job because it was abnormal and monstrous for its stage of development, and this was an additional stress for the cow. She went into shock, but we turned that around with several gallons of IV fluids and medication to try to reverse the shock and restore circulating blood volume. Her hind legs were paralyzed from the difficult birth, and she was unable to get up or to eat very much, but we kept her going for 3 weeks, feeding her alfalfa pellets soaked in water. We fed this to her in a slurry mixed with 7 gallons of water, feeding her twice daily by stomach tube.


We gave her the mineral oil/castor oil on Dec. 10, and kept up the twice-daily feedings, morning and evening, until after New Years, with one of the grandkids holding the flashlight for us in the evening feedings. The cow was out in the corral at the beginning (and could not get up) and we made a windbreak of hay bales and put tarps over her to protect her from the cold wind and snow.

A few days later we moved her into the barn with the tractor and loader. We put plywood on the loader's hay tines and rolled her onto that and strapped her on, then carried her to the barn and rolled her off.
In the barn, we situated her comfortably in some deep bedding, with bales of straw helping prop her upright

We were able to get her back on her feet using a hip hoist for her hind end and a sling made from a wide lash cinch (from a pack saddle) for her front end. It was quite a challenge!

Her gut finally started working normally and she began nibbling hay and chewing her cud. But she never ate enough and we had to keep feeding her additional food via stomach tube twice daily. The most frustrating thing, however, was her inability to use her legs. Even though we hoisted her up for awhile each day, and she took some of the weight on her hind legs, she would never use her front legs.

They couldn’t straighten out because the tendons had contracted so much from being bent under her so long. The leg joints were swollen, and it was like she’d developed joint infection--perhaps from septicemia due to toxins that circulated through her body when she was in shock.
Finally, after much frustration, we regretfully made the decision to end her life. We’d jerked her back from the brink of death, and she wanted to live, but her inability to stand up on her own ultimately defeated us. We didn’t regret the time and effort spent trying to save her (that’s what raising cattle is all about) but as calving season approached we knew that none of us would have time to continue giving her this much intensive care. And a cow that can’t stand up cannot survive. We reluctantly admitted defeat on saving that cow, and moved on, trying to make up for lost time on our many other tasks.
Michael needed to haul a load of calves to the sale—the calves that were too young and small to sell with the big group in the fall. We also needed to tag, vaccinate and delouse our heifers, and give all the cows their pre-calving vaccinations, but the weather was bitterly cold (30 below zero) and we postponed those projects until early January. Michael helped us vaccinate the cows.
When we finally vaccinated our heifers on a Sunday afternoon during the warmest part of the day, the needle on my syringe kept freezing up—but I had a jar of hot water in an insulated picnic cooler, and I could stick the needle into the hot water to thaw it out.
For several days Carolyn had a very sore, stiff neck with some vertebrae out of place, so that weekend when the kids were home from school they helped Michael do their feeding. Young Heather (age 15) drove the big truck—chained up and loaded with 5 big round bales. She did a good job, and was able to drive up our steep, slippery lane without spinning out; she was becoming a very good truck driver!
I finally got my calving book manuscript (500 pages) finished, and the illustrations and photos for it, by the January 1 deadline, so that was a big relief. I hoped to catch up on some article deadlines before plunging into the next book project (cattle health handbook), which I had to finish by September. I kept biting off big projects, but it helped pay the bills! I don't think we can ever afford to "retire". Our work is too much fun and too necessary, especially since we are still trying to help our kids. Andrea was doing very well but still had a lot of expenses that we were trying to help her with.

Fall 2006

We had no appreciable rain in late summer and fall that year, and the dry conditions resulted in many forest and range fires. It was almost as smoky that summer as it was in 2000. The range grass became so dry (and short on protein) that the cows were trying to come home early. Some crawled through the fence into our upper pastures, so Michael and kids took them several miles back up the creek to the high range. He bought a ton of protein supplement to haul out to the range, to try to encourage the cows to stay on the mountain and not come home. There was still a lot of dry grass, but without protein it was like straw and the cows wouldn’t eat it; they need protein for proper rumen function to digest the roughage.
In late August young Emily came to the ranch to stay a couple days and rode with me to Baker Creek on the high range.
Together we fixed a trough, where the cows had knocked the pipe out and the water was running onto the ground instead of into the trough. Baker Creek had dried up except for a few small puddles, so we had to make sure the little springs kept running into our troughs, piped from the springboxes.
Emily progressed swiftly in her riding abilities that summer, and was quite proud of her accomplishment. She was also delighted to find 3 elk antlers on various rides, and we had to lug those antlers home on our horses, of course. She held the antler for me each time I had to get off my horse to open and close a gate.
On one ride she and I gathered some cows that had come down the creek and were standing around by the gate, wanting to come home. We took them up the creek a couple miles to the protein tubs that Michael put at the top of that range pasture.
This was the first time 8-year-old Em actually helped me move cattle. She and old Veggie did very well. She had come a long way in her riding skills since early summer when I was still leading her horse from mine.
By fall Emily was a confident enough "cowgirl" to be able to go with us (Michael, Carolyn and kids and me) to help move cows on the range and look for missing cattle, so she was very proud of herself, being able to ride with the big kids.
On one of those rides we all split up to cover more territory. Nick (age 13) went with me and Emily and we were lucky; we found 6 of the missing cows and 4 of the calves, and brought them around a mountain toward Baker Creek. As we came around the mountain we were hit with strong gusts of wind that nearly blew us off the mountain, and we had to hold onto our hats to keep from losing them. I held my hat in my hand as we struggled against the wind, and my hair blew wildly in all directions, which made Nick laugh; he said I looked like an “electric grandma!”
There was still another area to check, so Nick took the cattle to a water trough to hold them there while Em and I picked our way down the steep ridge, in the wind, to a hidden saddle where we hoped to find the missing calves. They were there, along with another pair, so we brought them to join the little herd. I was very proud of my “crew” and happy to be able to ride with my grandchildren. It was a long, hard ride in steep and treacherous country, but Emily and the old horse managed just fine, and young Nick was very good help with the cattle.
The next week, all the kids were back in school, and Michael and Carolyn gathered more cattle by themselves. They had a big herd and not enough riders to keep the lead cows from going up the canyon instead of staying on the main trail. Ever since our range burned in 2003, that area is treacherous, with down logs and areas of serious erosion along the creek. One cow got her leg stuck in the fork of a log trying to climb over it, and Michael had to get off his horse and literally pry her foot out. Another cow nearly fell off a 45-foot cliff along the edge of the canyon. Three calves fell into a deep hole along the bank, but were able to scramble out.
After Emily was back in school again (3rd grade), she only had a chance to ride once, on a weekend, looking for one of Michael and Carolyn's missing cows (and calf) after we'd rounded up all the other cattle. Em and I didn't find that pair (they were on the wrong range and came home with the neighbor's cattle a few days later) but we did gather 4 pairs and a bull of our neighbors' that had strayed onto our range.
It was a tough job, and would have been hard to do with only one horse (those critters are a bit wild) so I was glad I had my little cowgirl partner along. She and Veggie waited quietly at the edge of the timber, to keep the cows from going the wrong way when I brought them toward the gate. I was afraid Veggie might fuss and whinny, being separated from my horse, but Emily petted his neck and talked to him and calmed him, and he behaved nicely for her—and she was able to head the cows through the gate for me.
We finally had rain in October, with snow on the mountains, easing into winter. We still needed to get our winter firewood, so we were hoping it wouldn’t come early and snow under our fall pasture (and make it difficult to cut and bring the wood home, having to put chains on the trucks). We were grateful for cooler weather, after all the heat we had that summer. Lynn's tomato plants and squash in his "water trough" gardens in the back yard (old rusted out water troughs for cattle, that he hauled into the back yard and filled with dirt) nearly "cooked" in the hot weather.
In early November we celebrated Danielle’s 2nd birthday, at Andrea and Mark’s place. The grandkids were certainly growing fast. Charlie was 5, Samantha almost 4, and Emily soon to be 9. She was on the 3rd grade wrestling team (the only girl, that year) and won 2 of her matches at a regional wrestling meet. Our older grandkids were busy with sports, also, with Nick doing well in cross country track, and Heather (age 15) on the track, volleyball, and basketball teams.
Lynn spent some time that Fall hauling hay; we had to buy a lot of hay because of the summer drought and being short on hay and pasture. Michael helped Lynn haul the hay we bought, but still needed to locate some hay for himself to buy and haul. We’d also been busy getting our cattle pregnancy checked and vaccinated and the calves weaned and sold, and I was also doing as much writing as possible. We were still helping our kids financially (on Andrea's house project at Twelve-Mile and Michael and Carolyn's cattle herd-building), so I was grateful for all the work that came my way that summer and fall, for article assignments and books to write. I ask the Lord to provide, and He does, and so I ask Him for strength to do the work He provides.
That fall I was also trying to find time to send a few books (BEYOND THE FLAMES) to some of the burn centers around the country to be given to burn patients and their families, in hopes it might be a source of hope and encouragement for others who are suddenly thrust into this terrifying unknown. Lynn and I had been helped by many people who had already gone through this ordeal, and by the many others we joined hands with while groping our way through that awesome detour in our lives. We wanted to help others who might be just starting this jourhey.
We hadn't been able to keep track of everyone we bonded with that summer of 2000, but I still keep in touch with Liz and Laurel and a few of the others. By 2006 Laurel was slowly healing in spirit after the loss of her daughter; she’d come a long way in that traumatic journey. The difference in her letters, compared with several years earlier when she could not handle it very well, was like night and day. And Liz had a lot of things to bear; that fall she had her hands full with very ill elderly parents and father-in-law (her dear mother-in-law passed away the previous winter after a long illness), and other ongoing challenges, but the bright spot was that her son Ty was doing so well. Her joy in watching him graduate from college that spring was incredibly wonderful for her. She and I continuously shared our mutual journey of nursing our burned and hurting children through the darkest hours of our own fears and despair and watching them take life by the horns again and eventually soar, letting none of their impairments hold them back.
Lynn spent quite a bit of time during the summer and fall of 2006 locating wells for people. He uses welding rods and a green willow, to determine location of the water, the width of the underground stream, and often can determine depth. He tries to find a spot where one underground stream crosses another (at different depths) so when the well is drilled, it hits them both. This gives more chance for a good water supply. There might be one stream 120 feet down that produces 3 gallons a minute, for instance, and maybe another stream going a different direction 100 feet below that, giving 5 gallons a minute. By hitting them both you get a well that produces 8 gallons a minute, which is adequate for a home. And sometimes those streams produce a lot more. He's found some wells that produced 60 to 75 gallons a minute, which is phenomenal for this part of the country. He's probably located more than 300 wells by now, and really enjoys doing it.
That fall my father (who had just turned 88) went to Missoula, Montana once a week all through October for more chemo drips. The doctors thought 4 treatments would be enough this time (he had 6 the year before) but after checking his blood values afterward they said he needed 2 more. Hopefully the extra treatments will bring his blood levels close enough to normal that he can go without treatments for a while again. He has a rare sort of blood disorder (Waldenstrom's macroblogulinemia). It's a cancer of the B-lymphocytes (a certain type of white blood cell), infiltrating the bone marrow, spleen, lymph nodes, etc. It occurs mostly in older people and progresses slowly. He had it several years but only within the last year needed treatment for it. The 6 chemo treatments he had in 2005 really helped him; his platelet levels came back up to normal and he had more energy again, so we were hoping this round of treatments will help again for awhile.
There's so much to deal with as life takes us farther down the road. My cousin's wife (who had surgery, chemo and radiation for breast cancer) had a summer of remission and then was back on chemo again, but she has such a good attitude about it, such trusting faith. I struggle along with lesser problems and wonder if I could do so well. We are all in this boat together, grabbing hands and lending one another support and courage and care. It's always easier when you know someone else is there beside you. The love that connects us is stronger than the difficulties that beset us, and there is much to rejoice in and wonder at. It's all about choice. We can choose to see the blessings and be grateful for them, and the wondrous things that evolve out of "bad" things, or we can be grumpy about our "fate". I keep needing to learn and relearn many lessons, but there are some wonderful moments of peace and understanding along the way. I just wish I wasn't such a wimp regarding the frailties of growing older!

Summer 2006

In mid-May 2006 Lynn and I helped Michael and Carolyn round up their cows and calves (100 pairs) from the field below our lane, to haul them to rented pasture on a ranch/range 10 miles up the valley. Some of their friends came to help. With 6 stock trailers, they only had to make 2 trips.
The next day Lynn and I went to town to join Andrea and young Emily on the annual MS Walk to raise money for multiple sclerosis research. We’d lost several good friends to MS in the last few years, so this is a cause we always support. While we were in town we bought more grain and milk replacer for the 5 bottle babies.
Michael and Carolyn had grafted several "spare" calves onto cows that lost theirs that spring (calves lost at birth or to coyotes). But after having 5 sets of twins and a few other orphans (a couple heifers didn't want to be mamas and no one wanted to take the time and effort right then to make them change their minds) and some other freak things, we still had spare calves. In early May one of their young cows died eating poison plants, so that left another orphan. So we had some pets that summer. Andrea's kids always enjoyed coming out to the ranch and helping feed the bottle babies.
In late May Michael and Carolyn turned more cows out onto our range, from our upper pastures. Later we put 17-year-old Rhiney (our baby-sitter cow) and her calf with all the orphan calves in a small pasture. We put up an electric wire to keep Rhiney from eating the calves’ grain. The calves were small enough to walk under the wire and come to their grain tubs. Eight-year-old Emily stayed with us several times and helped feed the calves their bottles and grain.

I finally got Andrea out here a couple times to ride, that summer. Emily had been learning to ride Veggie (a 20-year-old grandson of the old mare my kids learned to ride on, more than 30 years earlier).

Emily started going with me on some fairly long rides to check and fix water troughs on the range.

In late June Andrea came out to ride with us. I'd been telling Emily how her mom used to ride range with me all day when she was little, and how we'd take our lunch and a canteen full of frozen lemon-aid. It would thaw out but still be cold by late afternoon after riding in the hot sun. Emily wanted to have a "picnic" ride, so we did. Andrea got a babysitter for her 3 younger kids and rode with us. This was Emily’s longest ride so far, and only her third ride solo on Veggie, without me leading him from my own horse.
For me, having Andrea out here riding again was a joyous "milestone" in our journey since her accident 6 years before. This was the first time Andrea had REALLY ridden range with me since her burns. She made a few short rides with me the spring and summer of 2001 (the year after her injury), just to prove to herself that she could still do it, but she was still very, very fragile and impaired. And since then, she'd been so busy with all those little kids that kept arriving. She only rode her horse once in 2003, for some family photos when a photographer was here taking pictures for an article about our ranch for SUCCESSFUL FARMING magazine.
So, that summer's ride in early July was a special occasion--3 generations of us, riding together.
We were able to give Emily her "picnic" up in the mountains, with our horses grazing in the grassy, shady meadow while we ate our peanut butter sandwiches beside a stream. It was great to see Andrea back up to strength again, riding her fractious mare Breezy, who hadn't been ridden for 3 years (and was snorty and silly after such a long "vacation”). It was gratifying to see Andrea riding again with all her former confidence and skill, and getting on and off to open and shut all the difficult gates. She also cleaned out one of the springboxes where the pipe had quit running and one of the water troughs was empty. It was almost like old times.
I realized that the last time she rode with me doing routine range work was on July 4, 2000, the day before she was burned. On that ride she helped me round up several pairs to bring home (bull calves and their mothers) to wean the calves. Those cows gave us a real challenge and we were glad for good horses--to outrun and outmaneuver those devious cows as they tried to run down the steep hills or into the brush to get away from us. Our cows love their mountain pasture and hate to come home!
We had a really good ride that day rounding up the young bulls, with great teamwork, great companionship. I always loved riding with my daughter because we were such a good team, whether training young horses or gathering or sorting cattle. We shared many thoughts and feelings on those daily range rides--while we were checking cattle, fences, gates, water troughs, making repairs to fences or water sources, or bringing home an occasional animal to doctor for some problem or another, or the young bulls to wean. But that wild, good roundup ride on July 4, 2000 was our last one; it was the very next evening that she was burned. So, riding with her again, 6 years later, was like a special gift.
We 3 rode again a few weeks later--an even longer ride--to check water troughs, and we spent time fixing several problems. We found 4 little frogs at one spring, which Emily wanted to catch, so we brought them home in a plastic bag. We'd taken our lunch along, in a plastic bread sack tied in my coat behind my saddle. When we found the frogs, Em just HAD to have them, so we emptied our lunch sack (by eating the last muffin) and put the frogs in it, along with some water from the spring. Emily had wanted to find some frogs all summer. Andrea carried the frog bag home on her horse (5 miles) for Emily. So it was a fun, wonderful day.

Life is certainly different now (after the burn) but oh, so sweet, in ways I never envisioned before. Early on, I grieved for the loss of what we'd had before, and the fact that our lives were changed and I might never be able to ride range and train horses again with my daughter. Then I finally resigned myself to never having it again. I was just so utterly GRATEFUL that Andrea survived and could have a LIFE, and kids, and pursue some of the dreams that had kept her fighting for life when she so nearly died. She told us later that she couldn't give up, because there were still so many, many things she wanted to do.
So, a tiny gift like being able to ride again with her, was almost like old times, but even more special because we had Emily along with us and we were doing it for Emily. It was a wonderful thing--one of those special milestones that I will always keep close to my heart. It will lift my spirits and serve to remind me (in future) when I need to remember that all the plusses outweigh the tough challenges that come along on some of the turns in the road. I keep thanking God for his many gifts along the way.
Meanwhile, we got our haying finished that summer while the weather was hot and dry. The creek was low and our irrigation water very limited. Afternoon storms often brought lightning, but very little rain. The lightning started several fires, including one at Twelve Mile, close to Andrea’s and Mark’s house and the fire department worked for 2 days to protect the homes along the river. BLM crews dumped water on the fire with several helicopters scooping water from the river.


During July we had extremely hot weather, up to 100 degrees, lasting longer than usual. We can usually cool our house off a little at night by opening windows, but several nights were too hot or smoky to do that. There were several big forest fires in eastern Idaho and the smoke drifted into our valley.
In early August Michael was still busy doing custom haying so I helped Carolyn and their kids for several days gathering cattle off the middle range pasture, to move to the high range. It was great to be able to ride with those grandkids, too. They were becoming excellent cowboys!




All through that summer I was busy writing articles and books and then signed a contract to do two more cattle books for Storey Publishing--a calving handbook and a cattle health care handbook. I started first on the calving book, working at it every morning in the wee hours before chores. But it was a fun one to write, since this is a topic dear to my heart. That summer I tried to do at least 5 to 8 pages on it a day, sandwiched in amongst working on articles for various horse and cattle magazines. With fewer cattle, Lynn and I depend more on my writing to help make ends meet, so my writing became become a full-time job.

Spring 2006

The final week of March 2006 was cold, so we had to put calving cows in the barn.
Rodennia calved out in the maternity pen at 2 a.m. one morning so we brought that calf to the barn. He was too big to carry so we put him in the wheelbarrow—since the sled was over by the kid’s trailer house on the other side of the creek and we didn’t take time to go find it. It was a challenge getting the wheelbarrow over the frozen manure piles with the calf trying to flop out.
Zimbobbee calved later that morning, but by then the sun was up and it wasn’t so cold. We put that cow in one of the small side pens to calve and she didn’t have to go in the barn. It was an exciting day, however, as one of Michael’s cows, Alvira, was having a backward calf down in the field. In order to save the calf they would have to pull it, but the cow didn’t want to come to the gate. She ran past 13-year-old Nick and nearly ran over Carolyn (driving the 4-wheeler). Then Alvira ran out the wrong gate and up the driveway instead of going to the barn. She headed up the horse trail, but Nick (who loves to run, and was on the 8th grade track team) ran up the main road and got ahead of the cow. He slid down the steep bank to the horse trail and cut her off, then chased her back down to the barnyard. They finally got Alvira to the corral by the barn, where they restrained her in the head-catch and pulled the calf. He was still alive, but barely.
A few days later we put Buffalo Girl (Emily’s cow) and her young calf up in the swamp pasture with the other first-calf heifers and their calves. Emily named Buffalo Girl’s calf Curlie Sue because the calf loved to run with her tail straight up in the air and curled over her back.
Eight-year-old Emily came out to the ranch to stay overnight and went with Lynn and me to feed the cows. She enjoyed seeing Buffalo Girl again. Even though this young cow (2-year-old) with her first baby hadn’t seen Emily for half a year, she remembered her friendship/bond with the child, and allowed Emily to pet her. Emily also enjoyed seeing all the cows and calves, and the yearling heifers—and several cottontail rabbits that lived in our barnyard.


By April the weather had warmed up and we had rain. The snow disappeared from the low hills and grass started to grow. The corrals were very muddy and we had to put chains on the feed truck to get around in the boggy fields without getting stuck. Fifteen-year-old granddaughter Heather got stuck on one of our upper fields while taking salt and mineral to that group of cows, and Lynn pulled her pickup out of the mud with our feed truck.
Our last heifer calved. We put her in the barn to calve because it was raining so hard that morning. She calved without help, but soon afterward we heard some loud bellowing, so I went back outside to make sure the heifer wasn’t pushing the new calf around—as some confused first-time mamas will do at first.
I realized the bellowing wasn’t coming from the barn, but from the little corral where Michael and Carolyn’s last 3 heifers were penned. I ran over there and saw one heifer standing by the fence, but no calf. She’d calved next to the fence and the newborn calf had slid underneath the poles, and was sliding down toward the creek. With every wiggle it was moving farther down the bank toward the rushing water. I climbed over the fence and pulled the calf back up the hill to where I could stick its hind legs back under the fence—where I could reach them from the proper side and pull the calf back into the pen. I pulled him to safety in the middle of the pen where the new mama could lick him. We called Michael and Carolyn and they drove down from their house to put that pair in the barn, out of the rain.
Our white cow, Lilly, calved in late April.
Zimmeric calved the next day while we were branding and vaccinating, and Cubby, the last cow to calve, had her calf on May 1st. We had a belated birthday dinner for Michael and Carolyn and their kids; they all have birthdays in April but it’s such a busy time of year that we usually just have one big celebration.
With all the snow we had that winter, and the spring rain, the creek was higher than usual and flooding its banks. There was water over most of the lower fields and very few dry places to drive the feed truck to feed the cows. Michael and Carolyn had been doctoring a lot of calves for scours and a few for pneumonia; many were sick because of the wet conditions. The creek was dangerously high, and whenever the calves had to cross it they’d go clear under water. Due to the risk to the calves for drowning, Michael and Carolyn moved that herd, putting them in the field below our lane where it was drier an only one small access to the creek for drinking. Then the cows wouldn’t be continually crossing the creek and putting their calves in danger.
Two cows couldn’t find their calves on the day the cattle were gathered and moved, and we suspected those calves had drowned. Michael left those two cows there, in hopes they might find their calves, but they didn’t, so 5 days later they rounded them up and sold them. Ironically, the day after Michael hauled the 2 cows to the sale, one of the calves showed up in the lower field. He’d been sick, hiding deep in the brush, and his mother had not found him. He had not responded to her bawling because he was so sick. Carolyn found him when she drove the tractor down to that field to get our harrow (to start brushing the fields); the calf had staggered out of the thick bushes and was lying along the edge of the trees, in the shade.
She and Michael brought the calf up to the barn and put him with their bottle orphans. They treated him with antibiotics and fed him by stomach tube--and gave him castor oil to get his gut moving gain. He was weak and wobbly from the intestinal infection and ulcers, but he eventually recovered and was raised with their other orphans.

Meanwhile, as we finished calving season and prepared for taking the cattle to summer pasture, we struggled with a few family problems, such as the declining health of my parents and the rift that could not seem to be mended with my sister. She kept shutting out the rest of us, and hindering any relationship we might have with my parents. I kept praying for resolution to that challenge.
But with heartache come blessings to counterbalance the pain. I realized I was very blessed by the friendship of many people who had crossed our path since our daughter’s burn accident 6 years previous. I was discovering that God's blessings are all around us.
We only need to open our eyes and our hearts to His love, His forgiveness. And if He can forgive us, surely we can forgive one another. This is what I constantly prayed for, as we humans so often act like selfish children and can't seem to get past the me-first or you-did-me-wrong or I'm-better-than-you phase of growing up, like a bunch of 3-year-old kids throwing sand at one another in the sandbox.
How we must amuse and exasperate our Father at times! I am certain God must have a sense of humor--which seems to be a necessity for loving parenthood--and He probably smiles as He gathers His wayward children into his arms, scolding and forgiving and loving us. If HE can love us, with all our imperfections and mistakes, we surely can strive to love one another, and be more tolerant, understanding and compassionate.
We all have our own timeline, and enter into a broader understanding of our life's purpose at different spots along our journey. I wish I had been more open (and less timid and afraid) earlier in my life, but we can only go on from here-- from where "we're at". Each day is the first actual day of our lives. God can use us wherever and whenever He finds us (or to be more accurate, whenever we open the shutters and "see", and let Him into our lives).
We are all learning and becoming—all in the process of trying to make a little progress toward what we are supposed to be. I am grateful whenever I encounter those loving people who are farther along on the path, reaching out to give me a hand and help me along in my own journey.
It's so awe-inspiring, how we all can help one another, to make the journey easier and so full of joy! Loving others is such a strange mix of sorrow/compassion for the trials they go through (empathizing with the hurts and tragic losses they suffer) yet also filled with the joy/gratitude for God's love and comfort that can bring us all through whatever tragedies we have to face. Life is such a paradox, but oh, so wonderful. I am ever grateful for the people that God continues to put in my path.

For anyone interested in reading more about our “adventures” on the ranch and with our animals, check out my bi-weekly column “Notes from Sky Range Ranch” at http://insidestorey.blogspot.com This is the publisher who does my horse and cattle books.

Calving Season 2006

We had a birthday party dinner out at Andrea and Mark’s place in January for Sammy, who had just turned 3, and Emily, who was celebrating her 8th birthday. Little Danielle, 14 months old, was eager to help them unwrap all their presents.

In mid-January Michael and Carolyn sorted their big group of cows, putting the earliest calving cows in the field below our lane, near our main calving barn. They spread straw along the fence in that field, for bedding, and also in the 2 big corrals where the 90 heifers will be calving. They had 80 first-calf heifers and would be helping us with our 10 heifers.
Michael and Carolyn started camping here at nights in our old trailer house, so they could check on the calving cows and heifers. We had a blizzard a few nights after they started calving, and one calf nearly froze to death. His mom calved in a snow bank then went into some brush to get out of the wind, and left her new calf out in the snow and wind. Michael and Carolyn found him a couple hours later, barely alive. They took their calf sled and 4-wheeler to get the calf, but the 4-wheeler couldn’t make it up the hill through the deep snow. So they pulled the sled up the hill by hand, put the calf in it, and the sled started sliding down the hill. Michael jumped in the sled with the calf. They whizzed down the hill at high speed, until the sled hit the feed trail at the bottom—which was covered with frozen cow pies. Michael had to crouch in the sled rather than sit, to keep from breaking his tailbone as they rattled over those bumps. Then they took the frozen calf to their trailer and thawed him out by the wood stove.
Another cow had twins the next night, and only mothered one of them. The neglected twin nearly froze, but Michael and Carolyn found it in time, and thawed it out in the trailer. Later they grafted it onto a heifer that lost her own calf at birth. A few days later they had another set of twins, from a cow that had twins the year before. After warming and drying them in the trailer, they were both just fine.

We had 10 days of severely cold weather, and lots of new babies. Just before the worst cold weather, Michael had acute pain from a kidney stone. He spent most of the day lying on the bed in the little trailer house, trying to keep warm, and drinking lots of water to try to pass the stone—but he was vomiting a lot because of the pain. Lynn and I helped Carolyn do all the feeding, and I helped her tag and vaccinate calves that needed shuttled out of second-day pens to the fields. We moved other pairs out of the barns, and brought in cows with newborn calves. Young Heather helped after school, and we finally got finished with all the chores after dark. Lynn drove to town to pick up Nick after basketball practice.
By 8 p.m. Michael’s pain was so bad that Lynn took him to the Emergency Room at the hospital. The doctor gave him a shot of morphine and some medication to relax the urinary tract, and several liters of IV fluid to increase his kidney output—to try to flush the stone that was caught between the kidney and bladder. The stone finally moved into the bladder at 10:30 and the doctor let Michael come home. He passed the stone at midnight, and then insisted on helping Carolyn with the calving through the rest of the night.
The next day was severely cold and all of us worked around the clock to keep from losing any newborn calves. Michael had to pull a set of twins; one was positioned upside down and he had to rotate it, and the other twin was backward. He and Carolyn managed to save them both.

That week they also had one premature calf and a blind one with some skeletal problems. Those 2 "handicapped kids" lived for a while in the trailer house, and had the run of the place like a couple of pet dogs. They also had a couple calves the mothers either didn't want (one heifer tried to kill her new baby) or couldn't raise (an old cow with cancer) and they grafted those babies onto the mothers of the "special needs" calves.
In late February we had a serious coyote problem. Coyotes killed a newborn calf in the maternity field, and then killed a week-old calf in the lower field. Michael started carrying a gun in the tractor while feeding cows, and managed to shoot a couple of the coyotes but there were still at least 6 harassing the cows. One night a group of young cows with new calves were bellowing and stampeding, and when Michael and Carolyn drove down to that pasture with their 4-wheeler and a spotlight, they found that the cows had trampled one calf to death in their efforts to defend their calves from the coyotes.
By early March Michael and Carolyn had more than 200 calves, and our own small herd started calving. One of our heifers had twins, so we grafted the extra calf onto Michael’s young cow whose calf got trampled. Buffalo Girl (Emily’s pet heifer that was raised on a bottle) had a nice heifer calf, named Curly Sue. Several of our first-calf heifers have now calves.
So, the cows were keeping us busy checking them at nights, since our weather wasn’t very nice for calving outside. Lynn and I would stagger out of bed periodically and peer out the window with spotlight and binoculars to see if anyone was calving and needed to be put in the barn. Our "maternity ward" for the ladies in waiting is near the house, with a good view from the windows, so unless it's snowing so hard we can't see (or foggy) we can generally check them in our nightgowns without having to go outside in the cold. The kids' cows, by contrast, being a larger herd, were in a bigger field farther from the house and trailer house, so they took turns trudging through the field at night to check on them, and bring any cows with new babies to the barn.


We continue to name all our calves, like Ursala (daughter of Cub Cake, who's a daughter of Cubby, who's a daughter of Cinnebear, who's a sister to Polar Bear and Bear Claw), Leena (daughter of Shirleen, who's a daughter of Rishira), Curly Sue, Dinglebelle (daughter of Dingaling, who's a daughter of Ringa, who's a daughter of Syringa), Rosalee (daughter of Rosie, named by our granddaughter Emily), and other crazy names. Over the years we've had fun thinking up thousands of names--drawing upon everything from Shakespeare and Greek plays (Ophelia, Antigone) to the Bible (Absolem, Shadrack), and Beowulf (Grendel, Hrothgar, etc.) and nonsensical made-up names the kids came up with when they were little.

On another subject, I received a letter in March from a friend who had recently undergone cancer treatments and was hopefully recovered. He was studying to become a tutor to teach English as a second language, and to teach basic English skills, and was also becoming involved in cancer outreach. Those of us who have been through one kind of hell or another and have come out on the other side (in awe and gratitude!!) seem to have this urge (maybe even a fanatic obsession!) to help other people who are struggling through the bad stuff.
Our cancer-survivor friend agreed with us that a support group, an understanding listener, or a no-nonsense lecturer ("You WILL NOT give up!!) can make all the difference in someone’s future. When someone cares, you do try a whole lot harder. On her trips back to Salt Lake for checkups, Andrea has sat in the ICU with burn patients who wanted to die and told them in no uncertain terms that they could not give up...that they still had too much to live for. And they listen because she's one who has been there.
The real challenges of life (potentially life ending challenges) do get our attention and get our priorities straight and take the blinders off. They open our eyes to realities about ourselves, and about the Love that is there waiting to find us when we do lift our eyes.
Connecting with that Love and becoming (albeit in fits and starts and imperfectly) a part of it in helping others is the most awesome and blessed experience one can have. Bad things can always evolve into wonderful blessings if a person lets it happen. Wake-up calls.
I guess that's why Lynn and I felt compelled to tell our story and to hope it will help other burn survivors and their families (or anyone else going through a tough road), and why we are now more apt to try to connect with and help someone who crosses our path rather than just pass by on the other side of the road and feel sorry for them. Amazing how these wake up experiences strip away the protective layers we so carefully (yet unknowingly) put around ourselves through the years. We don't hide behind them anymore. We gladly bare our souls to someone else if we think it might help, or go out of our way to give encouragement or brighten their day. We are all in this life together.
That winter, one of our friends who was more at-home with the internet than I am located a list of burn centers around the country. I started going through the list and calling them, trying to connect with people who might be interested in having me send sample copies of my book BEYOND THE FLAMES. Often I just got transferred to someone's answering machine, and only a few of those people called me back. But once in awhile I got lucky and spoke with a "real" person, and many of them were receptive to having me send them a book.
I was glad for this breakthrough--being able to connect with the various burn centers--because this is where my book may make a difference in a person's life. Lynn and I were so devastated by our daughter's injuries, not knowing if she would survive, or what life would be like if she did survive. One of the things that gave us the most encouragement was a little book that someone gave us, about a burn survivor, and his physical/spiritual journey through the valley of death--and through it. This gave us hope, and that little ray of hope was what we desperately needed at that time. So after we began our own pilgrimage (the detour in our lives that began at the burn center) we knew we had to write our story, in case it might also give hope to someone else facing a dark night of the soul. One of my goals has been to connect with other burn units. If we can donate books to some of them, we’ll feel like we're starting to accomplish our mission!
My parents were becoming more frail that winter. Mom was ill for several days, and spent a day in the hospital to get a spiking high blood pressure episode under control. She’d been wearing herself out too much taking care of Dad, and worried about his having to go to Missoula, Montana (145 miles away) once a week for a chemo drip—something the doctor put him on to slow down a rare type of blood disorder. The trips over the mountain were hard on him, since it was an all-day ordeal.
I wrote to my brother after Dad’s 2nd weekly drip treatment in Missoula, and said that Dad was very tired, but perky. “Not so giddy this time. Maybe they didn't put the steroids in the concoction or maybe they changed the dosage. Mom is still tired after her high blood pressure episode, but her blood pressure is more under control now, since the doctor changed her medications. She goes to see the heart doctor today (the one that comes over here periodically from Missoula). I think she's been wearing herself out too much taking care of Dad, and she's probably worried about his having to go over to Missoula every week for the chemo drip.” I kept worrying about my parents, and the fact that it wasn’t easy watching them grow older and more feeble, and having to carefully ease into the role of caregiver to those who took care of us when we were young.

Winter 2005-2006

November and December of 2005 were cold. We had several weeks of cold weather before Christmas and it got down to 20 below zero. Just before the worst of the cold weather we had a lot of snow. We started feeding hay a few weeks earlier than usual because our fall pasture was so deeply snowed under. It meant buying more hay than we'd planned, but also meant there was more snow in the mountains than we had the previous year. We wouldn’t be so short on irrigation water the next summer.



We weren’t sure what the weather would be like by the time we started calving. Our herd was small (down to 30 head) but our son Michael was calving his 285 cows here at our place. His cows started calving in mid January. Ours were bred to calve in February and March. Michael wanted to add more stalls on one of our calving sheds; we don't have enough barn space for all his cows if weather is cold or nasty.

We had enough barn space (when we were calving in January) for 20 pairs, which is about the most calves we ever had born in one day, but we only had 185 cows at the peak of our herd numbers. We'd hoped to do the barn add-on project in the fall, but Michael was too busy hauling hay. He bought hay from 3 other ranchers around the valley (more than 400 tons) and was hauling most of it himself on a flatbed trailer.
Andrea was busy with her little kids, and helping carpenters add onto her house at 12 Mile. She was up on the roof nailing shingles before Christmas. She also helped put insulation in the walls, and put up the sheetrock. But she had a bad fall one day when she was in town (missed a step on the stairs going into a store, and fell several feet onto concrete) and hurt her knee, so that slowed her down a little. Lynn was out at her place helping with the building project, most days, except when he got the "stomach bug" that was going around and was laid low with diarrhea for several days. He wasn't able to eat--just drank lots of Gatorade to keep from being dehydrated. He resorted to taking some of the calf medicine (liquid neomycin sulfate) we give our calves for diarrhea caused by intestinal infection, since the human medicine didn't seem to help much. He got over the diarrhea pretty quickly after that.
Michael and Carolyn helped me feed our cows and load our hay until Lynn got over being so weak and sick. We were glad they lived close by, to help us; usually we are the ones helping them, getting their kids to and from the bus when they're busy calving, helping them work cows etc. (we call ourselves the battery backup, since we're ready to help in any emergency) but this time it was their turn to help us until Lynn felt better.
I am glad both our kids and their families live here in the valley. Though Andrea was 25 miles away, on the other side of town at 12 mile, that's still very close, compared to some families that are scattered all over the country. We often help baby-sit her kids, and Lynn sometimes picked up little Charlie from pre-school when Andrea wasn’t able to get into town.
Andrea never ceases to amaze me. She doesn't let her pain and impairments (from the burn injury) slow her down at all. That winter she was carrying heavy bundles of shingles up the ladder to the roof even though the tendons in her ankles don't work properly. She was using gloves without fingers during the cold weather so she could handle the nails--because she doesn't have enough feeling and dexterity with the grafted skin on her fingers. But she needed to go back to Salt Lake sometime for more surgery (to release some graft contractures that were pulling one little finger out to the side, and pulling on both shoulders--which puts her spine out of line, creating back pain and headaches). She wanted to wait until spring to have it done, however, so she wouldn't be handicapped (while the surgical sites heal) while lugging little kids around on frozen, slippery ground. The doctor would probably have to do the shoulders one at a time so both arms won't be immobilized at once.
So, I looked at my daughter carrying on with her life, living it to the full. Every day I rejoice in her ability to do that, and thank God for the gift of those 3 youngest grandkids, that "would not have been" if their mommy had died in the fire or from her burn injuries. God is indeed merciful and generous in His gifts.

That winter after Christmas I was trying to catch up on a lot of letter writing. For the past 10 years I've tried to do more and more letter writing, to encourage friends and relatives who are going through tough challenges. Before Andrea’s injury, I had immersed myself in the ranch and taking care of animals. I never was very good at interacting with people—always a bit too timid (and claustrophobic in crowds). But we all have our different gifts and I know now that I can still help people, in spite of being a hermit!
During the past several years I've come to realize that perhaps the best way I can "make a difference" or brighten someone's day is to write letters to people who need emotional encouragement to face tough situations. I've also discovered that I've become braver about talking on the phone. As we get older, more of our friends are going through traumatic challenges like cancer or the loss of a spouse, and in some small way I've become part of a generic "support group", partially because it's my way of "paying forward" all the help and love that carried me and Lynn along when we were going through the ordeal of Andrea's fight for survival.
Lynn and I have "connected" with an incredible number of people since the summer of 2000, and it's amazing how we've all been able to help each other more fully because of the traumas we've gone through. It amazes me how we can be "found" by God, to accomplish His work. Trauma and tragedy are often the keys to unlock the door to the heart and soul. Due to human complacency, laziness, selfishness or whatever we want to call it, most of us don't quite see the whole picture when everything is going smoothly for us. It seems like most of the folks who are the most loving and understanding and tolerant are people who have suffered some kind of trauma in their own lives. We are slow learners, aren't we, until we bump up against some hard knocks.
But extreme adversity puts us more completely in the NOW, and opens us up to God and to other people. It helps us live each day more fully. As one of our cancer-survivor friends recently put it: "living each day as if we are dying". This gets our priorities in order (at the top of which is being open to God's Love and recognizing our connectedness with one another--which leads to love, tolerance, empathy and reaching out to help each other) and puts the trivial stuff way down in its proper place.
Also at the top of the list is family. Families add a whole new dimension to our lives. Families are special and precious and I am sad for people who never have kids. Children (and grandkids) add to the richness of our experiences and seem to be almost necessary for some of us, in helping us gain the maturity and wisdom needed on our own journey. We have very much appreciated our children and the many lessons they have taught us along the way.


The circle of life (and the balance created by the old learning from the young--as well as vice versa) is one of God's greatest blessings for us. Each child has unique potential as a special creation, and also has immeasurable possibilities for being part of our own learning process in our spiritual journey. God can use even the "impaired/challenged" or wayward children (sometimes even more than "normal" ones!) to open our hearts and teach us more about love and understanding and forgiveness and selflessness, for instance. We have several friends with handicapped children, or children with other problems, and though at first glance that would seem like a terrible burden, it has also been an awesome lesson in love, filled with unimaginable blessings. God can use ALL things for wondrous, unexpected blessings. Sometimes it's hard to see it at the time, but it comes.
That winter I wrote to my friend Liz (whose son was burned severely in August 2000), who had told me about the agony of watching a good friend die of cancer. It's so hard to watch a loved one die. You wish, wish, wish you could take away the pain, the agony, and lend strength to fight the battle.
It had been hard for Lynn and me, that summer, watching our friend Dave (who lost his fight with stomach/liver cancer--which he'd valiantly fought for 2 years) slip downhill and leave us. He was ready to go and handling it with grace, but the last week of his life was very miserable. He was at peace with it emotionally and spiritually, but the physical misery was still very difficult. It was a relief to have that over with, a blessed release from that ravaged, frail body. He was at peace with his journey, and impatient to go on to the next phase of it. Death, like birth, is not without pain and struggle, as we leave one phase of our life and enter the next.
The toughest part was for his widow, who must try to deal with the rest of her journey without him. She's the one we worried about. Dave was always trying to comfort the rest of us, up until the very end. He was doing ok (at peace with his journey), and at the end was impatient to go.
I was also commiserating with Liz’s challenge of helping take care of ailing parents—hers and her husband’s. I could only try to imagine what it's like, trying to care for both sets of parents. My own parents were becoming frail, especially Dad, who was having balance problems and an increasing number of falls, and taking too many pain pills for his shoulders and back--and befuddled in his mind much of the time. At that point Mom was able to manage him and they were still living independently but I was not sure how much longer that would last.
Indeed, the world is full of suffering. We have it so easy, in this country, in so many ways (compared to the starvation, wars, poverty and lack of medical services, etc. in so many other countries). Yet the death rate is still one apiece, and though we tend to be complacent at times, and spoiled, life has a way of thrusting us into reality.
In my view, reality means that without opening ourselves to Love, we become lost in all the suffering and misery. But Love gives us a way to face it. If in some small way we can help alleviate the suffering (physical or emotional) of someone else, we can find our own peace. The paradox of the human animal, it seems, is that we must live in the real world, of floods and earthquakes, hurricanes and war, where life is often cheap and short, but we are also blessed with this spark of something greater, that transcends the ephemeral bodies that we trundle around in for a time. The dichotomy of this existence is fraught with struggle; we are mortal yet immortal. So tied to earth and yet transcending it. Something within us yearns and strives for a higher plane. We humans are worshiping animals, and even in our most primitive existence our prehistoric ancestors reached out to something beyond ourselves.
I guess I have to be an optimist, and always have been. My twin cousin (who I am closer to than a sister--she's always been my best friend) put it so well in one of her letters to me that winter, saying that she had to be an eternal optimist, to keep her own sanity. I guess that describes me, too. I've always been an optimist, trying to look at the positive, the good in things, the good in people, the plusses rather than the minuses. I watched my father (and many of my relatives) fight depression all his life, and I know how very, very far a little of that goes. A little bit of negativism can sure ruin a whole bunch of goodness.
There is plenty of misery, grief and hardship in this world (and hatred and war). I have to be an optimist for my own mental and emotional survival. The alternative is too bleak. Love and hope are the only mitigating factors in this life, on this earth. Love is the only thing that bridges the chasms between people, and brings compassion and understanding, tolerance and peace. Love and hope are the antidotes for despair. And when human strength and courage fail, love can carry us through the minefield of life. Lynn and I found that out, during the summer of 2000, and our faith and hope have grown. What I only had an inkling of before, I know for sure now--that God does love us, and that He will carry us through whatever we face in this life.
Everyone walks a different path on this journey, and it seems that some paths are tougher than others. I am not sure I could handle the trail that some must climb. I just pray that God will give me the strength and grace I need as I face my own cliffs and boulders, swamps and jungles. I am encouraged, however, by the fact that He led us through the summer of 2000 when our own strength was woefully inadequate. Somehow I know that He will lead me through the rest of the challenges.
And I do fear them those challenges. I am not sure I can face the end of my own life with as much grace as my friend Dave did, for instance. I see my parents (especially Dad) becoming frail and tired, hurting and depressed and more negative, and I don't want to go there.
I know I am a wimp, especially when it comes to tough physical pain, and if I get to hurting that much I hope that God will allow me to bow out sooner than later. I know I will not have the courage nor the grace (at least not on my own) to handle some of the things life can pitch at us. I also know how vulnerable I am to the suffering of a loved one (it was hard for me to cope with Andrea's challenges when she was fighting for her life, and even when she was starting her very painful recovery here at home after the summer in Salt Lake). So I pray for mercy and Love that can comfort and ease life's hard/bitter moments and the knowledge that pain and devastation will pass. Eventually it will be just an eye-blink in our existence.
I have to be an optimist, and I try to see each new day as a new beginning, a chance to do something good, and maybe try to brighten someone else's day. We're all on our separate little journeys, walking our own path, but there's a connectedness we can open up to. We can sometimes help pull each other along and over the obstacles when the path gets rough.