First Breath of Winter

Posted on November 21, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

Something about the snow, a fresh snow, transforms the landscape of my mind. When the snow starts to fly, I can’t seem to stop smiling – my soul can’t stop smiling. There is a newness, a freshness, a wonder about the snow, flying and swirling from an invisible sky above and transforming the drabness of dying autumn into the glory of waking winter. The cold ceases to matter. The snow seems to bathe life with madcap delight.

I came downstairs yesterday morning, before the sun had peeked into our hollow, and I was greeted by the wonder of snow. Everything was covered – the rough-cut fences, the branches of every tree, old tires sitting out by the chicken coop, the wind chimes, windowsills, the yellow grader – everything was covered in a layer of pure, undefiled white.

There outside was Anna’s black kitten, Kashka, enjoying the experience of her first snow. She frolicked and dashed madly about, plunging through snow drifts, jumping up a tree, in the throes of delight. She didn’t even try to sneak into the house, as is her habit. As I drove up our winding driveway to work, a few does startled up from their bedding ground, kicking up their heels – the cold and snow and delight of winter had gotten to them, too. When I got home last night, I couldn’t resist a mad dash around our place – T-shirt, flannel pants, and snow boots, the thermometer reading 15 degrees, and the wind laughing in the trees.

Today, the sun is shining and the sky is the pale blue of winter, behind transparent clouds – The world sparkles in the chill sunlight. Delight and quiet seem to walk hand-in-hand in a world transformed: The chirrup of snow underfoot, the gentle chuckle as snow falls from trees, the icy rustle of a rabbit in the tall grass, the sigh of windblown snow on snow. It is a fragile spell that might shatter like an icicle on stone, shaken loose by a mere sigh of a breeze. But fragile or not, while it lasts the spell is binding.

This is the first breath of winter.

Laura Elizabeth

Harvest

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

Dad is a South Dakota native, and he is back in his element. He went out this morning around 7:00, to “look for that buck.” Half an hour later, we got a call saying he had gotten a buck, in a meadow about a half mile from our front door. Talk about efficient. And he’s a dead shot, let me tell you. We’re not positive it was that buck, but we still have another tag left, so maybe we’ll get that buck after all.

Field dressing is something of a nasty business – The carcass is slit from the rib cage down and the entrails are essentially lifted out. They are all contained within a membrane sac and, provided you don’t cut the sac, they come out pretty cleanly. Nevertheless, it is a bloody process. Liver and heart are saved for cooking later, the inside of the carcass is washed out and the entire carcass is hung up to age.

In Illinois, with all the liberal bureaucracy and socialist gun control, being a legal hunter and firearm owner is challenging, and the hunting part isn’t nearly as simple as a hike from the front door. And you can’t just string the carcass up in your yard when you live in town, at least not in Illinois. I don’t think that is considered particularly socially acceptable.

Hunting is a misunderstood endeavor, by a significant portion of today’s population. When children are taught in schools the evolutionary idea that people are nothing more than a somewhat higher level of animal, why wouldn’t hunting be misunderstood?

But one only has to look as far as the book of Genesis to see that God gave mankind the job of stewardship of the earth (chapter 1), the command to fill the earth and subdue it (chapters 1 and 9), and permission to eat animals for food (chapter 9) which, I believe, was given with the condition of stewardship. God’s design for “stewardship” doesn’t mean leaving the environment alone, but treating it carefully, responsibly, and as a blessing from God. This includes responsible harvesting of wildlife and fostering healthy wildlife populations.

We aren’t exactly set up for processing the deer ourselves this year, and we need to get our freezer up and running, but we’re all already looking forward to having venison for a change.

Laura Elizabeth

Sunday walks and spiderwebs

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

Sundays always go too quickly–The fellowship, the family time, the blessed enjoyment of the outdoors. We live in such a fast-paced culture, but I’ve been discovering a peace that comes with a quieter life. Sometimes life gets busy and schedules get hectic, but coming home to a quiet life at the end of the day is unbelievably restful and calming. Regrettably, the last week sped by with hardly enough time to breathe deep of the clear, piney air or to ponder flowers in shady corners of the Hills. I tried to make up for it today.

A quiet, solitary walk to scout some good photography locations was restorative, even with temperatures in the 90s. I explored a beautiful little ravine branching off our jeep trail to Hole-in-the-Wall, and enjoyed the sight of birch trees glinting in the 5:00 sunlight. Deadfall and rocks, mossy soil and sandy creekbed–The ravine was like something straight out of a western novel. I love not being able to see what is around the corner–Where might it go? What is just out of sight, waiting to be discovered?

Another ravine, the grass bent from flooding, was scattered with ancient, sun-bleached bones. Some of them were mossy and green, all of them porous with time. Life is so short, so transient. Like the “flower of the grass”, the Bible says, life comes and life fades, just like that. Human life, animal life, plant life. But unlike the flower of the grass, we have a soul that will not die! And God is good to His children. So good.

On the way back through the corrals to get home, which are built with the bare rock as the fourth wall, I nearly walked right through this beauty’s web. I watched as she snagged herself a grasshopper, then scurried back to the center to watch and wait. Ants are examples of industry. Spiders are examples of vigilance.

We were graced with a little thundershower this afternoon, just enough to wet the deck and scare the Dog. She’s a bit of a coward. The clouds rolled up so gradually, they looked like smoke and haze, but soon took command of the whole horizon and the sky above. A little thunder, a little rain, a little wind in the whispering pines. The moisture was pleasant.

Tomorrow is the start of a new day, a new week, and a new job! Off to new adventures.

Big kitty

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

We’ve got lions down on Battle Creek! This is nothing new–We’ve known it for awhile, guessed it for even longer than that. There are reasons we’ve got a place we call the Mountain Lion Cave. But I finally collected photographic proof of their prowling down near the Cave.

Because of all the rain we got, Battle Creek flowed through this canyon all summer, finally going underground about 100 yards upstream from this place sometime in the last week or so. There’s a pool of stagnant water into which the creek is pouring, but the water stops there.

But downstream, near the ravine where our Mountain Lion Cave is, there is a cliff face and a little pool beneath left in the muddy creekbed. There in the black mud, all around this pool and intermixed with coon prints, were dozens of cat prints. There would appear to be multiple cats, maybe a baby, since there appeared to be a few different sizes of prints.

Likely, the cats are living in one of the many caves and holes that pock the entire canyon. Wouldn’t it be exciting to see one!

Back in the saddle

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

Got back yesterday afternoon from a four-day trip to vaccinate calves and pregnancy check cattle. In total, we worked nearly 1000 cattle between Friday morning and yesterday evening, and we covered a lot of ground! I drove out to the permit west of Custer with Penny (Jack’s wife) on Thursday night to join the rest of the crew, and we were in the saddle by 7:30 the next morning.

It took a good couple of hours to round up the cattle, with a crew of about ten on horseback, a plane, and a Jeep, and once we had them in the corrals, sorting took another hour, and then four of us had to move about 50 yearlings to another part of the permit. Pretty sure I didn’t climb down off that horse until about 1:30 that afternoon. I haven’t ridden much at all lately, so I rediscovered some muscle groups I’d forgotten that I had…

Everything went quicker than expected Friday, so Saturday was a pretty easy day, packing up camp and heading to Wyoming, where Jack leases from a rancher over there. The heifer group (cows with heifer calves) were all out in Wyoming, 226 pair, and to get things going for Sunday, we brought in the herd Saturday afternoon. It was hot, dry, dusty, and we were ready to be done when we finished, let me tell you. It was a little stormy on the horizon, and we could see smoke from a couple of fires in the distance, from lightning strikes we assumed. But the cattle came in without incident, sorted nicely the next morning, and we were able to finish up another small group of cattle yesterday in the early afternoon. A good weekend’s work.

Working with ranchers and cowboys, I appreciate the gentleness with which they treat God’s creatures. We may just be getting steers ready for the meat market, or getting heifers ready to be bred, or preg checking a bunch of cows, but there is a gentleness and respect for the animals, and a desire to cause them the least trauma or discomfort. Rounding them up, running them through a chute, sticking them with needles, all that causes some level of stress to the animals, but the job is done quickly and efficiently. There is visible distress in the voices and on the faces of the crew when there is an animal suffering–A calf died at the permit, a “respiratory calf” that had a form of pneumonia, and the sober attitude had nothing to do with money lost on the calf, but everything to do with the little creature’s suffering. It is refreshing to see such gentleness towards God’s creatures–That gentleness is, I think, a sign of real strength.

The visit to Wyoming was eye-opening. I’d never been to Wyoming before, and it is some beautiful, desolate country. Green this year, but just so big–So much of it! And so open. The things that seemed to thrive were sunflowers, rattlesnakes, horned toads, and rabbits–Lots and lots of rabbits.

Being on horseback isn’t conducive to taking pictures, but I managed to sneak just a few. I missed one really fantastic photo opportunity, with the sun coming up over the corrals, and the dust rising like mist around the cattle, sifting through the fences, and partially obscuring the cowboys sorting the herd. It was really beautiful. But the dust was really awful.

I leave tomorrow morning around 5:30 to head to Nebraska for more vaccinating and preg checking, and I’ll get back on Thursday evening. Good to be back in the saddle, even if only for a week and a half.

Rattlesnakes on the ridge

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

We live under the shadow of a snake-infested ridge.

Okay, so that’s a bit of a stretch, but rattlers have been seen from time to time on the ridge above our house. Yesterday, I went out to my truck, parked to the right of the old chicken coop, just in time to see two entwined rattlesnakes come tumbling down the face of the ridge and disappear behind the chicken coop.

After a rush of some heavy adrenaline while we made sure the pets were all out of the way, we went back to observe. We watched one of the snakes slither slowly back to the top of the ridge and that was that. Or so we thought. Fifteen minutes later, we heard rattling and ran back over to watch the show. Two snakes, probably the same two, were entwined and rattling furiously above the cliff, on a steep grassy slope. Their curious dance brought them further and further down the slope until they tumbled in a writhing mass off the face of the ridge. Once again, we watched as they slithered back to the top. That was the last we saw of them, and Sarah and I left for an evening hike with Jessie and Roy, two friends from church who live in the neighboring town.

But when we got back that night, and after we had been standing in the yard talking for twenty minutes, Jessie suddenly said, “That’s a snake over there. He’s a big one!”

Sure enough, there was a rattler, coiled up not twelve feet off at the end of our sidewalk. And there had been people coming and going for the last half hour!

We weren’t entirely sure what to do with it, but he sure couldn’t stay there. We watched him for twenty minutes or so, amused by how he reacted to shadows passing over his body when we waved our hands in front of the yard light, listening to the fascinating sound of his rattle, and amazed at how long he could hold his body up, unmoving and perfectly silent. Beautiful and dangerous. We kept our distance.

Finally, it was time to get rid of him. Roy picked him up with a pitchfork like a piece of spaghetti on a dinner fork, and took the angry, rattling creature over to the ridge.

Fortunately, seeing rattlesnakes in this quantity or with this frequency is rare. But it was all still a little unnerving.

We let him go this time. But Mom’s determined to get rid of it for good if we see it again.