The picture above of Mona on her front porch is one of the final images I have of the ranch, as just after it was recorded around 9am on October 30th I was off on the drive twelve hundred miles to California - a place I wasn't necessarily ever expecting to see again. It was not a happy prospect, as I could summon up no joy at the prospect.

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When Mona and I drove up into the mountains, she introduced me really for the first time to John Denver, playing his tunes and singing lustily along. She was almost apologetic for playing his music at first, but as I listened I saw a dimension of him I never had from his pop tunes on the radio. He was a kind, compassionate, generous, and eloquent musician. One of his songs, Sweet Surrender, with its Buddhist allusions has become my anthem for the exhausting, demoralizing, and distressing but oddly inspiring events of the summer just past. Here are the lyrics...


Lost and alone on some forgotten highway
Traveled by many, remembered by few
Lookin' for something that I can believe in
Lookin' for something that I'd like to do with my life

There's nothin' behind me and nothin' that ties me to
Something that might have been true yesterday
Tomorrow is open and right now it seems to be more than enough
To just be here today, and I don't know
What the future is holdin' in store
I don't know where I'm goin' I'm not sure where I've been
There's a spirit that guides me, a light that shines for me
My life is worth the livin', I don't need to see the end

Sweet, sweet surrender, live, live without care
Like a fish in the water, like a bird in the air.


At least if I can free myself from the obsessions about past mistakes, and what I perceive that I have lost, and what the future might bring, and believe in the words that feel so right in that song, I might be able to live that way.

On one of those lonesome roads, between the ranch and the Interstate, I ran across an abandoned motel - the Home Ranch Motel.



As I drove on through the whole of Wyoming from East to West, then Utah, I grew progressively more depressed. When I would stop to walk the M-dog, she would never express any interest in being where we were or peeing. Each time she would strain at the leash to get back to the car, interprepted by me to mean "What the Hell are we doing here? Let's get back to the Ranch where we belong!"

As I passed through Salt Lake City, I knew I didn't want to stay the night in a motel, as I had planned. It would have been far to depressing to sleep, so I pressed on. I called my sister Becky in Reno to tell her I was going to try to make it all the way there without an intermediate stop. Shortly after I entered Nevada, it grew dark. At times it rained, but was temperatures were just warm enough to spare me snow and ice. By the time I passed through Winnemucca around twelve hours had passed, and as I approached Reno I knew I couldn't make the final hour or so without risking falling asleep driving. I stopped and slept sitting up for an hour, then got back on the freeway. Becky waited up for me, and I pulled in there around 2am, adjusted for the fall time change and Pacific time zone. By my watch it was 4am.

Later in the morning when we awoke, Becky showed me around the ranch, and we talked and caught up on things. She had shopped for good things for me to eat, and baked cookies - I packed stuff away for Pat and I to have after I arrived in Alameda.

Becky has a great dog named Rowdy who is getting on in years. He looks like M-dogs long lost brother. My sister is as attached to him as I am to the M-dog, and it is sad to see him slowing down, and displaying the symptoms of a probable minor stroke. He has a lopsided grin, and one ear is out of sync with the other.



Tomorrow I'll post some more photos of Becky and her trucks and horses (and me), and some more thoughts on the awesome chaos and uncertainty that continues to dog me as I try to move on with life.

Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf

Sweet Surrender lyrics © John Denver

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