It’s the time of year when I have to learn how to be alone again.  We elected to send Robbie out to the southeast for early season work this year.  The paychecks will be nice but more importantly, early season work allows us a little wiggle room during the fire season with regards to annual time off.  There’s more bandwidth to work with if we want to take a week to go horse camping or haul our boat over to Henry’s Fork to fish. Those trips are very important to our little family come June, July and August.  They re-glue us a bit, slap a bandaid on our relationship until the end of the fire season when we can take care of any rips and tears in our marriage.

This roll of his is three weeks long which isn’t very long at all in the grand scheme of wildland firefighting — one winter he did nine weeks of early season work!!!  How I suffered!  That said, I find I have to make some major adjustments as soon as he departs.  He takes care of so much when he is home from keeping the firewood pile stocked, the wood stove lit and meals on the kitchen table to morning chores and grocery runs which really frees me up to stick to a rigid daily routine that balances studio work with writing with my physical (and spiritual) needs for time outdoors.  As soon as he leaves I have to find a way to take care of all the aspects of my jobs as well as every thing he does around here.  It’s a lot to manage.  I can’t be a coward about it.  I have to be utterly religious about how I approach my days and stick to rigid bedtime routines if I want to keep the boat afloat.

I also have to be kind to myself when it all goes to hell in a hand basket.  Because it will.  And it does.

Last Saturday, Resero was chasing Hawk around in the big hayfield and that painted horse of ours ran himself up on a metal t-bar post in the far corner of our fence line.  The post went up and under his skin atop his ribs, tore up some of his rib muscle and was generally horrific looking.  As soon as I saw the wound I ran to the house to phone the vet.  And allow me a moment to offer up my thanksgiving to God for rural large animal vets — THEY NEVER SAY NO.  They never fail their communities.  They are hardworking, down to earth, capable and reasonable animal doctors.  My vet was two hours out on a dairy call but I loaded Hawk up in the trailer and simply waited in the kitchen with a few cups of tea while I waited to roll out.

We managed to get him all stitched up and he’s healing nicely but what a heartbreaker to have that sweet boy of ours hurt so badly.  It’s taking some of my time to doctor him every morning and night with his medications and this afternoon I’m hauling him back over to the vet to have a check-up and his drain tube removed.  I’m guilty of treating horses like they’re invincible because so much about them is miraculously strong and magical.  I think they can go anywhere and do anything but they’re made of flesh and bone and saltwater just like I am.

This is all to say, it’s stop and start around here, two steps forward and one step back.  I try to celebrate my small daily victories.  This morning I cleaned all the floors in the house which have been niggling me and taunting me for almost two weeks.  They look beautiful and it was time well spent.  Sometimes when I stop to deal with the task that has been nagging on my soul it tosses the doors wide open on the rest of my life so I can move about freely again.

Somedays I feel fussy in the studio.  My eyes drift off my work to the wide blue sky outside my big studio windows.  The angel on my shoulder keeps asking me when I’m going to go outside, when I’m going to run, when I’m going to hike, when I’m going to ride my horses.  On those kinds of days, it’s best to shut everything down and simply let myself go, gallop, get scrubbed clean in the wind and sunshine so that I can return to work changed and unshackled.

This is the start of the alone season for me and I’m not afraid.  I know how to do it.  I know how to be.