One of my favorite parts of my day is taking the dogs out on my walk up to the field, or on the trail to the east pasture in the evening after supper. I like how they know, when I come out with my tennis shoes on, that it’s time to take off. I look at my puppy and say “outside!” and he perks up and races to the door to great the cow dogs. And I perk up too as soon as that fresh air hits my face and we all go bouncing together down the road and up through tall grasses and down through the trees. These animals are free to go anywhere without us out here, that’s one of the many perks of being a ranch dog, but (apart from their occasional wander to my sister’s and the oil sites down the road) they chose to stay here with us and wait for a walk or a ride in the side-by-side or alongside a horse.

I was out with them yesterday afternoon before the kids got home from basketball practice with my husband. I had some moments to myself that day, so I decided to take my walk early. Lately I’ve been skipping the music or talk in my headphones, swapping the option for whatever quiet I can hear and daring to catch my own thoughts, like I used to before there were so many ways to plug into the chatter. The sun was only barely starting to move toward the horizon and I felt the sort of free you feel when you’re out in the world on a random Tuesday afternoon when your normal routine would have you working behind a computer, behind the walls, behind the wheel of a fast-moving car..

“I love the way these dogs zip back and forth like this,” I thought to myself as my shoes left footprints in the silty soil of the trail. It had rained the night before and there were still spots that were a bit slippery. There was a moment I almost went down. I laughed to myself, of course, there was no one else around, but I laughed still. It feels silly to almost slip, even when you’re alone.

“I love the smell of these wet leaves. This cooler air. This breeze,” I continued to myself as I moved up that hill behind those bouncy dogs who were making a wide swath of circles before coming back to check in on me. “I love this stack of bales on the horizon and the way the dust smells when they’re rolled out. I love fall work and last week when we walked out and could see our breath for the first time in months.”

My moving feet and beating heart and air sucking in and pushing out of my lungs became a rhythm for the quiet little list I started creating in my head. “What else do I love? What else? Let’s think about it now. Let’s make a list.”

“I love round-bellied kittens who just learned to walk with their tails spiked up.

I love watching my children roll dough on the kitchen counter with him and his shirt sleeves pushed up and that he uses his strong hands to build houses and also tiny dumplings for soup.

I love it when the fog settles in the low places on our morning drive and when I come up over the hilltop I get to look down on the clouds. I like that Rosie wants me to stop the car so she can run through them.

I love the big granite rocks on the hilltops that have been here a million years, and I like rain puddles and the grass greening up after summer, after all.

I love when we see a hawk on a fence post, or a grouse perched in the bullberry brush and I love the wild turkeys who roost on the roof of our house and we only know they’ve been there when they decide to fly down past our windows to the lawn in the morning and scare me to death.

I love a kitchen table card game, one more please before bed and I love brushing my daughters’ hair in the morning, even when they don’t like the style and pull it all out to do it themselves.  

I love the way he taught them to use a fork to dip the Oreos in milk and I love any laugh I can get out of him.

I love the sound of my nieces calling me ‘Aunt Jessie’ like that’s the only name I ever had,

and I love the sound of a steele guitar in a band I get to sing with.

I love finding a big fat toad in the yard, or a turtle, or a bull snake,

and I love the way the wild mushrooms pop up under old leaves and the little, almost big, cowboy kids who made bolo ties with me last weekend out of paper and ribbon and wore them every day at the rodeos and I love this cow trail that’s also a horse trail that’s also a deer trail and an elk trail and a racoon trail and a trail for me and my footsteps and these dogs. These funny little pack of cow dogs zipping back and forth like this. I love these dogs…”