HICKORY PASS RANCH #5

COMING OF AGE -- DAYS 6 & 7

By © Russ Barnes.  All rights reserved: text and photos.

July 13, 2008; Sunday.  Awake 8 a.m.  Go through the ritual of making coffee.  Butane stove on porch. Percolator coffee pot which I haven’t used in decades.  Light breakfast in guest house. 


Pace to get ready for revising.  Dive into it at about 9:15 and work till about 12:30.  It appears to me to be working.  Knocking out most narrative for action.  Making the division between the two worlds of the play (the “Meeting Place of the Living and the Dead” and the “Hallucinatory Past” clear as well as the passageway between the two realms.  Make clearer why Granny and the Captain are there where they are.  Also clarify the role of the audience as “the town looking on and implicated.”  Went to make lunch at the big house.  Sat out on the breezy hill overlooking the scrub wooded valley and Lake Travis in the distance.  Returned to do two and a half more hours work on the play.

STRIPPING DOWN & DOMESTIC DISCIPLINE

At about 4 p.m., I get on the bike and roll down hill about 3.5 miles to Cow Creek Road where there is the creek and a swimming hole.  I strip down except for old tennis shoes and go in for a 30 minute soak.  Water is about 5 feet at deepest.  Clear.  Minnows and some trout swimming around me.  I reach out to grab and they are reet, petite, and gone.  Water is cooling, but pretty warm -- about 78 degrees.  Sun is blazing.  Later I talk with Joe on the phone about the experience.  About the elusive fish, he says, “Use a spear.”

Get dressed and begin the arduous bike climb to 1700 feet.  I’m not in excellent bicycle shape yet this summer.  I stop three quarters up the public road alongside the ranch for rest, shade, and water.  I go through the ranch gate.  I push half the steep driveway stopping twice for rest and water.  Arrive back at guesthouse about 5:40.  Cool down.  Begin hour’s meditation at 6:15.

Watched the sun set at 8:37 CDT, “burn orange,” as Texans say, over the southwestern part of the valley.

Am reading materials about George C. Marshall in the evening to prepare for that play I am contemplating.  Thinking about dilemma and structure.

July 14, 2008, Monday,  Awake 7 a.m.  Is this Bastille Day?  Talk with Robbin.  Miss her.  I miss shared experiences, shared perceptions.  She pushes me to see more things.  I miss sleeping together.  It feels right.  Fear I may not be right for her as she may need someone on the more preacherly side.

NARRATION SHIFTS TO ACTION

I make my way to about 19 pages of revision of Red Dog Dirt. 8 a.m. to 12:15.  It seems like about five minutes.  It is arduous work.  Narration to action.  More stage directions to guide the director.  More family stuff.  Will be controversial in my family, but will be valuable to the public.  Doing my best to universalize it and not just make it the story of one family, one person, or one town.  There is not just one protagonist in this version.  There is Granny, Russell, Richie, Guts, the town (audience), and Mongolusa.  I would say the themes are childhood innocence, coming of age (socialization), losing ones way (adulthood, manhood) through avoidance and regression, shame, guilt, eucharist.

CLOUDS ROLL IN

Ominous black clouds blew in from the west at about 11:45 a.m.  They seem to disperse and have made a generally overcast sky all day.  Windy.  Know enough about Texas weather that it can change in a minute.  And that change is ordinarily violent.  So I do not take out the bike today for my exercise and exploration.  I let it blow over, and try to do it earlier than usual tomorrow.

“Blue Monday” on KUT radio tonight.  Celebrating 20th anniversary of Antoine’s.  Downtown Austin.  I have seen some of the greats there: Bobby Blue Bland, Junior Walker, Marcia Ball, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson.  

I’m not struggling here for some remedy to my life problems.  I’m just doing my disciplined routine: work, exercise, eat, sleep, walk around enjoying the scenery and the animals, meditate, keep house, pray (for general insight), tell myself and God funny stories.

To be continued tomorrow

Go to sequel: #1, #2, #3, #4, #6, #7, #8

HICKORY PASS RANCH #4

KEEP YOUR FACE TO THE WIND -- DAY 5

By (c) Russ Barnes.  All rights reserved.  Photo credit: Seattle Weekly.

July 12, Saturday. 8:30 a.m. over to the main house for breakfast.  At breakfast Jacquelyn announces she has just had a dream.  She walks out of the ranch house, and there is a bison out on the grounds.  It is friendly.  Lia is with her and so is Russ (She thinks “it is Russ.”)  In her dream, they all go to Marble Falls, including the bison, and go to a nice restaurant.  While sitting there, the bison leans his head up against her.  She says it’s one of her more vivid dreams seeming very real.

The four wheelers won’t start.  So we drive around to all the ranch gates.  We open one gate that leads to a pristine pure water creek.  Many pools with various types of fish.  Sand as nice as Virginia beach. Beautiful sun-bleached outcroppings.  Visit a swimming hole.  Fish.  It’s a two mile bike ride.  And I intend to soak later during my stay.  

The two of them depart for several days.  I am all alone on the ranch.  It’s beginning to feel good.  I pace to evoke the imaginative tasks ahead of me in my aloneness.  Plan to hike and do the Daily Office readings each day for discipline breaks.  Turn the radio on once a day for brief update on election.  And KUT Austin’s “Twine Time” and “Blue Monday.”

Then the cell phone rings and it is Sharon in New York who announces she will be one of four videographers to follow the official Obama campaign.  I hear this right on top of this Texas hill.  She will write copy, shoot video for live television feeds, commercial takes, websites, etc.  My heart almost leaps out of my chest.  

A chance of a lifetime for Sharon.  I must admit I have parental pride.  In spite of my many deficiencies, I must take in that I added something to her self esteem -- not to take away in any way from her own achievement and what Susan, her mother, obviously added.  But I did, almost methodically, try to add to her self esteem and sense of herself as herself.  Self-congratulations!  Can be taken too far, but also not to be minimized. Balance for the sake of reality.  She texted me, “I am not prepared for this job.”  I texted back, “You are worthy.”

Meditated for a long period of time -- maybe two hours.  Afterward, I pace furiously up and down the guest house.  The new shape of the “Red Dog Dirt” stage play, thanks to Pittsburgh director, David Maslow, begins to dawn upon me.

Took the mountain bike out for the first spin in the afternoon.  Short ride to get used to it.  Went through some fences.  Crossed a few cattle bars.  I do like the bike’s low gear, lows for big hills and rocky terrain.  Climbed the paved driveway, a steep one-half mile hill.  Turned off onto a bulldozed rocky trail and three deer were plenty surprised by my down-wind, quiet approach.  One of them jumped a high, close-by fence in a perfect jack-knife leap.

As Joe, my guide, says, “Keep your face to the wind and your powder dry.”  Need I explain the meaning of that?

To be continued tomorrow.
Go to sequels: #1, #2, #3, #5, #6, #7, #8

HICKORY PASS RANCH #3

BUNGIE JUMPING -- DAY 4

By © Russ Barnes.  All rights reserved: text and photos.

July 11, Friday.  We awake.  Me later.  Joe makes coffee outside.  We head out in the truck for a trail head.  We go down, down hill.  Rogue cedar trees have been bulldozed.  We go through ranch fences.  We meet cows,  Rocky.  Beautiful old live-oak trees, very few mesquite, and a few cottonwoods.  Enthusiastically, Joe gives me all the skivvy on animal tracks: deer, bobcats, feral pigs, coyote.  We see a klatch of wild turkeys, a hen and her almost grown chicks.

I get instructions on rattlesnakes.  “Walk in the sun during day.  Be careful when walking in the shade.  At night always carry a flashlight.  If you see an animal in the sunlight during summer,  it is probably rabid.  Either shoot it or back away quickly.  There is no 911 out here Russ.  Don’t die in the house.  It’s bad manners.  If you die outside the buzzards will eat you and the only thing we’ll find will be your glasses and watch.”

PICK A TARGET


Joe insists on providing me with a single-barrel shotgun.  ”You are the only police force out here,” he says.  He checks me out. “Open the barrel.  See the chamber.  Load a shell. Remove the shell.  Close the chamber. Pick a target.  That’s it.  Now dry fire it.” Click. “You would have hit that target, Russ.  Now, would you like to live fire it?”  “No,” I said.  “Only if I have to.”

Joe has been a wilderness guide, an outfitter, an outdoorsman.  And if he had it to do all over again, this is what he would do for his life’s work.  His passion.  I get the feeling I’m now the beneficiary of this, I think, sacred energy.  He explains to me when he kills a deer, he cleans and processes it all himself.  He says he can take a deer apart entirely with only a penknife.  The city-slicker in me shudders.  He explains how the bullet must enter the deer to make the most tasty meat.  You can’t just shoot the deer and kill it.  You must kill it in a special way.  Then he explains all the different parts of the deer and how each one needs to be aged, seasoned, and cooked according to their properties.

We walk about 4 miles over rough terrain.  Return to the truck about 10 am.   Nice town.  I try unsuccessfully to get on the internet.  Will try again when Karen arrives on Wednesday. 

MY HOST

Joe leaves about mid-afternoon.  I do more settling in.  About 7 p.m,, the Ranch owner, Jacquelyn Mouton arrives with her nine-year-old daughter, Lia.  I go to the main house to visit for introductions.  Lovely person in her forties or so.  Out-going.  Generous.  Her daughter is obviously thrilled to meet a writer.  And she talks about her own writing using terms like metaphor!  At the age of nine yet.  At nine, I would have thought it was a railroad signal.  Anyway Jacquelyn offers me a huge space in the refrigerator.  We talk for about an hour and a half -- about the Episcopal School, about fundraising, conservation, education, cooking, Texas, Virginia, and New York.  She invites me on a four wheeler tour of the ranch the next morning.

Her daughter asks me pointing to her mother, “She bungie jumps.  Do you bungie jump?”  Well, I can tell I’m in Texas.  Clear contrast with one of my recent dates who requested an elevator to hike up a hill along the civilized Potomac.  I have to answer, “No, I don’t bungie jump.  But there are other risks I have been known to take.”

I retire at 11:00 p.m.  All heart palpitations have disappeared. Heart rate is 60 b.p.m.

To be continued tomorrow.

Go to sequel #1, #2, #4, #5, #6, #7

HICKORY PASS RANCH #2

SALMON AND EGGS; DAY 3.


By (c) Russ Barnes.  All rights reserved: text and photos

July 10, 2008, Wednesday.  I wake up in the morning about 7:30 on the couch in the “hood,” East Austin.  Slept straight through without a stir. Karen fixes me eggs and salmon; and coffee. Then she takes me on a tour of the old places of Austin.  And many of the new places which are awful. America corporate retailing.  It’s good to be with my old friend zooming around in her Miata.  Joe arrives home around 11 am and he begins readying “Wall Mart” for the move to the ranch.

He says,”Make a list, Russ.  Make a list.” His outdoors guide kicking in.

We get to the ranch, on a hill altitude 1700 feet. 360 degree panorama of the Texas Hill Country and you can see Lake Travis and the horseshow bend. Tallest hill in Central Texas.  3500 acres adjacent to the Golden Cheek Warbler Wildlife Preserve operated by the Park Service.  There is a largish, well-furnished, but modest, by Texas standards, ranch-house.  I occupy a two-story guest house.  And there is another guest house, called the bunkhouse, on the hilltop property, plus a habitable log cabin.  Because of the altitude, there is a pleasant breeze at all times.

I unpack myself and begin to set up for living and work.  Joe brings in the stuff: butane stove, paper plates, plastic flatware, detergent, flashlight, towels, radio to listen to KUT, mountain bike equipped with a gun-rack, home-made salsa, home-made barbecue sauce, a case of beans, freshly cooked rice, binoculars, garbage bags, a cell phone, camp-like folding chairs, corn to feed the deer, medicine in case of snake or wasp bites, and more

Joe also sells me two knives for a penny.  One is a nice, useful buck knife.  Single blade penknife, really sharp.  The other is a multipurpose penknife with many tools including a can opener, two saws, a church key, and a cork screw.

WHAT YOU NOTICE

Joe and I survey the immediate land.  At sunset, he pours himself a vodka cocktail and we watch the lights of Austin, far in the distance come on.  Then we talk in the house till about 11 about adventures, including the adventures of our children and our attitude toward them.  


In the evening, Joe and I get into a big discussion.  We talk about you don’t condescend to women, and you don’t try to dictate the lifestyle of your children.  (He says he despises guys who make off-color remarks to women about them being women.  He says they usually take it, but they are thinking, “What an asshole.“  This is another reason Joe and I are friends.)  He talks about the Episcopal School and how he has to lug around altars, etc.  He says, “They gave me full benefits right off.  Gave me three weeks vacation; now I’m tellin’ you, not at the end of year, anytime I want it starting on the first day!  When I was in the hospital with a hernia, they gave me full pay, and when I came out of the hospital, they gave me a check for $500.00.”

AGING

We discussed age.   Joe said he has a hard time now doing computations in his head.  “I’m mean I couldn’t do long division in my head and I used to be able to do it as easy as a saddle on a horse.  Maybe it’s just computers do all the work for you and your forget how to do it, or maybe it’s age.”  I told him about my mushroom hunt in the Rockies, and how Peggy Godfrey, the Moffit, Colorado shepherdess and cowboy poet said, “Real intelligence is what you notice.  There’s where quality of life comes from, what you choose to observe.”  And I said, “Joe, you observe things; you look at quality things.  That hasn’t diminished with age; it’s improving all the time. Let the computers do computation.”  We turn in about 11 p.m..  Not a sound outside.


To be continued

Go to sequel #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8

HICKORY PASS RANCH #1

Out of Washington.  Day 1 -- Day 2
By (c) Russ Barnes. All rights reserved: text and photos

_________________

Here’s a story. A journey in daily journal form.  All the way from Washington, DC to Austin, Texas and the ranch.  I will be publishing these posts from today till July 28.  I hope you will join with me by your comments and wisdom.  Please check in every day for the duration.

July 8, 2008, Tuesday --  Washington DC -- I pack; organize for trip.  Haven’t flown in eight years.  Nervous, anxious.   Anxious about where I’ll be.  Will I have enough to survive?  Will I really have time to do my work?  Will Robbin abandon me while I’m gone?  Will Anne be okay with her house without my help?  I’m also sad.  I feel alone.  I know I will miss everyone.  This is not going to be social I think.  It is going to be lonely.  But that’s what I think I need.  Don’t exactly know why.

I develop severe heart palpitations.  They last the whole day without let-up.  Heart skips a beat - at least three times a minute.  Irregular heartbeat too.  I feel bad, fluttery in my chest and stomach.  And that adds to the anxiety, a sense of dread.  I feel so bad, I call the doctor.  She says to take a moderate amount of diazepam all the way up and through the flight.  The palpitations don’t go away; but they diminish.

July 9, 2008, Wednesday. Washington to Austin -- I get through security, new to me after 9/11, almost without a hitch.  The flight is close to routine.  I even sleep a bit.  Fly south out of Houston along the Gulf to avoid a thunderhead between Houston and Austin. In the airport there were live jazz and blues bands playing in several spots. Welcome to the spirit of Austin.  Karen meets me in Joe’s truck, Silver, with a gray-top, AKA Wallmart.  Since, if there were seven 9/11s, you have everything in that truck to survive.  On the dashboard are the skulls of animals like bobcats, sundry other bones, teeth, bullets, feathers, and such things the black neighbors call Ju-Ju.  Evil spirits will not come near.


EAST AUSTIN

Karen at 53 is smashing as always.  She talks a stream, Joe talks a stream.   We all three talk a stream.  Non-Washingtonian.  It’s about plants, animals, cooking, adventures experienced, business, who was hospitable and who was not, about ways to get out grease and dirt, put things together. 

And about Leslie.  Leslie is a gay man dressed in a pink bra and a g-string who regularly walks up and down Congress Avenue.  He was arrested.  The Travis County ACLU intervened, and now Leslie continues her daily walks and has gained celebrity status.

Joe hugged me upon arrival at the house in East Austin.  Ramshackle place as always. Nineteen sewing machines strewn about with other mind-boggling accoutrements having to do with my host's encyclopedic interests.  

Dinner, the Eucharist, if you will.  Well, more accurately, going back to the ancient sacrifices.  Oil barrel barbecue grill in the back yard with a huffing and puffing chimney. Smelling of Fajita meat.  What a meal: Fajitas in fried tortillas: the meat, sautéed onions and varieties of of peppers, guacamole, a french cheese, and home-made salsa.  Then a Mexican bean soup on the side which was one of the best soups I have ever tasted.  Then we made contact with Robbin by Skype video conference in Mexico.  I had such a feeling of worthiness of these three people.  We all talked together.  A little stilted.  But I was so proud of everyone.


To be continued tomorrow
Go to sequel: #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8

MONTICELLO: A CHRYSLER & A TEA SERVICE

A GREAT COUNTRY HOUSE HELPS FOUND A COUNTRY

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By (c) Russ Barnes. All rights reserved.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia.  The year is 1959.  I am traveling with my grandfather Cluss in his 1955 blue Chrysler New Yorker.  

Leaving Staunton, Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley, we drive through the Piedmont countryside -- our road overhung by the dark-green canopy of the Carolinian forest.  Through the open car windows, you can smell the spring-fresh Southern Pine along with the oozing-hot road tar.

Our destination is Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s lifelong passion and his home. 

DRIVE UP TO THE GREAT HOUSE

Unlike with today’s more organized tours, we drive right up to the front door of this Neoclassical American masterpiece and walk straight into the grand house.  

We arrive here at the turning point between an old era and a new one -- the election of John F. Kennedy and the beginning of the turbulent, dynamic era of the 1960's was upon us.  This era marker I somehow sensed as I walked through Monticello for the first time -- perhaps because Mr. Jefferson himself looked back and forward at the same time.

I won't outline here the architectural genius that produced Monticello nor the political and personal ups-and-downs of the author of the Declaration of Independence and the founder of the University of Virginia.

SOUL STIRRINGS OF A SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY

Rather, I want to chronicle the soul stirrings of myself as a sixteen-year-old boy upon encountering, on this Virginia mountaintop, something of greatness, an originality born of a fertile imagination, an engine of a new republic built upon daring.

Once in the house, our tour guide takes us past the obligatory inspections of inventions and gadgets: the “great clock,” the weathervane, the wheel cipher, the spherical sundial, the dumbwaiter.

But the thing that enamored my adolescent attention the most was displayed in the dining room.  Today, I barely know why this single object, with its simple classical lines, seduced my imagination so.  What captivated me was -- a teapot -- part of an elegant silver tea and coffee service.

Close by the teapot were drawings, practically cadcam-like, drawn by Jefferson himself and sent to a silversmith in Paris with specifications for execution and transport across the Atlantic back to Monticello.  The drawings are so reasonable, rational, so exact with an eye to detail, practicality, and aesthetics that they, and the object itself, flooded the feelings of the boy I was then with a new vision of what was possible in life.

Here was a man who funded Lewis and Clark on their expedition across an entire wild continent, who negotiated with Napoleon for another third of our nation’s geography, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, who founded the University of Virginia, who insisted on attaching the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution . . . and yet, who could, simultaneously, design a lowly domestic accoutrement with such grace and utility to please any hostess entertaining elegant and powerful guests.

HOSPITALITY FUNDS A NEW NATION

And Mr. Jefferson did just that -- entertained at the Great House for the enjoyment of family and guests, all the while benefitting the fragile political and financial development of the nascent United States of America.  Our guide pointed out that the Great House had a suite of rooms dedicated for the exclusive use of such luminaries as James Madison and his family.  These guest rooms were like a home-away-from-home, but the guests were expected to show up for dinner and other communal occasions for lively discussions and activities such as music and stargazing.  


Such discussions, for example, might bring clarity to projects as to how to frame the legislative language for the Bill for Religious Freedom in Virginia -- a bill which provided part of the foundation for the First Amendment to the Constitution.

European guests such as the Marquis de Lafayette also showed up on the mountaintop. Lafayette, who had been an invaluable general in the American Revolution, also later served as an ally in securing French funds for the new United States.

My adolescent mind imagined how it would have been to be there experiencing that domestic detail, thoughtful entertainment and conversation -- as well as the delights of the inventive new world built on ancient classical values which had appealed to so many previous visitors of that Great House on the hill.

During the 1950’s, paying attention to a silver tea service appeared, to the boy I was then, to be what we would have called "a feminine pursuit."  That was the convention of the day.  But what Monticello dramatized for me was that the “Great House” provided not only a roof over one’s head, but also served as an instrument in achieving one of the most sweeping political successes in human history -- and, that in some way, Mr. Jefferson had combined both masculine and feminine qualities in his pursuit of this political victory.

IF YOU GO:

Charlottesville has many comfortable lodgings and restaurants.  However, The Boar’s Head Inn is one of the best.  http://www.boarsheadinn.com.  Opened in 1834, the 573 acre property features gourmet Virginia cuisine with locally grown herbs, golf, tennis, fishing, bicycling, a fitness club and spa.  Stop for afternoon tea or dinner or for a night or two.  


Don’t miss the University of Virginia. Check out this page -- http://www.virginia.edu/exploring.html

For information on travel to Virginia, go to: http://www.Virginia.org

HANGING OUT MORE BRILLIANTLY ON A TEXAS HUNTING RANCH

UNUSUAL SOLUTIONS TO LIFE'S PROBLEMS

By (c) Russ Barnes

FORT MCKAVETT, Texas.  Many successful people have explained that personal and business creativity thrives on limits.  If you desire a creative frame of mind to solve some problem or initiate some needed personal innovation, then a Texas ranch may be the place to hang out for a while.

My daughter, Sharon, recently found this to be true when we visited AC Ranches near Fort McKavett, Texas.  She is a filmmaker/producer in NYC, and graduate of the University of Texas at Austin.  

STARK, BUT ABUNDANT

For exercise, Sharon took her daily run on the mostly deserted road in front of our ranch lodgings and witnessed stark limitation, the hard line of the big sky meeting scrubby land at the horizon -- and once even a rattlesnake stretched clean across the dirt road as straight as the horizon itself.  What she witnessed slowed her down and made her think differently.  “A bit more brilliantly,” she claims.

In the film business, as in most businesses, many creative problems and opportunities present themselves -- often as limitations to be overcome.  On the ranch, the magic fences serve as boundary markers -- more than hemming cattle in and keeping poachers out, they mark psychic as well as physical limits.

“JOY COMES OUT OF THE PROBLEM”

 Making a Texas ranch profitable, says John Sassin, is no different from any other business. Sassin, a 20-year ranch hand and head of a family aluminum re-cycling business in Dallas-Fort Worth, claims, “A place like AC Ranches gives you the perspective on how you might become profitable. The ranch clears away some of the noise that keeps you from thinking fresh.” 

On AC Ranches there are 150 head of Black Angus cattle for which the ranch has signed a contract with Whole Foods (Austin) to test the market for meat which has not been industrially processed.

Unlike most industrial farming operatives, Sassin points out, Texas ranches mostly free-range their cattle (within limits). And because of the rise of profitable industrial farms -- which, he notes, are "virtual concentration camps" for animals -- the vast ranches of Texas (and elsewhere) have seen significant decline in profitability.

"THE ROMANCE OF THE WEST TEXAS RANCH"

 "I have been told by others," Sassin notes, "that the cattle business is 'unprofitable.'  I intend to prove otherwise by thinking creatively about change --  the greatest tool in any business venture. "  And yet, as he is well aware, change is often difficult to accept.

Sassin muses on how ranch life braces the spirit in opening to unusual solutions to life's problems, invoking the myth of  "the western" -- in both novel and film such as Lonesome Dove.

“The 'romance' of a west Texas ranch in my opinion," continues Sassin, "is conjured up in the mind of an individual 'caught up' in the everyday motions of typical life; i.e. wake up, breakfast, get kids to school, go to work, get kids home, dinner, pay bills, homework for all, bathe, sleep, wake up, repeat."


“NATURE IS YOUR NEIGHBOR HERE”

He meditates a minute on his statement --  and adds, "It's a cycle which becomes mundane." Then he modifies a bit, "On the ranch one's life becomes in some regards the same but yet excitingly different."
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[NOTE: DISCOUNTS, Premiums for outdoorsmen and their companions -- You must mention these articles to AC Ranches and you will get 20 percent off your selected hunting and outdoor journey.  Check out AC Hunting Ranches for rates and bookings at: http://achuntingranches.com  Contact Allen Spence for information about transportation from Austin or San Antonio:  allen.spence@wildblue.net.  (325-387-2085) Future articles will feature other hunting and regional premiums which you may access by contacting AC Ranches or this website.]

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With the nearest sizable grocery store sixty miles away, and no significant access to 911, the limitations make one think differently, with more simplicity, and with a kind of blessed clarity.

"Here nature is your neighbor," Sassin points out. "For a change, instead of people, cars and traffic, there are deer and wild turkey to replace your ordinary morning and evening traffic as those animals cross the roads or fly overhead to their favorite feeding sites. Unlike in the fast lane on the highway, or the crowded avenues of the city, when a west Texas driver lifts up his hand up to signal you, the gesture is one that says 'Howdy' -- instead of something far less friendly.  Stress disappears."

A FEW WORDS ABOUT A RANCH-HAND AND A FIRE TRUCK

John Sassin has no title.  Everyone on the ranch appears to be a CEO of some ever-changing domain on this 20,000 acre ranch. "I'm a Jack-of-all-Trades," Sassin claims. "This past week I got the fire engine running that we purchased at the Ft. McKavett Fire Department Benefit Auction.  She's a beauty, vintage 1964 Howe Chevrolet model pumper truck with all the 'bells and whistles.' We'll display it under the flag on the highway at AC-3 for everyone to enjoy."

AHEAD OF THE CURVE

John Sassin is a bit reluctant, because of competitive factors, to disclose details of plans to make AC Ranches profitable. But it is clear that there  is interest in building a wind farm on one of the ranch's high hills -- a clear departure from the "as usual" oil energy sinecures exercised by many Texas ranches.

But he is forthcoming regarding several innovative areas the ranch is considering. "Sight-seeing, bird and wildlife watching, bed and breakfast are some ideas I can mention at this time that we are exploring." It's a new concept in supporting open farmland and ranch-land -- called "agri-tourism."

Sassin has also initiated some farming on AC Ranches: fields of Sorghum and Milo  for wildlife and domestic animal feed -- as well as fresh vegetable gardens for human consumption at the ranch. Farming is not ordinarily practiced on ranches, which are conventionally for grazing herds, domestic and wild. But Sassin believes that growing crops may add to ranch profits. (More about this in future posts.) 

Many west Texas ranches add other dimensions, in addition to the sport of guided hunting, among them a place for creative re-thinking of one's life.

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To see more articles in this AC Ranch series, go to: 

# 1 "Where the Wild Things Are" 

Other Links: 
The Ranch:  http://achuntingranches.com



An Outfitting Guide Describes the Harvest -- Two audios range over topics covering outdoorsmanship. Click here:  Hunting Guide  

Sonora Texas information at: http://www.sonoratx-chamber.com

Many thanks to Anne Tongren for providing her excellent editing skills.