We drove up our mountain road, headed home, through the desert sand and cottonwoods that line the lower river, up through the two villages that lead to a large granite canyon, past the tierra blanca patch and where we know you can dig for garnets, up through the shiny gravel patch and deeper canyon cut by the river - past our swimming hole to almost the top of the valley that crescents out with verdant pastures and more mountains to the north, east & west - we pass the pink mercantile and that’s usually when our daughter yells “home!”.
Our dogs bound towards us with faces like maybe we were never coming back. Johnny clocks the cows in our pasture quicker than a man checking the corner of his card in a poker game.
I don’t know whose cows they are but they’re not ours.
We run into the field to move them out, a horse we don’t know is also with them, brown and shiny, a handsome one.
We’re home and I can feel it, my body in motion. Even when we leave the ranch which is rare and experience the everyday comforts that non ranch life provides I still feel most comfortable when we’re back. The clear mountain air thick in my nose and the reminder that when on this land my body doesn’t stop moving.
Our neighbors,” los Chacones”, down the road in the village below - pull up with their cow trailer. Two characters out of a Steinbeck novel but New Mexican, each wearing a worn hat that could be from any era in history and faces to match.
They are surprised in a way that they now have to deal with their cows in our field which for the few days we were in Arizona was a convenient mistake.
One brother runs towards us eager to have discovered the cows are here and willing to help.
“Your gate! It’s locked!” he yells towards me.
The other brother leans on our gate, one eye open squinting at the situation not sure if he wants to volunteer quite yet or at all. I wonder how many times these men have chased cows out of a field in their lifetime.
“Brother! Brother” his brother in the lower field calls up at him!
“Get the cow cakes!”. He wearily walks to the truck to retrieve them.
I see Johnny bounding up towards the cows with his long willow legs pushing the herd up and around the shed house so they don’t trample our garden. A few of the big angus inevitably do and we mourn the loss of some of the corn and beans for a moment, more matter back into the ground.
I recognize that I’m often out of place here with these mountain village men, but still, I stand confidently as a woman in the field, with the men, moving cows, opening gates, mourning garden stompage.
And I also relish in my luck in this life getting to witness characters from a time past that get to live free out here in these mountains only tending to the things their dad and his dad have for lifetimes - with as many beers as they want, and to yell “Brother! Brother!” …like they have their whole lives, young or old.