My Kind of Date

It's not hard to imagine why Randy's ancestors chose a spot along for Rattlesnake Creek to stake a claim as they pushed westward more than 125 years ago. It's especially true on an evening when the sky was painted like an expansive, texture-filled canvas of light and darkness. The creek gently gurgled as the current ebbed and flowed along the banks after recent rains. 

That particular night, there were few insects to swat away. And a little springtime chill in the air made a sweatshirt the perfect fashion accessory.

 

It's no wonder that this piece of ground has been handed down, generation to generation, better than an antique ring or dusty family china.

 

The evening "date" was an excursion to replace a rotted hedge post along the eastern border of the Big Pasture, as Randy's family calls it.  

 

 

 

I rode along - not for my fence-building prowess, but for the company for him and the scenery for me. It was the evening after my second Covid vaccination, but it was before the side effects arrived. The cloudy sky promised the chance for an interesting sunset, an unexpected bonus.

 

It was just a couple of days before our 40th anniversary. This kind of "date night" has become the norm in the past year, with Covid restrictions. But, in truth, it's always been my kind of date. God's creation is an ever-shifting painting here on the Kansas plains. Some may not recognize the beauty, but to me, it seems a gift to savor.

 

On Sunday, I gave Randy a canvas of a photo I took last August at the same pasture. We don't usually give each other gifts for things like birthdays or anniversaries, but I thought the 40th deserved more. I take thousands of photos a year. It was really hard to choose just one to enlarge and present. But I chose the scene from the Big Pasture for several reasons, including the tradition and family ties it represents. We have held that family partnership for 40 years now - significant, of course, but just a fraction of his family's legacy. The creek's twists and turns mimic a marriage's ebbs and flows, and water is a life force on a Kansas farm.

 

It was especially hard to choose the photo when I couldn't ask Randy his opinion, even though he's usually my sounding board when it comes to my decision-challenged selection of photos for contests and such. 

 

It's just as well I already had the canvas ready to go because that evening's scenes were pretty enough to move into contention to take up some real estate on the wall of our farm home. 

 Here was the scene looking west from the border fence as Randy made the fence repairs.

The view to the east looked past the fence into the neighbor's pasture, where the Rattlesnake continued its meandering path through more native grasses.

Once the fencing mission was complete, we worked our way back to the bridge on a dirt road that borders the pasture to the west. 

The "same" scene looked nothing like the canvas that Randy would unwrap on Sunday morning, though it was taken from about the same spot. And that's the beauty of nature, isn't it?

More of the fence line that Randy and his cousin Don maintain provided a foreground for another snapshot facing east.  It's hard to know whether they were the ones to set the posts or their dads or granddads planted them in the Kansas soil. And there's some history and symmetry in that, too.

The view to the west of the road gave a very different perspective. The sunbeams were almost like God reaching fingertips downward to our little piece of heaven on earth. I guess it seemed right on that Friday before Palm Sunday, a message of hope and peace in a world too often fraught with chaos.

The sky continued to shift. Most of the time, ducks soaring high overhead were our only companions. Eventually, a couple of guys in a pickup came by to make sure we weren't broken down on this desolate road with limited cell phone coverage. 

 (They also may have been curious about what we were doing, but I hope they were giving us the benefit of the doubt.)

We moved down the road and climbed onto an oil tank platform for a view of a pond where our cattle will drink this summer.

Some of those ducks who had been soaring overhead found a resting and feeding spot in that small pond.

Randy said it looked like they were making jet streams in the pond to mimic the ones in the sky as they glided over waters unruffled by typical Kansas winds.

I probably gave up on the sunset too soon. As we turned the corner on our road to go home, we saw the vivid pink underneath a blanket of blue as the sun went to bed for the night. We stopped at our wheat field for a quick snapshot.

Afterwards, we got to enjoy Randy's blueberry anniversary pie. Nature's "movie" and a snack. Maybe it's even better than a blockbuster and popcorn. (It's been so long between blockbusters, we wouldn't know.)

The next day, I was really glad I'd made the pie early. Dose No. 2 of the Covid vaccine knocked me for a loop. Thankfully, the reaction was short-lived. And I figure it's just a sign that it's working.

I hope it will help move life back toward "normal." But I'll still love dates with nature as the marquee attraction.