Calamity Jane

            They walk among us. They are behind you in the supermarket, and sitting next to you in the café. They are the incredible women who straddle two worlds – after working nine to five and picking up the kids from soccer practice, they ditch their high heels for cowboy boots and run home to throw hay to the livestock, fix fences, and move cattle to the upper pasture.

            In Montana? Of course.

            Texas? Hell, yes!

            But Southern California?

            Absolutely.

            They live on dirt roads, off the power grid, and sometimes even, without running water. They can break a horse, fix the clutch on an ATV, and bake a cake for the ladies luncheon in their woodstove.

            I have always been fascinated by this world. As a teenager, I sought out books like Pioneer Women. I watched reruns of Little House on the Prairie up to an age I am too embarrassed to admit. I appreciate, and have even dabbled in, the art of quilting. And I have been a country music fan for decades.

            Yet I was born and raised in Southern California.

            It wasn’t until I met Dave that I discovered that this world did indeed still exist in modern times, and within miles of one of the most modern cities in the world. Since then, I have met many incredibly strong, genuine, and graceful women. Some of them still use oil lanterns to light up their evenings, while others have taken advantage of the affordability of solar power to make night life more convenient. Some haul ice from town to keep cold storage coolers working, others use propane refrigerators. Some of them still even haul water to their homes. (Although they use water trucks, not buckets like Laura Ingalls did.)

             I am a recent immigrant to this lifestyle. While I have always been a fan, I was not born to it. But when Dave was offered the opportunity to caretake on a ranch set in the Los Padres National Forest, I was wholeheartedly behind him.

            He, however, had some reservations. Not necessarily about whether I could tolerate it. It was about whether I would survive.

            A little background on me: As a child, it was rare to find me without a scab, scrape, or bruise, and usually all three at once. Not only was I active, I was also a klutz.

            As I got older, the trips to the emergency room only increased. Of course, it was never for glamorous accidents, like breaking a leg skiing slalom on a triple diamond run in Vail. No, my pathetic accidents were things like stepping on a stingray in the tidepools, badly spraining my ankle falling out of bed (a futon, actually), and losing the tip of my thumb to a dog during a game of fetch.

            A former roommate even made note of the fact that each successive move I’d made since college brought me closer to the local hospital. In fact, the most recent move had taken me from seven blocks away to only one. Now I could walk to the emergency room for my weekly visits. As a volunteer, not a patient!

            Usually.

            And now I was moving into the National Forest. Far away from the hospital. Or even a neighbor. (The closest one is over a mile away.)

            Dave set some immediate ground rules. One was to ban me from using any of the sharp knives, which is really no problem since he does most of the cooking anyway. (Yes, I am a lucky woman!)

            He also spent the first two months we were here reminding me at every turn, “Be careful!” or “Watch for snakes!” Which was also no problem, because it showed he cared about me. Or at least didn’t want to be bothered with a trip to the emergency room.

            And so far, so good. (Knock wood.) The only midnight trip to the emergency room has been for the dog. (Who knew an 11 year old dog could get pregnant?! Isn’t that 77 to you and me?)

            And so far, it has been fabulous! One of the first months we were here, as we sat around the firepit watching a bear saunter past the pond, it suddenly hit me. It’s Monday night. A good three-quarters of the rest of the world is inside their homes watching football. Oblivious to the wonders taking place fairly close to their own backyards. And not a single, solitary part of me misses that.

            I know that I still have a steep learning curve ahead of me. But I have some incredible women to learn from. And I hope someday to glide as gracefully between landscapes as they do. If I don’t get eaten by a bear first.