Page 11 of Forbidden Rancher's Return
And for the first time in eight years, I fall asleep listening to this stream. This wind. This mountain.
The mountain that never stopped being home, no matter how far I drove or how long I stayed gone.
Calla
The sky turns fast over the ridge.
One minute the clouds sit heavy and gray. The next they split open and the rain hits the pasture hard. Cold and sudden and soaking through my shirt before I make it halfway down the slope.
I should go back inside.
I don't.
The north fence leans where the ground softened during last night's storm. A post shifted, wire sagging low enough that the horses could test it if they felt curious.
That's all I need. A mare pushing through the fence line with rain coming down sideways and Rowan Cade already stirring up trouble in my barn.
I grab the hammer from the tool bucket and drive it into the dirt beside the post.
The earth smells sharp and wet. Mud pulling at my boots with every step. I like this part. The physical honesty of it.
The post leans worse than I thought.
The rain has softened the ground around the base, so the whole thing tilts east, pulling the wire down in a long, lazy sag.
A horse could step right over it if she had a mind to. And horses always have a mind to when the grass looks greener on the wrong side of a fence.
I dig around the base with the heel of my boot, loosening the mud, then brace my shoulder against the post and shove it upright.
The wood is rough through my shirt. Wet grain pressing into my skin. The post resists for a second, then settles into the hole with a slow sucking sound.
I hold it there. Breathing hard. Rain is running down my face and into my collar.
This is the part of ranching nobody photographs.
Nobody writes songs about a woman standing in the mud at seven in the morning holding a fence post upright with her shoulder while the rain tries to knock her sideways. Nobody puts that on a calendar with a sunset behind it.
But this is the work. This is what the land asks for every single day.
Not the pretty parts. Not the golden hour light on the upper pasture or the colts running in spring. The ugly parts. The mud and the sweat and the fence that falls again three weeks after you fixed it last time.
I love it anyway. I love it because it's mine.
Because nobody else is going to hold this post while the rain comes down. Because the land doesn't care if I'm tired or lonely or carrying a weight I can't name. It just needs the fence fixed.
And there's freedom in that simplicity that I have never found anywhere else.
The staple gun jams on the second pull. I clear it with numb fingers, wiping the rain from the mechanism. My hands are red from the cold. The calluses on my palms catch on the metal.
Good hands. Working hands. My father's hands, though I try not to think about that too often.
He had hands like these before the drinking softened them. Before the ranch fell away from him one season at a time and he stopped trying to hold it.
I hold mine tighter.
No one watches you fix a fence. No one has an opinion about how you hold the staple or how hard you swing.
It's just the work and the land and the satisfaction of a thing standing straight because you made it.
