And by my partners current fate he has landed in the middle of the mother of all cowboy havens as one middle aged, obstinant employee among a whole slew of old geizers still slogging the bovine trail in cold, windy Montana. He's been learning cattle now the hard way from them for several months. He's only just cracked the tip of the glacial berg there in the volumes of knowledge yet to be learned. And he has yet to find the core of true value which comes with working with a series of co-workers who's ages top seventy consistantly. And knowing my partner, I'm sure despite all effort in his eyes to be gruffly cordial, I'm certain it shows.
So what does all this have to do with synchronicity you ask? Do you even know what synchronicity is? If you don't then I'd recommend a good book for your evenings before bed titled: The Celestine Prophecy. In my mind it is the melding through expanded awareness sensitivity, of the functioning of one's higher self with one's environment on both a physical and spiritual level. I won't go much more into it because that is not the primary purpose of this discourse.
Well, now that you are really confused I will say that it, as a consequence, gives the ability to know certain things at certain times. And sometimes even someone as dense as myself can put it to truly decent use. Like knowing that today, a particularly ancient cowboy who still works, plugging away at his rough trade, will be spending his morning fighting the snow to accomplish his bovine chores and thinking miserable thoughts related to his age and life in general. It's knowing that unlike most days when my partner and him break for lunch both are sitting at opposite ends of the pasture, no it is today where both will be taking lunch together...I simply know this...woke up knowing this. Expanded Awareness does that to you sometimes and it also calls you to action when it discerns a need...today it needs the sharing of a special lunch...It needs me to pack a few extra of the chocolate chip cookies I baked yesterday.
My partner asked me this morning what I was doing. He couldn't eat all those extra cookies I was putting in his lunch bag. I said they aren't for you. They're for Kenny. My partner says but Kenny and I don't eat lunch together, he's usually at the other end of the pasture. I said today will be different...see to it he gets them. Ok, says he, giving me one of those looks that says I shouldn't be advertising. Well, sometimes there are more important things....like getting the ignorant and the knowledgeable together where empathy and interchange, and improvement in self value can all mix and work the wonders it tends to do. Where the down trodden can brighten for there is yet things of importance to be done even if it is to break ice in the mind of the agri-hardened for they run in tandem for reasons neither yet suspect. Can you imagine kickstarting a branch of the future with Chocolate Chip Cookies? Can you imagine lifting the spirit of the gruff and the aging with the sent, the smell, and the bite from one of those universally beloved confections? Oh yeah!
I'm certain of how this story will play out. It's happened before. Some thirty-eight plus years ago there was a young man with a new wife. He was raised a farmer as well, but the parents died when he was still a kid. So as could be assumed much was lacking in his knowledge base. Well synchronicity was on a roll back then too and threw that young fellow in with another old geizer in the year 1969.
The old geizer was married, drove a Dodge 1960 3/4 ton baby blue pickup and was of an age to have been a young man on the last big interstate cattle drive between Montana and Texas before all the new wire fencing relagated such things to a thing of the past. He'd finished that drive and then with his small share of the booty bought himself some Herefords and went to Oregon where he married and settled down to tend his cattle on a small acreage. His cattle were too many to keep all year only on his own land so he generally found ways to trade his interest/skill in mechanics and ranching for use of spare pasture for his critters...well as it happened when the young man bought his first ranch he ended up meeting the gruff, sparse speaking old man, who by then was topping the big 7-0.
And the deal turned out that if Old Geizer could run a few Hereford Cows on his acreage then he'd get his first cow and all future breeding for his own hered for free by the Old Geizer's bulls. The young man took the deal and landed something better, a friendship that lasted a lifetime, and through it he learned everything he knows about ranching and mechanic-ing today. Through the final years of the historic Old West, a lifetime was changed and brought back to the land in the midst of the age of technology. Today the young man is no longer young. His kids are all grown up and gone. So too is the Old Geizer, who died a few years ago at the age of 102 while out tending his cows. But his legacy lives on in people he grew close to and took the time to 'tell a few stories, and show a few things". His interaction enriched an entire family who took the knowledge and is even today passing it on.
So here I relate an older story to shed light on the beginning of a new one. One initiated by chocolate chip cookies which in another three hours shall bring together a new round of life linking and a fresh tweaking or fine tuning of a portion of the future. For we are all interconnected in everything we intend, everything we think, say, and do.
Everything and Everyone Matters.
Seems to me I'm seeing the theme for 2009. Yeah, so all you young bucks out there, go find an old geizer and break past his gruff shell. He still has things to teach you. Let it uplift his life, enrich yours and inspire the next generation.
Here's to Ancient Cowboys; Old Geizer's everywhere! You are eternal by consequence of that which you pass down to young hard heads.
Cyrellys
from the hard heads of the past to the hard heads of the future, this post dedicated to:
Paul Ellenberger
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About the photo:
Fifth-generation rancher, poet, and writer Deanna Dickinson McCall shared this circa 1912 photo of her grandfather. Deanna told us:
The picture was a post card (that was quite a fad), of my grandfather Perry Preston Dickinson. He went by "P.P." He was born in Denton County, Texas in 1896 to a ranching family. He got itchy feet and rode to AZ at the age of 12 and stayed there quite awhile. He "courted" my Granny back in Texas and had the card made for her. The picture was taken in the vicinity of Grand Canyon. It is signed "The 10X Bronc fighter," as he was the rough string rider and was working on the 10X ranch at the time. (Men weren't boys for very long in those days!) He was a great influence in my life and taught me many of the old stories, songs, and how to ride. He later was a Marshall and a special agent of the Texas Rangers.
You can read more about Deanna Dickinson McCall and read some of her poetry here.
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