Life at 9,500 Feet

The Mayflower moving crew was hauling out the last of the heavy furniture and loading it into the 60 foot moving truck for the long journey from La Casa Alta Del Sole’ – the waterfront   dream home in Gulf Breeze, Florida I’d shared with the love of my life – to the DoubleGRanch, an eight acre piece of rock-laden property in Hartsel, Colorado with an outdated modular home located up six miles of dirt road in the Rocky Mountains. It had some some potential if you were creative, optimistic, and looked really hard.

“OK, thank you, I’ll grab it,” was all I could say. Another box. Terrific. I’ll be unpacking boxes for a year.

I walked into the empty bedroom and in the center of the room, directly beneath the palm shaped ceiling fan was a box, an Ariat boot box. My attention turned back up to the slowly spinning ceiling fan. We’d rescued that fan sixteen years earlier, salvaging it from the original home that Hurricane Ivan destroyed in 2004. It was one of the few items we managed to save and reuse in the new house. Ivan robbed us of most everything we owned but in an act of defiance I insisted on reusing and repurposing whatever I could salvage. We decided to build back our lives in the very same spot and prove to Ivan you could knock us down but we wouldn’t stay there.

Tears welled up in my eyes again but after two years without Hal I’d learned to stop the flow when people were around. No one wants to hear a widow’s cry. The real grief would flow out of me when I was alone. Now was not the time. I sat on the hardwood floor next to the box and looked out the french doors past the palm trees and onto the saltwater canal behind my home. I said out loud to no one, “I’ll miss this view.”

I pulled the box into my lap. Ariat boots; my favorite brand. The box, covered with a fine layer of dust, was familiar, a distant memory. I opened it to discover a brand new pair of “Magnolia” cowboy boots. Ah, yes, the memory cleared and the moment was vivid in my mind. I paid way too much for the beautiful new boots but they would be perfect for riding that 1350 pound fire-breathing dragon of mine.

Too Tall Tulo was half thoroughbred which gave him a need to fly. Thank goodness for his Quarter Horse half which gave him a level head most of the time. Tulo had been my sanity for nearly three years. Watching my husband fade away as his lungs and liver slowly stopped functioning, riding was my only escape from the heartbreak. Riding took me away from the past and stopped me from thinking about a bleak future alone. Riding Tulo put me in the moment, the here and now. Tulo was the key to working through my grief before Hal died, and after.

I recalled the day I bought the boots and brought them home, setting the box on the bed. I kissed Hal and he teased me because he knew my boot addiction and the new boot routine. I would pull them out of the box and display them for a few days. He loved to tell friends about his wife’s shoe and boot ritual and claimed I belonged to a cult of leather shoe and boot worshippers. He lovingly teased me with his southern gentleman sense of humor. Then, his cell phone rang. It was the oncologist with the news we knew was coming but tried to deny. The cancer was growing rapidly, spreading; his death sentence was undeniable. I shoved the boots under the bed and forgot about them.

After two years alone in La Casa Alta Del Sole’, the tall house of the sun, it was time for another  major upheaval of my life. I was leaving my pampered princess life in my waterfront dream home and moving to an old modular home at 9500 feet in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Never one to do anything subtly I was leaving behind my 25 years of life on the water to build my retirement ranch in the Rockies. From sea level to 9500 feet.

What the hell was I thinking?

I decided with this brand new pair of boots I would just march into my new life alone. I was a sixty-something year old woman with a truck, a good horse, and a brand new pair of Ariat Boots.

I could rule the world.

It was November 2020 when Boudreaux kitty, a 20 pound ball of orange fluff, and I arrived in Hartsel, Colorado. Winter was knocking on the door. Neighbors were taking bets on how long it would be before the Florida gal in the white Ram Truck would get stuck in the snow. My gulf coast friends pontificated on how long I would last. My family just shook their heads waiting for the inevitable meltdown. I’m sure my two older brothers were planning the rescue mission.

My only plan was Grit & Gratitude. I’d need a hell of a lot of grit to survive. I’d be happy if I’d focus on gratitude rather than my widow grief. Grit and Gratitude; that would be my magic formula.

This is my blog to share the story of building the Double G Ranch.