Soulful Pleasures

Ranch weekends are almost indescribable in their purity of form and substance.

Of course, "weekends" are only a focus because the ole fat boy is still toiling in the salt mine of an employer Monday thru Friday?

This past Saturday morn dawned with a brilliant sun, azure blue sky, and just the slightest wisp of occasional cloud to season the day.

A labor of love is one that satisfies the soul, provides tactile and visual evidence of its existence, and leaves the world a slightly better place for its doing. The ranch hand indulged his soulful pleasures on the recent sixth week day by stacking previously harvested brush on the back forty burn pile. A task simple in its execution, mindless in the transition from its slain earthbound position to atop the "burn" heap, yet soul satisfying to the miscreant performing the actual labor. Dad used to say when approaching a cemetery he maintained, "Ya'll got to excuse me cause it is time I cleaned yall up". This would be "rancher" intuitively understands that call to nature for forgiveness of the human alteration of the landscape of the land.

Yesterday began with a trek to the front gate to retrieve the Sunday newspaper and the unexpected morning trumpet of the resident turkeys calling after their night's slumber in the Gabriel river bottom. Happy to greet another day, the grasshopper wranglers were joyously gobbling their love of life.

Such are the Lord's reminders of all that the humble ranch hand is blessed with on his small patch of earth bound heaven in Gabriel Mills, Texas.