Thought I would drop one last line before my long hiatus has passed. My paints and materials have already begun their return journey, in no time I will be back at home.

Today breakfast in Sheridan at the Silver Spur. I saw a man at the counter eating a half dozen or so scrambled eggs smothered in thick white gravy. It was reminiscent of the Big Horns with a fresh coat of snow.

I am no longer waking at 5 am – I do wake for the windstorm, the meows signaling freshly caught mouse, the sprinklers outside my door that do little but dampen the mulch – but 9 am now and the hills’ brow still shades it’s chin though the sun is already high.

Burnt or chafed – the orb of my left shoulder. Indeed it is scratched – mapping red my morning pursuits. The surface suffers here…

Today I went for a nice tromp around the ‘thousand acres’ – which is the grazing land at the ranch, with very tall hills, big rocks, sage brush and grassy bits. The blooms of flowers and the seed heads at then end of amber colored grasses dipped slightly in the light breeze and gave the hills a sort of glowing undulating aura. I saw pretty flowers in many colors, floatee butterflies, skipping grasshoppers, buzzing flies and bees and la and la. All was a fascinating percussion of chirrups, whirrs and the gattling retreats of the grasshoppery sort as I gallumphed along through the hills.

Have arrived at Jentel! Still just getting my feet wet! The cowboys here don’t look at all like the ones in Brokeback Mountain (but then I hear that was filmed in British Columbia). There is a mountain
called Bomber mountain – which a bomber flew into (which must have taken some work given that it is pretty gosh darn flat here – one would think the pilot would realize to avoid the tall bumpy snow topped mountain bits).