Dear Reader,
Believe it or not the rancher does take a vacation every once in a while that does not involve going to a livestock show, some sort of cowboy gathering, a ranching convention, or to go look at a perspective buy. Just a regular vacation to a regular destination where they pretend to be like regular people for a week or so. Leaving the ranch for vacation isn’t terribly easy. It’s not quite the same as just leaving your home, because when you ranch, the home and the business are often combined. There is no such thing as leaving work at the front door after 5:00 PM, though leaving work boots at the front door is recommended for a good marital relationship.
The vacation process for the rancher starts like it does for most people. The dates and destination are selected, the logistics and travel budget are set, and the money starts to be saved up. But along with those typical vacation planning to-dos, the rancher also has to consider what seasonal things need to be done on the ranch so that the vacation can be scheduled around it and who will be taking care of the ranch and animals while the rancher is gone.
Once everything is loaded, the final arguments are had, and the car is started, the rancher begins the vacation like a normal person. There is the feeling of “wow, we are actually on vacation and going to fill-in-blank-place”. The music is turned up, tempers simmer down, and everyone gets comfortable for the long ride ahead. After arriving to the destination, it takes the rancher a day to adapt to not having to get up to do chores and trying not to worry about if something has gone wrong at the ranch, if he remembered to shut the water trough off, or if he closed the gate right (The ranching version of did I turn the iron off). After some forced activities and deep breathing the rancher begins to enjoy the vacation, watching cable TV, staying up late with no thought of tomorrow, and enjoying just doing nothing.
By the second or third day, the rancher is enjoying this life of leisure and may start wondering if he made the right decisions in life. The leisure of city life with everything at your fingertips within a matter of minutes is very enticing. Of course, city life is not vacation all the time, but it is very convenient. And most jobs that require you to live in the city have a higher profit margin than ranching does, even if you are the owner, CEO, and general hand. With more money to play with, more vacations would be possible. You might even be able to buy a house in a vacation spot and not even need to rent a house.
These sentiments persist only for about a day or two. After that, the rancher starts to get restless. The vacation house gets a thorough once over, things may even start to be packed up early, and then the pacing starts because they are in a rental and cannot afford the security deposit for relandscaping the yard. Even the kids start talking about how they could keep a horse in the back yard and ride it on the beach and to the pier. Usually after the ranch wife gets tired of everyone’s restlessness, everyone is sent to the beach. At the beach, their unproductive anxiety is expressed by building extensive sandcastles, turning tide pools into irrigation ditches, and seeing who can hold their breath the longest. Or a hypothetical discussion takes place consisting of if they bought and owned the whole island, they could take down all the houses and make it into a ranch on the beach. By the time the day to pack up and head home rolls around, the rancher is a little bit relieved, almost like he was waiting for it.
On the morning that the family has to return home, everyone is actually a little sad to leave. Having God’s swimming pool (and also the shark’s) in the front yard and watching the sunset every night is kinda nice, but not having a to do list every morning can make one feel restless. After everyone has a last-minute swim, the house is packed up and double checked for belongings, it is time to return to the ranch. Everyone is usually back in their ranch clothes ready for action for when they get back home and are lulled to sleep by the warm sun from the windows and the general exhaustion from vacation.
After arriving home, the whole family works to unpack the car, check on the animals, and by evening, everyone is back into the rhythm of the ranch. The whole family seems relived to be home and even the kids mention how crowded things felt in the city, and the rancher begins to wonder why they even left in the first place … until one of the kids come in and says, “the cows are out.” That’s about when the rancher begins to start thinking about the next vacation.
