Legacy Career

Dear Reader,

Have you ever wondered if the love of farming and ranching is nature or nurture? I think it’s a little bit of both. I would say that people are born with a love for raising plants and animals and that if they are born on a farm or ranch, that nature is nurtured by their environment. I know lots of people who have that ranching nature, but because of circumstances and the way life flows, they didn’t grow up to own a farm or a ranch (and they are happy with their lives). But just because a child has a nature that is nurtured and knows deep down that they want to continue the family legacy, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have fantasies of starting a different legacy or even wishing they came from a different family legacy.

Legacy careers that the Rancher’s Daughter sometimes wishes her ancestors had started instead of ranching:

Royalty

It’s not surprising that I wished I was a princess when I was little, most little girls do, but my chances of inheriting a throne were pretty much thrown out the window when not only did my ancestors decide to take up ranching, but to separate from the monarchy not in one, but two countries. (I guess twice if you count the war of 1812 and the defeat of Maximillian.) The affinity that a little girl on ranch has for princess culture is not that far-fetched. Being a princess is pretty similar to ranching though, a princess has a horse, has animal friends, and has to be brave on a regular basis. Only, instead of putting a dragon in its place while wearing a beautiful dress, the rancher’s daughter is trying to put the feisty yearling bull into the hopper while wearing mens jeans and rubber boots (because it’s muddy).

The Circus

Before I was in my princess phase (or maybe these phases were simultaneous) I wanted to be a “tricker” girl. This was my three-year-old way of saying I wanted to be a girl in the circus who did tricks like a tightrope walker or an acrobat. I also wanted to have a pet elephant to ride in the circus, bonus points if it could fly! And since there were horses in the circus, I thought I could at least get a job Roman riding if I ever decided to run away. But my Roman riding aspirations were dashed when I tried to do it on my baby sister’s bouncy horse and my mom said I didn’t have the proper gear. Having a legacy circus career wouldn’t have been that far-fetched for me as not so distant ancestors used to be in the carnival business, but I’m ok with not having a circus legacy now as an adult because I never learned how to do a cartwheel and I have a significant fear of heights.

Alaskan Frontier

The movie Balto, about the Alaskan Husky who helped pull a sled of medicine to Nome Alaska, and the movie and song, “North to Alaska”, made me wish that I had grown up in the Alaskan wilderness with my own dog sled team. The red heelers that we had at the time l went through this phase looked very similar to a Husky and I was sure that they could pull a small sled and handle the Artic cold. But I wasn’t entirely sure about this, because I really loved our horses and wasn’t sure how much Alaska was conducive to ranching. I guess my ancestors thought that sticking with the cattle was a better long-term investment than a goldrush.

Sailing

I don’t know where this one comes from, but I always found stories where the whole family knows about sailing, and it is part of the family business. I always wanted to be the little kid who could climb around on a boat like a monkey and could call out orders of what needed to be done to keep the boat sailing. To me, being able to guide the direction of a whole boat during a storm was a lot more heroic than sitting on a horse like a wet cat, depending on your horse to get you back to the barn because you have no idea which way to go. None of my ancestors where necessarily seafaring people, except for the ones who crossed the Atlantic to the new world. I guess they were one and done when it came to sailing voyages. Plus, I have read too many Titanic books to be thrilled by the idea of a long sea voyage.

I don’t know how much of my time was spent daydreaming about a different way of life and reading about different types of adventures, but I could never quite bring myself to say goodbye to the ranch. But in each adventure that I longed for, there was always a piece of them that I seemed to live out on the ranch. The daringness of a trapeze artist is the same daring that is used to make that crazy dash off your horse to shut the gate behind the cows. The trust that is required between a person and their sled dogs is the same trust between a cowboygirl and her horse.  And the same intuition that guides a sailor is the same intuition that guides a rancher when moving cattle. But even though cowboy culture strongly denounces the idea of one man ruling over another, the ranch is the place where “horses are heroes and cowboys are kings” (Where Horses are Heros, Wylie and the Wild West).