Prime Time Summer 2018

REFLECT IONS AND RECOLLECT IONS

Paul Marchant | Rancher/Columnist | idahomarchant@gmail.com Irons in the Fire

Enough Rope I was sure glad when summer finally ar- rived this year. She certainly took her sweet time on her trek to the Marchant place from wherever she spent the winter. There is a pleth- ora of reasons why I ea-

often find it easier to leave the ropes hang- ing after I’ve loaded the hay. It’s easy to tell myself I’ll get to it as soon as I finish feed- ing. This, in turn, leads to another round of procrastination. “It’ll be fine until tomor- row,” is too often my mantra – famous last words, which inevitably haunt too many of my tomorrows.

gerly anticipate the arrival of summer each year. Many of those reasons are obvious:  I don’t need to dress in muck boots and 17 layers of coats, vests and shirts.  I don’t have to fight eight inches of sloppy, muddy crap with every step.  There are more minutes and hours of daylight in which to finish every last tedious chore. Other reasons are perhaps subtler, but no less meaningful:  The beauty of the high desert and moun- tain country that I call home is never more sublime than when the valleys, enhanced by the snowcapped peaks in the background, transform from green to brown.  My demeanor transforms from crabby, if not borderline mean, to occasionally pleasant.  The horses and cattle shed their drab win- ter hair in favor of a sleek, shiny, look.  I can finally quit feeding hay. And, on that note, I was reminded of, and re-taught, a couple of hard lessons this spring as my haystacks diminished. In order to maintain some respectable hay quality, we cover the stacks with huge tarps that are tied down to keep them in place. As the hay is fed, the tarps must be rolled back, and the ropes retied to prevent them from becoming a twisted and tangled rat’s nest – a potential residue of the relentless southern Idaho springtime wind. In my role as the consummate procrastinator, I

As the last stack of hay had dwindled to just a few bales, I arrived at the stack yard one morning to find five or six pieces of 10-foot-long rope twisted and wrapped around each other in a mess that would have caused a nun to cuss. As I stood in the morning Idaho zephyr and gazed at the witch’s broom that required my attention sooner, rather than later, I wondered aloud, in proper convent-cussing language, how in the world I would ever get the motley maze untangled. The more I looked at it, the more I cussed, and the more I cussed, the more bewildered and frustrated I became. Somehow, I talked myself down from the ledge and determined that this particular mess was not going to undo itself. The job had to be done and, if it was to happen, I was the only one who could make it so. I started by finding the end of one rope. My

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Akaushi Prime Time • Summer 2018

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