Julie Morrison - Barbed: A Memoir

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

Soulstice Publishing brings to life books with soul that inspire readers with stories of human potential realized and celebrate our unique position in the Southwest.

Soulstice took root in our mountain town of Flagstaff, Arizona, which sits at the base of the San Francisco Peaks, on homelands sacred to Native Americans throughout the region. We honor their past, present, and future generations, as well as their original and ongoing care for the lands we also hold dear.

Surrounded by ponderosa pines, enriched by diverse cultures, and inspired by the optimistic Western spirit, Flagstaff abounds with scientists, artists, athletes, and many other people who love the outdoors. It is quite an inspiring place to live. Considering the dearth of oxygen at our 7,000-foot elevation, you might say it leaves us breathless.

Learn more at soulsticepublishing.com .

Soulstice Publishing, LLC

PO Box 791

Flagstaff, AZ 86002

(928) 814-8943

BARBED
A Memoir

Julie Morrison

W hen two adults start down the back side of life toward burnout, a casual remark can sound like the harmonic bridge toward rhapsody.

Dad spoke the buoyant notes into a scene for a dirge. My husband and I were slumped into chairs in my mothers kitchen, our presence in Flagstaff, Arizona, planned as what we thought would be a routine quarterly visit from our equally woodsy but much wetter home outside Seattle. It had been a day: of travel by too many hours and conveyances for us, of too many hassles on the family ranch for Dad, of too much preparation with nobodys help for Mom. The mood was glum despite the soaring summer evening, fatigue devolving our pre-dinner chat into a litany of grievances, when Dad joked, Anytime you want a change, you guys could just move down here and help me out.

Sorry, Dad, cant hear you for the hallelujahs. Honey, can you turn down the choirs of angels there over your head? Moms saying dinners ready...

Our mythologies, individual and shared, had let us down: adulthood had not been a leveling off; marriage was not the ultimate in romance; and hard work was paying, but our debts were long from paid off. In all the classic stories Id heard and subscribed to, the demons, once defeated, are done. None of my favorite tales had clued me in to self-doubts that do not depart at any age; power-and-laurel-hungry superiors that feed unto thriving on typical workplace hierarchy; or the daily gremlins of weight and obligationall far too easy to take on, all but impossible to work off. I kept expecting my showdowns with daily challenges to reward me with the plateau of making it. All the components were thereadvanced college degrees, marriage, home, healthbut try as I might to plot them into a heros journey, I woke up each day feeling more like a fool with errands.

Really? Brent asked, eyes already alight with boyhood fantasy.

For my Colorado-born husband, who had summered with his granddad in Oklahoma haying cattle by the clunk and rumble of a farm truck, the title of rancher was the ultimate in workplace daydreams.

Well, yeah, Dad said, the simplicity of the words lost to the glory of a paradise foundthe familys atrophied ranch holdings suddenly a gateway for Brent to the land of Theodore Roosevelts daring, Lewis and Clarks backbone, the Marlboro Mans making. That any of those examples is also deeply flawed unto impossible on closer examination was but a trifling argument I did not make. I hadnt lived in Arizona for more than ten years, each one seeming to take me further from my roots or any sense of familiarity. I wanted nothing more than to feel at home: within my marriage, my life, and myself.

B itter coffee aftertaste bites back at my tongue as I step out of the truck into crisp, pine-scented air, my eyes immediately drawn toward the line of horses with sleepy eyes and cocked feet, tied to rough-weld hitching posts.

Happy anniversary, Jules. Lets celebrate by riding for hours across rocky terrain in the hopes that well gather the ranchs cattle along with everything else thats wayward in our lives, jobs and marriage.

No pressure for a first roundup .

Trying not to feel like a visitor to a place that was owned by relatives for decades, I push myself into the rousing day. Its Labor Day weekend, but mountain elevations invite an early fall. I shove my hands into my lined canvas vest pockets, hoping for warmthsomething I wont expect from the group of cowboys near the tack room, eyeing me like a scale just shy of balance. They are not the company I would have picked for an anniversary, but Brent and I have opted to spend the occasion fostering a beginning rather than celebrating a completion. Dad has seriously offered us the ranchs management, suggesting we come get a firsthand look at what a day in the life is like at that job before we accept.

Looking at my husbands luminous expression, Im guessing even if he got the calfs day instead of the cowboys, being headlocked, branded, and castrated would still look better to him than going back to a corporate job.

Belayed aggravation is something everyone in the cinder-sand yard seems to share, the grit underfoot only slightly less rocky than the start weve made: were late, which is an annoyance at any workplace and an actual barrier to entry here, as no one can get started until the trucks and trailers are loaded with everyone who will be riding the forest across the freeway from our headquarters to first locate our grazing herd, then move it south into the next fenced pasture.

I humbly crunch my way through the cinders to the end of the horse line where a cowboy just finished tying a horse, ready to offer apologies.

This is Shorty, says the cowboy before I can speak, tossing a saddle onto the back of a large, sturdy bay gelding. I assume hes speaking of the horse and am glad of the introduction as, even with an asphalt stare, Shorty looks more welcoming than the cowboy, whose calloused hands are tacking the horse up at a payday pace. Im struck by his hat, the only uniform element among the waiting crew: faded black, creased by sweat and rain. We might both be in our mid-thirties, but its difficult to tell: miles wear harder than years. Were both tall, with long legs that seem to fit better in a saddle than anywhere else, but where he is trail-worn lean, I am decidedly curvy, even under all my layers: long-sleeve T-shirt, fleece, vest. He wears only snap-front, long-sleeve cotton, its plaid irregular from the stains of work. Now, he wraps a hand through Shortys tail, pulling for reasons I cant fathom, reminding me of my own long, brown ponytail fed through the back of my ball cap. The cowboys hair is cut short, in hard and harsh angles around his red ears and neckthe only sign that he might be feeling the cold.