Promises, Promises, Promises!
Home and decompressing from the Gathering in Elko, we have been waiting for a promised inch of rain for the past three days with less than a few hundredths to show as the series of storms in the Pacific begin to come onshore. So positive seemed weathermen that the branding scheduled for today was canceled two days ago at the Ainley Ranch in Elderwood – at daylight, though, it’s plenty dry enough to brand calves. More importantly, the third to a half-inch received the day we left for Nevada had returned our short gray slopes to green by the time we got home. With less than five inches for the season and about 25% of normal snowfall in the Sierras, everyone in Central California needs the rain whether they know it or not. And judging by what we saw driving through, whatever spills into the Great Basin won’t go to waste!
I continue to marvel at the friendships developed over the years (19) at Elko and that so many of these relationships center on poetry and music (of all things). Incongruous as it may seem for the generic image of ranch people, Elko has become the hub for creative expression for land-based people of the West, which with current technological advances, has effectively expanded to some very artful video presentations. When one considers that we treated the magic anomaly of the Gathering like a fragile artifact in the early years, it is apparent now that it has a vibrant life of its own. Credit is due the WFC directors and staff for their vision and implementation, to the artists for fresh expression and to the audiences traveling substantial distances to be an integral part of it.
But you can’t see it all. At the top of my list for what I missed was Andy Wilkinson’s “A Way in the West: Women on the American Frontier” performed by Trudy Fair at the Great Basin College. As we circumnavigated the back streets of Elko with Earl at the wheel of the shuttle, the twenty-minute, extemporaneous review of the play from a middle-aged female left me longing for a ticket. Congratulations, Andy – I just barely shook your hand.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, work waits as real life settles-in with the gray clouds in this canyon as it tries to rain.