Book Review/Accidental Cowgirl
Accidental Cowgirl
Six cows, no horse and no clue
A Memoir
By Mary Lynn Archibald
Cloud Lake Publishing
Paperback $19.95
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
Everyone has a story to tell just from living. But the key is in the storytelling.
By that paradigm, Mary Lynn Archibald is one great storyteller and her memoir is at the same time sad and funny, but it is a story worth reading. It is the story of a couple of crazy urbanites who dream of escaping the dreary existence of the rat race and become country squires on a 120 acres of lush rural beauty called Twin Creeks Ranch. Nightmares occur in the dream and as Archibald writes, “when my husband, Carl, signed the papers he discovered we had inherited six cows, two cats, a flock of wild turkeys and a working cattle ranch. With one stroke of the pen, our relaxation had gone out the window. It was crazy.”
But she admits: “It was one of the most uplifting experiences of our lives,” but warns if you’re over 50, or in a job rut, or looking for adventure, or yearn for a “relaxing retreat,” you should read this book first. “They say love is blind and if you’ve ever fallen in love with a place, warts and all, you know it’s true. God help us, we fell in love.”
Archibald is now in her 70s and says if she were 30 years younger, she’d do it again.
She begins the book explaining that she and her husband were in the midst of an overburdened, overscheduled, list-making life when they decide to seek the idyllic life of ranching. “If this is your desire,” she writes, “you are not alone,” but advises “before you sink your savings into that country squire lifestyle and all that goes with it, perhaps you should take a cold shower and read this book.”
She said the couple lived that life for 12 years and discovered the simple life isn’t really that simple and “despite my persistent romantic fantasies, I rarely managed to look like I’d just emerged from the pages of an L.L. Bean catalog. Those people never get muddy and they wear bras in town.”
She and her husband got the call to their wilderness in 1990. But they discovered the six cows expanded into 26 and it was quickly understood 120 acres wasn’t a big enough space for that many cows. As is common among novice ranchers they became attached to their animals and “the sweet things became very hard for us to part with and we kept them longer than we should have before they were sold.” That meant the added expense for supplemental feed. They also discovered that cows were in the habit of “coming into estrus all at the same time.”
Archibald said she tried farming the land and quickly discovered the difference between farming and ranching required time. “After repairing the barns every spring, bucking hay into them, cutting and splitting four cords of wood for the winter, planting thousands of seeds and erecting nearly two acres of deer fencing, we finally excepted we only had enough energy to take care of the cattle, find and fix the leaks in both the house roof and the water lines and grow just enough vegetables to keep our chest freezer well-stocked year around.”
If after reading her introductory paragraphs, you still harbor that romantic image of a bucolic life style, Archibald suggest you to ask yourself:
• Are you fit? You won’t need your exercise machines where you are going.
• How straight can you shoot a gun? Forget urban gangs, you have to defend your turf against dogs, mountain lions, coyotes and marijuana growers.
• Are you adaptable? You schedule will change from 9 to 5 to dawn to dusk and until you decide to forgo that hot bath and fall into bed.
• Can you live without TV, movies and only Country-Western radio music?
• Can you survive without a supermarket? The general store several miles away will only have a wilted head of iceberg lettuce, yellow onions and cold-storage apples.
• Can you can? You better learn how because that’s what you do to preserve the orchard’s and vegetable garden’s bounty.
And finally, she advises don’t forget the sunscreen, mosquito repellent, snake bite kit, poison oak remedies, bee sting injection kit, flea and tick repellent. “If you break a leg while out of earshot of the house, your spouse won’t miss you until you fail to show up for supper.”
Archibald’s idyllic rural life in Zenia, Calif. has ended in favor of town life in Healdsburg, Calif., but not the memories of “early evenings talking by the fire, the hot tea brewing on the Franklin woodstove, the glass of wine reflecting the candles…and watching the sunset over the King Range, craning our necks skyward to marvel at the stars and the enveloping peace of the place.”
(Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com or by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)