Ranch living is responsible for the opportunity to experience and embrace the fugitive status of life. 

 

As a child, I saw birth of lambs, calves, chicks and a myriad of other animals step onto the earth that we all share for a tiny amount of time. And of course death is a common experience when in proximity with so many living beings. 

 

I find it so interesting that in our society we have so little contact with death that most children have never seen the bones of the dead other than a rib or a drumstick that they have just consumed- hardly any part of that experience seems to relate to the animal that that bone's origin might be imagined. However on some of the nature walks that I lead, we find the bleached bones of deer or horses or other animals. People  are astounded and hold them reverently, wondering..... Ah, yes we will all share the same end.