Vagabonds

When Kris was young she told her family she was going to live on an island someday. Her father scoffed at her, spitting out, “No you’re not! You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I’ve known her long enough now to realize that she dreams about how to make more of her life, but she also activates those dreams.

She’s not a fly-by-night, run-off-on-a-whim sort; she will focus herself on a goal and keep moving toward it. I love that about her. I think it takes a lot of faith and optimism to follow a long path to a worthy goal. I very much appreciate orbiting Kris’s bright star; the faith I’ve struggled to maintain in my life is stoked by her steady, soft, determined drive.

Kris and I always talked about what we should do, where we should go, how we wanted to live. We kicked around ideas about next week, next month, next year, and our golden years. We worked out a long-term plan to sail around the world; spending an entire Saturday in an office with a whiteboard and sticky notes, planning our future and putting it all into a spreadsheet.

Over the past seven years, we have traveled a couple of times a year over to Wyoming to spend time with Kris’s aunt, uncle, and cousins on their ranch near Centennial. We rode Harleys over there a few times, traveling two-lane back roads through beautiful Western vistas. On one trip we even took a look at Centennial’s historic hotel, with an eye toward buying it; trying to imagine if living and working there was a thing that we could do. We finally decided to rent out our house and move out to the country and look for a home that we could rent or buy that would allow us to increase our animal herd.

At New Year’s Eve on the ranch in Wyoming, Kris’s cousin had offered to send that new little filly over to Oregon for Kris and the girls to raise. That seemed to be the activator for us and we made the move out to the country six months later. We upgraded our RV and pickup to allow us to live comfortably with the girls having their own beds and room. And we relocated to the farm where Juno was being boarded.

The first day as vagabonds was a bit of a stress. With Kris having absconded to Eugene to work the Olympic Track and Field Trials for Nike, I was left alone to load up the rig and drive out to the horse farm and plug in. After getting setup and plugged in, I was able to sit back and relax for a moment and realize that everything was going to be okay. It was the longest day of the year and the weather was perfect. The girls stayed outside until nearly 10 pm, playing with the other kids at the farm and riding horses in the outdoor arena. It was a well-needed idyllic counterpoint to a very stressful week.