When my childhood friend, Nealy, got married, her older sister Erin gave the best speech– almost perfectly summarizing the experience of growing-up in the Santa Cruz mountains. It talked about her parents raising tough mountain women that knew how to stack wood, dig ditches, and weather the inevitable disasters brought-on my Mother Nature.
A couple of years ago, I had to rush home at lunchtime to dig out our culvert in the rain. There were people in my office who didn’t understand the word “culvert.” They were like, “You what? What’re you saying?” Which was a true blind spot because I’ve basically known the word culvert since I learned to talk. It was very early days that I needed to distinguish between our neighbors the Culvers, and my dad digging mud and leaves out of culverts.
Beyond culverts and disaster-preparedness, mountain kids are trained to wave at every person they drive past on the road. Accurate identification of poison oak versus berries. And how to handle that one day, inevitably, when your dogs will murder someone else’s chickens. This is mountain living.
And that day came, for Piper and Lightning, back in March. Like a good bird dog, Piper retrieved the dead chicken and brought it right to me. And then they couldn’t stay home. The blood lust was just too exciting.
And the tears of the Sweet Valley High twins next door were just too much. Piper and Lightning had to go live at the club. No. The “Club” is not a new euphemism for the farm. The Club is the hunting club at Hastings Island where dog-less hunters can rent a trained bird dog for the day. And bird dogs can live their true authentic lives. Reports via the Granddad Network are that Lightning’s loving it and Piper has rebounded from puppy parole and proven she can in fact perform when it comes to pheasants. Probably.
To soothe the loss, James brought home three baby chicks the Thursday before Easter. Because what we needed from our failure of pet ownership was more pets. It turns out, we’re chicken people. And they were adorable. Like little bite-sized doggie doughnut holes.
We became the proud parents of Mohawk, Pipsqueak, and Quicksilver… or Silver for short. My proposed Dixie Chick names never stood a chance.