Back in Bird's Eye

Meet Uncle Jim.

Uncle Jim is one of my favorite relatives. He's one of those hard-working types that gets up at 5am to bail hay.  There's something wonderfully soothing about him. 

He isn’t big city paced, businessmen trying to make a sale, talking so much and saying too little. He pauses before speaking; sculpting the sentences until deemed fit to gently set into the air.  

To me, he's a representative of an earlier era-- a slower time, when people sat on their porches to listen to the crickets chirp.  That’s not to say he isn’t brilliant – he’s a learned professional, owner of his own pharmacy, a well of knowledge on everything from cows to the cosmos.  

I spent Sunday at one of my favorite places-- the ranch, 60 acres tucked away in the mountains of Bird's Eye. [Even those of you familiar with Utah may be wondering, "Where is that?"  Exactly.]

It's a place with hills of rolling lavender

and mint growing by the stream

           

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;	5
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

Gerard Manley Hopkins