Accidental Cowgirl: Six Cows, No Horse and No Clue
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Synopsis:
With One Stroke of the Pen, Their Dream of a Peaceful Rural Escape Evaporated. Before They Knew What Happened, They Were Ranchers.
“We’d planned to relax on 120 acres of lush beauty, but instead found we had inherited six cows, two cats, a flock of wild turkeys, and a working cattle ranch,” says Mary Lynn Archibald, author of Accidental Cowgirl: Six Cows, No Horse and No Clue, a delightful memoir of 12 years on a Trinity County, CA cattle ranch, dealing with deer hunters, poachers, marijuana growers, critters, temperamental rural water systems and wandering cows."
This book is a lighthearted look at the world of cattle ranching through the eyes of two rank greenhorns who would make the men of City Slickers look like experts. Statistics show many people today yearn to do likewise. But should they? Ah, that is the question this memoir poses in an entertaining way.
Says Ray Raphael, author of An Everyday History of Somewhere and a dozen other books, “So you want to move to the country? Before closing escrow or mounting your horse, try galloping through the pages of Accidental Cowgirl. You might die laughing, but if you survive with your dreams still intact, at least you will have been warned.”
Book Excerpt:
Chapter 1 LAND
”Life is a sum of all your choices.”
—Albert Camus, 1957
“You can’t always get what you want.” —Mick Jagger
Mick was right about one thing. But, as we discovered by doing way too many things the hard way, you can get what you need. Eventually.
What we needed, Carl and I, were like so many other things in our relationship: two vastly different things; yet our 12-year experiment in country living brought us closer in unexpected, almost magical ways that we were only able to appreciate long after our rural adventure had ended.
It had started, of course, as a dream. Carl’s dream, not mine.
Sure, at 55 Carl was already contemplating retirement from his landlord business, but meanwhile he was looking for a place to hide.
A native of New York City, Carl came to California in search of space. Land. “I am a peasant at heart,” he declared. “I need to find a quiet, rustic retreat where I can relax, contemplate nature and ponder life’s big questions.” Big deal, I thought. I’d grown up on an apple and chicken ranch in the tiny town of Soquel, California, where my dad was assistant postmaster and we knew everybody in town—a circumstance I did not consider desirable.
Nevertheless, Twin Creeks Ranch was, at least in concept, just the place Carl’s mind had conjured. But it soon became much more. Way too much more.
“I need some sort of big spread, said he. “Acreage. And water. Preferably in motion. And rocks. Big rocks. Lotsa big rocks.”
My own list (at 54) was more modest: Armfuls of wildflowers in the spring, room to grow a few vegetables, and a small but elegant country house I could redecorate with antiques and drape with riotous chintz.
My nearly 15 years as an interior designer had given me very big ideas.
Also, I must confess here that early access to too many issues of Town and Country magazine had led me to picture myself as one of those anorexic, Patrician women they feature posed feeding her thoroughbred horses in front of the country estate, which would be elegant but barely visible in the vast, green distance.
She is beautifully but practically coiffed and wearing the latest Ralph Lauren barn jacket over custom-made designer jeans; her English rubber boots unsullied by mud or manure; extending to her horse a red apple that perfectly matches her carefully manicured, unchipped nails.
My God, I thought. I could be that woman!
It was for this I had made the laborious climb (chipping my own nails in the process), from country to suburbs to city, acquiring an admittedly thin shell of sophistication along the way.
No matter. I had done a little acting in my youth. (I wouldn’t mention my chorus girl days, of course.) I was made for this role.
Topics/Categories:
Animals/Life Experience, Country Living, herbs, Nature, ranching, Women
Type of Work:
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Purchase From:
Atlas Books
Amazon.com
Barnes and Noble.com
Original Publish Date:
October 15, 2007
Formats and associated ISBNs:
978-0-9787054-0-4
Formats:
Paperback
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