Borderlines: Sketches from the Empty Quarter

Longron. O’day.

2024. What an eminently forgettable ride.

Another year has come and now is nearly gone, I am older, but little (if any) wiser, so once again I have chosen to recycle the last few years’ Christmas missive. Creativity is lagging behind ambition, but the message remains the same.

Earlier that morning I finally got another snowbound semi-truck out of the Arctic landscape of what once had been a promising milo field, limped it over to the rutted track that now passed for a county road and paused to consider my remaining options. Maybe the other loads would float downstream on their own when the drifts melted? Or perhaps they’d simply sink out of sight and save me the trouble of breaking more tow chains?

History, if we allow it to reside within us, keeps alive the people and places that brought us life and made us what we are. 78 years ago in 1944, my father, CW Harkness, took leave of his wife and children, sold his business, paid off his debts, volunteered for the Marines and went to war.

Not.

Stewards of the land often cast long shadows, sometimes reaching centuries beyond their own lives.

A lonely spot in a lonesome landscape.

In his later days, my Father built this fence around his small meadow, a final strategic move in the annual battle to discourage stray cattle from sharing his retirement retreat.

Kiowa County, Colorado, far out on the eastern margins of the high plains, has been my home for most of my life. A life that is now beyond the end of its seventh decade.

I didn’t wake up this morning knowing this was National Ag Day.

It’s been a long time coming. Almost fifty-two years since I picked up the reins from my Dad.

Out here in the empty quarter it’s a long way to a filling station, so we buy most of our diesel fuel in bulk.

There’s terrifying and then there’s Terrified.

It’s cold outside today. And I have a cold.

I was tired.