June 2015

As western ranches go, it wasn’t grand or impressive, but the location was good. Eight and a half acres carved out of the 52-acre Four Pines Ranch, right on Nettle Creek where it joined the icy blue Crystal River.
Mary thought it would do just fine. “It had an apple orchard and two little guest houses, an old house that had been fixed up, and a beautiful old stable,” she remembers. And there was a bonus: “Free water, coming out of the creek through a wooden pipe held together by wire, running right through the property. Well, you know, in the west free water is invaluable!”

POKHARA Nepal — It made me feel like a good consumer spending a lot of money on relief supplies, more than $1,000 (U.S.) on tarps alone. One ton of rice plus 330 pounds of potatoes cost $470! Seventy mattresses and 35 yards of foam matting cost $600.
We collaborated with a new group, got everything ready to go and booked a truck for 8 a.m. the next morning. By 10:30 a.m. it still hadn’t arrived; then we remembered it was Saturday. The driver told us he would be there, and then he must have remembered he doesn’t work on Saturday but failed to inform us. We took the extra day to do more purchasing, arrange another truck and Jeep, and go to bed early. The truck showed up on time a day late. It took three hours to collect all our supplies from around Pokhara, but once we were on the road, all the usual apprehension burnt off under the scorching sun, a cool 105 degrees.