Away and back..

Monday morning I took off fro Wyoming. A friend who had passed away some time back, his wife and in-laws were erecting a ,monument on the home ranch for him and all friends and relatives were invited to it as a celebration of his life. Rough rugged country, just off the Powder river on Bitter creek…beautiful country, great ranch folks and a wonderful experience…

I think this is a wonderful way to remember someone… there is an etched plaque attached in front with his picture and some words of his on it…

a friend of Scottish descents, as was Rods, sent a message he wanted added in some way, so we used small letters and hammered them into a light piece of brass and attached it…. it was in Scottish with the translation, : I will place a rock on your cairn to help keep your memory fresh” as best i can recall…. seems in days of old when the Scots went off to battle, each would place a stone on a cairn and those who survived, when they returned, removed their stone… a monument to remember…

They scattered ashes around and on the monument.. he had his mother and father in law their, of course his widow and children and grandchildren..

Rod was a bit of a tease and trickster, much as the old Indian s claim thew coyote is….I had decided to take a real cool old horned cow skull I have been saving for a special occasion… when I went to pick it up, I was going to sniff it to see if there was any bad smell on it… As I put my nose close a whole herd of wasps boiled out and attacked me….I went to sputtering and falling back, dropping thew skull and knocking off my hat and glasses… I got about 4 stings, none real bad, but painful…so I decided to got get a different skull… when i went to pick it up I was very careful to inspect for wasps, but there were none and i couldn’t really sell any bad smell, maybe a bit of old cow horn smell, but any cowboy wouldn’t mind that….as i walked to the vehicle with it i noticed brown liquid coming out of one horn where rain water had seeped in.. I placed it in two garbage bags and decided there still was too much chance f a bad smell to haul it in Cindy’s car, so instead went and found a nice piece of petrified wood…yup, Rod was just jacking with me… and I am sure laffing his butt off! He did something similar to an old friend when they erected one of these on his families ranch in Nevada, last winter…we all laffed hard at the little pranks Rod was pulling on people, even tho’ we could not see him, but his presence was felt…

Rest in Peace Rod…a warrior is at rest now…