They say you can't go home again, but today, home is coming to me in the form of a hazy orange sky.  The news report say that the Ashby Fire slowed it's "forward progress" but for those of us who grew just a stones throw from there "stopped" is a relative term.  In the Sandhills, the wind is the only boss, and right now, it's carrying the smell of burnning cedar and dry prarie grass-the smell of my childhood being rewritten in ash.

    

        Its hard to explain to people who didn't grow up here.  They see "grass" We see "veins" of the hills.  When that grass burns down to the sand, the hills start to move.  They call it "blowouts."   I call it losing the ground you stand on.  

 

        When the news gets too loud- when the reports of 35,000 displaced cattle and miles of melted fence wire start to feel like "sludge" in my brain- I go back to the place we've talked about before.  I go the Gram's house. I close my eyes and I'm back in that kitchen.  Outside her window the hills are green and the wind is just a whisper, not a threat.  Gram taught me a safe place isn't made of wood and nails- it's made of the quiet strength you keep inside when the word outside is on fire.

 

        Being "Sovereign" doesn't mean being alone.  It means being the one who stands up when others are falling.  If you have a few dollars that you can spare, please consider sending them where they can actually do some good:

 

nebraskacattlemen.org/disaster-relief-fund 

 

100% goes to the ranchers who lost their summer grazing and their fences

 

The hills are black today, but the roots go deep.  We've survived the Sandhills before, and witha little bit of Gram's grit, we'll do it again.