Rangermom

      Grandpa has talked about his wife, Grandma, (who is, of course, my grandmother,) so I suppose it would be fitting for me to talk about one of the remarkable women in my life; my mom. She’s like the rest of us. She fishes. She picks grouseberries in abundance up at the cabin, she lays in the hammock in the warm sun of a summer Wind River afternoon. But unlike the rest of us, she gets up  at some unearthly hour every morning to go run. That’s her little Rangermom-time. It brings her closer to herself and the outdoors by going out under the stars to solve life problems.

          Lauren Fleshman said: “Running is not who I am, it’s something I do, something I love.” I think the same can be applied to the outdoors. We live and breathe the sharp, fresh smell of sagebrush after a Wyoming monsoon in July, the triumph after a successful antelope hunt, the cool breeze of an September day in the mountains, the crackling of a campfire a million miles from nowhere under trillions of stars. It’s just what we do in our family.

Another quote, by Jenny Hadfield, states, “Life can pull you down, but running always lifts you up.” Again, this can be tied into the outdoors. I mean, is going fishing in the lazy Big Sandy river some nice warm summer’s evening really all that stress-inducing? The outdoors, no matter what life circumstances we face, always helps one unwind and think of things in perspective. It brings us closer to ourselves and God.

 Back to Rangermom. Whether it be nagging me to get packing for a campout, or the delight at fresh game meat to use for dinner for the next six months, she’s always there for me, helping me to experience the same outdoors that her parents lived in, breathed in. That their parents lived in, breathed in. And ya know, that ain’t such a bad thing.

-The Ranger

Here are a couple other great running quotes: