The Gruver Ranch

The winding highway, heading west, seemingly leading to nowhere, passes nothing that can be considered ‘civilization’ other than a small convenience store with no cars parked in front of it: the official last stop for food.  Along this highway there are two mailboxes next to each other at the beginning (or end) of a dirt road – a dirt road leading to the ranch and laying emphasis on the lack of ‘civilization’ out here beyond Coalinga, California.  Along this road, there is a gate.  This gate is the precipice of the current reality – once you pass through it, you are in another realm completely different from what you know.

Gruver Road crawls through trees and dances alongside a creek, eventually crossing it.  It rises above the hills at its sides, meeting the level of the large fields and opening the view to the over-watching mountains.  Passing a white house with an ornament-filled yard on the left, a line of trees and the creek act as a natural fence-line as you enter Gruver Ranch.  On the property there is a field surrounded by a trail and filled with hundreds of squirrels and birds that insist on making their presence known by passing in front of you, usually going to or coming from a rundown shed that hasn’t been worked in or on for decades (emphasizing the age of the ranch), as you make your way down the driveway. 

The front of the house bears a yard with infant grass and a large tree that has a rope hanging from it - leaving proof of a swing from the past.  A porch, encompassing the house’s northwest corner and sides, that is in forever shade due to the overhanging roof and protective tree-line to the west, provides a couple of beds suited only for the courageous: during the day the calming environment along with the comfortable beds allow for perfect introspection and philosophizing conditions, where the foundations of your existence, beliefs, and purpose are melted and reformed easier than warm butter (which is aided by a leisurely read of Immanuel Kant’s answer to the question, “What is enlightenment?”); at night the wild pigs and elk like to roam closely to the house at night, creating a large ruckus, and putting a fright into anyone - making it nearly impossible to sleep.

The south side of the house has its own porch, but meant for a different type of relaxation – the relaxation produced by the realization of our communion with living life of all kinds.  The long table on this porch urges conversation with family members, while the surrounding bushes and the path from it – surrounded by a garden – nearly produce an over-stimulation of nature with all the animal life moving about and plant life flourishing (nowhere else in the world makes me want to talk to birds more).
            Inside, the living room – susceptible to family gatherings for classic movies – is filled with older couches and chairs and a television in its corner surrounded by a VHS collection that probably predates the couches.  Throughout the house there are pictures of relatives, both living and not, that remind me of where I came from and the importance of those that came before me (nowhere else in the world makes me more willing to be the greatest father ever).   The best picture of all – containing the faces of four generations – is located in the reading room on the wall above a very old pump-pedal organ - with now only one working pedal - that my aunt used to practice on and dream of being a great musician, a dream that lives within my brother and I as we too play and practice on that organ.

Besides the washing machine that has to be filled with buckets of water in order to do laundry in a decent amount of time because it takes hours for it to fill up on its own, and the plethora of guns in the entry room used for killing rattlesnakes and the occasional hunting season, the rest of the house is like any other, articulating the point that where you eat, bathe, and sleep has nothing to do with the importance of a house – it’s how you how you do those things that makes it important.  And this is something that the Gruver Ranch exemplifies by its pure simplicity.  Interestingly enough, it’s the simple things in life that are the most compelling and effective, and that is no better represented than when the smell of clear air, the view of the openness, and all experiences and interaction on the ranch are in the past yet their impressions are forever within you afterward.

 The closing of the gate and reemergence into the ‘real’ world is intense.  You realize that this realm is not what it used to be as soon as you reach the paved highway and a vehicle speeds dangerously past you – it’s wretched and repulsive.  However, regardless of how the world is around you, it’s how you live in it that really matters.

[This is a descriptive essay that I wrote for English class.  It was kind of difficult not to do any 'pointing' at stuff.]