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A Voice, not an Echo


As a child, I was often deployed to spend my summers on ranches near Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Before you say, "Oh wow! That place is beautiful!", which by the way it is, understand that this was very much a working vacation. 

I love my family. I loved my time on the ranches. I was outside. I was free. I learned by doing. I was tutored by experts who cared deeply about me and about the work. The ranch and the animals treated everyone equally. There was diversity of experience and life. We were all included in the tasks.

My grandpa's sister, Eula, kept sheep. Lots of them. This day was my day to help, while the others cut, raked, and bailed hay.

One day while we were riding around in the flat bed Chevy, checking irrigation and fence, as we headed back to the pens, she was telling me about how she knew each of her sheep by their voice. I was inwardly incredulous, as they all sounded alike, echoing one another with their baa-ing.

As we wound our way up the dirt road towards the pens, windows down, Aunt Eula stopped mid-sentence and shooshing me as she pressed the accelerator. Braking hard before the gate to the pen, opening her door and simultaneously pinning the truck in park, she lept over the split rails and waded into the 30 or so sheep.

Cocking her ear side to side as she went, she abruptly bent and came up with a ewe, calling to me to come and help her. I timidly opened the door, made my way over, climbed the fence and walked to her. The ewe, she explained, was struggling to birth her lamb, and she needed calming. Aunt Eula asked me to stroke her face and talk to her while she assisted the birthing. 

Mouth agape, I watched, listened and spoke softly to the ewe. After a few tense minutes, Eula's forearm emerged, fist wrapped around a leg, and a lamb joined us, barely alive. My red-haired Aunt began blowing in the nostrils of the lamb, and clearing mucous from it's mouth. 

Eventually, the lamb took its first breath, and the momma ewe joined her newborn in the shade of an overhang near the pen.

Legs dangling on the flat bed as she wiped her arms with a greasy rag from behind the seat, Eula squinted off into the sun and shook her head. "That was a close one.", she shared. I stared at her, and finally mustered, "How could you tell?"

"Everyone has a voice, Jarret.", she said. "Some of us echo what we hear around us. Some of us are courageous enough to use our voice for good. All of my sheep, I know their voices. They are good."

Use your voice. Even if you stand alone. Don't be an echo.


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