The Box-R ranch was absolutely gorgeous. Way up, high in the mountains close to California, this ranch appears. A long gravel driveway. Dry grassland. Coniferous trees everywhere. Deer. At the end of the long gravel road we pull up to an open meadow. A pasture dotted with cows, horses, and donkeys stretches in front of us. To our left is a white two story house set behind a large droopy tree. The owner's house. Our cabin is further up the gravel road,
to the right of the pasture.
We settle in and the family adventure truly begins. A huge chunk of my mom's side of the family is here and I could tell it was going to be interesting. As it turns out, we all got along a lot better than Hollywood movies had led me to believe. True there were some moments. My grandmother exclaiming, "the precipice! I'll never be able to leave this place!" Our car had to climb about 4,000 feet to reach this ranch, and the climb was anything but subtle. More often than not, one side of the car would be flanked by nothing at all. No guardrail, no trees. Just a steep nearly vertical drop to the ground below. Almost the entire way up my grandmother kept saying, 'the precipice!' so much that that word became the unofficial joke of the entire trip.
But besides some snippy moments, my family is surprisingly well mannered. And it was truly great to spend time with them, my relatives whom I rarely see. We are always branching off, doing different things, so that at some point I worry a branch might snap and I'll never connect with them again. It made me think of how many branches we have that have already disappeared and I'll never get to meet. You could walk right past some distant second cousin and never know it. Isn't that strange?
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