Deep Creek Finding Hope in the High Country By, Pam Houston

I didn't want this book to end! I wanted to keep following Pam, her Irish Wolfhounds and farm animals on all of their adventures. In 1993, after the success of her first book, "Cowboys are my Weakness" Ms Houston receives an advance of $21k which she uses as a 5% advance on a $400,000, 120 acre ranch in the Colorado Rockies. She then states, "I had no job, no place to live except my tent, nine tenths of a PHD, and all I knew about ownership was it was good if all your belongings fit into the back of your vehicle, which in my case they did."

Its a memoir of her struggles and dedication to maintain a lifestyle she cherishes, when the odds, and the unpredictable environment (fires, floods, drought) challenge her. She begins to see the benefits of nature as a means of nurturing and  healing old wounds. She describes, her desire "to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief...to love the damaged world and do what I can to help it thrive."

"How do we become who we are in the world? We ask the world to teach us."

Ms Houston writes eloquently about the beauty she finds looking out "her kitchen window" the bluebirds, elks, horses, rams, chickens and snow covered peaks of the Colorado mountains that surround her. She details her "Farm Almanac" and  learns 'ranching' from the locals who take her under their wing, and offer physical and emotional support, so she can survive as a novice caretaker of an aging homestead.

Her depictions of farming are hilarious and heartbreaking at times. "In the winter of 2011, I had only two chickens-Cheryl Crow, who thought she was a rooster and Martina. Two is not enough chickens-everybody knows that-but that is how many I was left with after the summer of ranch fatalities."

Ms Houston survives and thrives, and notes her dedication to the homestead, "But right from the beginning I've felt responsible to these 120 acres, and for years I've painted myself both savior and protector of this tiny parcel of the American west."

This book was an education on the trials of tribulations of living in the west, taking care of a ranch, "when to turn the outside spigots off, to have four cords of wood on the porch and two hundred bales of hay in the barn, no later than October 1st and the birth of lambs which are born "like clockwork on the 25th of March every year."

Books by Pam Houston:
Cowboys are My Weakness (Short Stories) (1992)
Women on Hunting (1996)
Waltzing the Cat (1998)
A Little More About Me (1999)
A Rough Ride to the Heart (2000)
Sight Hound (2005)
Contents May have Shifted (2012)