Somewhere between boots and saddles, briefcases and taxis…

Why (oh why) me?

Sitting in the kitchen at Jess’s family ranch after this year’s branding (his hundredth or so, my first), I marveled at how Jess must feel going back and forth like this – one day in the city talking as his job and the next day here physically working as his job. It seemed to me that he could be good at one or the other, that he could only love one or the other. So I asked him. Essentially he said he needed both. Essentially he said one cannot exist without the other. Essentially he said that what I see outside the windows (wide open space, a couple of working horses, the calves they had just branded) and that what I felt inside the house (camaraderie between family and friends, the ability to laugh over the day’s minor mishaps, pure physical exhaustion from hard work)—that it could all be in danger without someone pounding the streets in DC talking about it, without someone voicing the concerns and needs of all families and small businesses in rural America.

The fact that the “someone pounding the streets” happens to be him still baffles him, I think.

And the fact that I am driven to help and support him still baffles me. After all, what do I know about it? I live in DC and grew up in a subdivision in the suburbs in the South. The first time I rode a horse, it threw me; it took me 17 years to try again. The sum total of my experience in Jess’s “other world” is that my grandfather farmed in northern Indiana, which to me meant only that he woke up very early in the mornings and he had a farmer’s tan. Once my grandmother sent me a picture of cows in a field with “these are the cows we will slaughter this year” inscribed on the back. That’s it.

Now I connect to rural America through Jess, in simple ways like carefully reading his ramblings and the news he finds relevant, like adding and subtracting commas, and like studying the Farm Bill, carbon offsets, foot and mouth disease and more. Now, I look forward to helping Jess share his adventures and maybe I can even help convince other unlikely people like myself to advocate for rural America. But enough about me, let’s go find Jess…

Tags: Stacia Couch, Welcome