Tagine

We received sad news this morning. Our friend Gary passed away last night in Butte, Montana.

The last time we saw Gary was when he visited us here in Santa Rosa in 2013. He was due to visit again this year, but he never came. We found out why in August when his brother phoned to tell us that he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm, while he was out on his motorbike moving irrigation pipes.

Although he worked with OilMan in the 70's, and as a teacher in San Francisco, his heart was in the Jefferson River valley where he grew up. When his father could no longer run the family cattle ranch, Gary elected to leave the city life behind and return to his roots. He built a house on a hill with a panoramic view of the Bitterroot Range. We visited him there often and although I gave him a lot of grief for his bachelor cowboy ways, it really was a spectacularly beautiful place.

It must have been a difficult choice. Although he was never at a loss for women friends, most of them were not particularly interested in living the life of a cowboy's wife in Silver Star, Montana, an hour's drive from any city. It was hard work, too, but it suited him. The longer he was there, the more taciturn, lanky, and marked by his summers outside growing alfalfa, and winters out in the same fields feeding the alfalfa to his cows and delivering calves in the snow.

On one of our early visits to Montana, the log cabin his father built as a young immigrant from Norway was still standing. It was the house Gary grew up in, and although it was eventually taken down, each piece was numbered and stacked behind Gary's house next to the vegetable garden..

We had a lot of good times with Gary…hiking, backpacking and visiting. It was difficult and painful to imagine him struggling to move, speak and breathe. I hope he is in a better place now. We will miss him.

OilMan is making a lamb tagine in our beautiful Egyptian cooking vessel. Gary would have loved it.