I spent opening weekend elk hunting in the Missouri
Breaks and the mid-October downpours had rendered
the boggy coulees and canyons impassible to horses.
Tracks along
the high ridges suggested many elk had moved to the
safety of the dense willows surrounding the river
several days prior to our arrival.
While probing the Missouri river bottoms for
a straggling elk, I came across an abandoned log
house with six, log outbuildings.
The action was slow, so my hunting buddy,
Mark, and I explored these log ruins.
As we both have built blisters with a draw
knife and ax, we admired the log joinery indicating
the sweat equity someone invested in this little
homestead.
The largest structure contained three rooms,
obviously constructed as three separate projects and
I surmised this rancher was simultaneously building
his herd, his house and his family.
Could they talk, the rotting log walls likely
held stories revealing the good and bad days of
ranching on the greasewood flats of the Missouri.
Those folks are long gone, so I can only
speculate how this family story ended.
Whether polio, or influenza took them in the
early 1900s, or bankruptcy hamstrung them during the
depression matters not.
Sadly, the day came when someone decided to
walk away and abandon their family dreams.
Here is why this is timely.
We are one week from the most pivotal election in
American history and sadly, a victory by the Clinton
machine destroys America.
Should the Donald come out on top, our
republic might survive because a more circuitous
route to America’s collapse gives us patriots more
time to alter our nation’s course.
However, because progressivism has saturated
America, John Q. Public has become obsessed with
freebies while remaining clueless about freedom and
what it takes to run a constitutional republic
founded on limited government.
Much must change, and this brings me to my
point.
Regardless the election results and unlike the
homesteaders who abandoned their dreams on the
greasewood flats of the Missouri, I refuse to just
walk away and let all I have worked for be scavenged
by wolves, weather and progressive politicians.
I will continue doing everything in my power
to drive this nation back to the liberty principles
upon which she was founded and I trust you will do
the same.
The dream called America only dies if we give up.
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