Oct. 12, 1986
Dear Judy, The name Turkey Track Ranch probably doesn't mean anything to you. I had the urge today to tell you about it. I do not know if it exists any more but in the nineteen thirties it was a working ranch complete with cowboys, cake wagon and horses. I do not know the acreage but at one time it was stocked with 900 mother cows. The location was twenty miles due east of Fountain, Colorado or thirty five miles south east of Colo. Springs. On a clear day - and I don't recall one that wasn't - it seemed as if one could reach out and touch the foothills of the Rockie Mountains just west of Fountain. A little to the right, toward the Springs (Colo. Springs) were the peaks and one was or should I say is Pikes Peak. Again I must say that it seemed like one had only to reach out and touch it. The view was beautiful beyond description. I wonder and even yearn a bit at times to look again and see if it would touch me like it did fifty years ago. The air was so clear that a road intersection which was a mile from the house appeared much closer. A dry creek ran through the place. It was named Squirrel Creek. It looked more like a broad gully with a sand bottom. In this country we would have called it a sand draw. Knowing that at one time this dry watercourse known as the South Solomon, was once a flowing stream; I have no trouble believing that at some time in the past it could have been a creek. Your Uncle Wallace spent several years on that ranch and so did Rosa. I was there some at different times. The land was full of sand, sagebrush and rattlesnakes. I never tired of riding that ranch. A good horse, a blue sky and the wind in the face, what more could a young man want. It was a place where the antelope still played; and a generation before me the buffalo roamed that vast land. I don't know why but it was a part of what the Indians called the Staked Plains. We can never go back and perhaps it is best. There are times when we wish that time would stand still, but it is not to be. Maybe as we grow old the past beckons to us and we long for, we know not what. Perhaps the poet said it best when he wrote these lines; Within her heart was a vague unrest and a nameless longing filled her breast.
Dad