Bonner's Ferry, Idaho

This is borrowed from my Thought For The Day series that I sent out this summer from the road trip.

I am staying on a ranch in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho. I hear the whinnying of a young, untrained sorrel. She's anxious to do what she was bred to do, handle cattle. She's a quarter-horse with muscles that bulge and quiver in readiness to perform. The distant sound of a dog barking is muffled by a soft wind blowing at 4 - 5 mph. It is a perfect night. The stars look like exploded fireworks in a sky lit by a full moon. 

The ranch is mostly quiet, things begin early here so rest is coveted when evening falls. The moon, full and bright gazes across the freshly mowed fields of hay. It is rolled in great disks and will serve as the staple forage through  a bitter cold winter where last year twenty eight feet of snow fell. 

A young coyote whose adolescent voice cracks is joining the chorus of the choir. 

This is the west and we are only minutes away from the spot Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe surrendered after successfully avoiding the army for months. His final words of surrender echo through the hills:

I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohoolhoolzote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say, "Yes" or "No." He who led the young men [Olikut] is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are -- perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.