Their Initials Were There From the Beginning
When we bought a piece of land in the Arizona high desert, we weren't trying to create a legacy.
At the time, the reason was much more practical. We had only recently begun living full-time in our RV, traveling from place to place and figuring out what this new version of life was going to look like. Although the RV had quickly begun to feel like home, we were also discovering that being completely mobile didn't mean we couldn't benefit from having an anchor.
We wanted somewhere that was ours. A place where we could stop for a while without making a reservation, where we could spread out a little, work on projects, leave things behind when we traveled, and return whenever we were ready.
We found that place about twelve miles down a dirt road in the Arizona high desert. There wasn't much there when we bought it—mostly land, junipers, sand, enormous skies, and the kind of quiet that makes you realize how much noise you've gotten used to.
We called it: D&H Crimson Sky Ranch.
The Crimson Sky part came easily. Spend enough evenings beneath an Arizona sunset and that probably doesn't require much explanation. But the D&H meant something else: Daxton and Holden, our grandsons.
Their initials were part of the ranch before there was much of a ranch at all. At the time, naming it after them simply felt right. We love them, they're an enormous part of our lives, and putting their initials on this place connected something we were building to two people who matter more to us than anything we could ever build.
What we didn't fully understand yet was that, over the next few years, the meaning of those two letters would begin to change.
A Place of Our Own
There's a strange contradiction in buying land when you're in the process of learning how little you actually need to own.
When we began traveling full-time, we let go of most of the things that had once filled our lives. We sold our house, got rid of furniture and possessions, and traded a permanent address for wheels. One of the earliest lessons of that transition was realizing how easily we can confuse the things we own with the life we're building. Experiences began to matter more. Time mattered more. Freedom mattered more.
And yet, only a few months into that first year, we bought a piece of land.
From the outside, maybe that sounds like moving backward. It never felt that way to us. The RV was—and still is—home. The ranch became something different. It became our anchor, a place that could stay still even when we didn't.
Over time, we began building. A cabin took shape. We made a place for the RV. We added solar, storage, and project after project, some that worked exactly as we'd planned and plenty that didn't. Things needed fixing. Other things needed rebuilding. T he wind and weather regularly offered their own opinions about whatever we'd just accomplished. Little by little, though, an empty piece of Arizona began becoming unmistakably ours.
At least, that's what we thought we were building.
Because every summer, two boys showed up.
Three Summers
Daxton and Holden have now spent part of three years at D&H Crimson Sky Ranch, and they've begun developing a relationship with the place that is entirely their own. They love helping us with projects, riding around on the ATV, hiking and exploring, and searching for rocks that emerge from the sand as the wind and rain reshape the landscape. They've learned to watch for coyotes, rabbits and lizards, and they've built forts and secret hiding spots in places that probably make far more sense to them than they do to us.
There are BB guns and target shooting, archery and games of cornhole. One year, there was even an eclipse, and the four of us stood there together watching something that doesn't come around very often. Just as often, though, there is nothing particularly extraordinary happening at all. We make pizza, play games, sit around a fire and simply spend time together.
To them, these are probably just summers at the ranch. They're having fun with Pop Pop and Pah Pah.
We understand that because we were kids once too. We remember adults telling us not to be in such a hurry to grow up, to enjoy those years because they would be gone before we knew it. Like most kids, we probably brushed it off. Childhood doesn't feel temporary when you're in the middle of it. Fifty sounds ancient, and the idea that you might someday ache for an ordinary afternoon from decades earlier is almost impossible to understand.
And then, somehow, you're fifty.
You find yourself remembering people who aren't here anymore, places that no longer exist in quite the same way, and moments you had no idea you should have been paying closer attention to while they were happening. Suddenly, all those adults who told you how quickly it would go make a little more sense.
That's part of what we see when we watch Daxton and Holden at the ranch. They're simply living these summers, exactly as they should be. We don't expect them to understand that the forts, ATV rides, projects, games, fires and pizza nights—or even standing together beneath an eclipse—may someday occupy a completely different place in their memories. They shouldn't have to understand that yet. Their job right now is to be kids.
Ours is to understand how quickly this part goes.
