Christmas Eve 2011
2011/12/25 | Colorado: Routt Co.
Christmas Eve 2011
By Matt Barnes
I hope that this annual dispatch from the frontier finds you well, enjoying the holidays with your loved ones, and reflecting on a well-lived 2011—what a year it’s been!
Professionally, I continued to own and operate Shining Horizons Land Management, LLC, providing ranch and rangeland management for a triple bottom line of ecological, economic, and social resilience. I managed the Howell Ranch, a seasonal custom-grazing operation with over 400 cow-calf pairs on several thousand acres near Blue Mesa Summit in western Colorado, for a second summer. I gave presentations about improving grazing management on the ranch at the Society for Range Management annual conference in Montana, and the Colorado Plateau conference in Arizona. I also spent time at San Juan Ranch in Colorado, and JT Land & Cattle in New Mexico; and found time to participate in the Quivira Coalition and Southwest Grassfed Livestock Alliance, and the International Rangeland Congress in Argentina. I joined the Rangelands Editorial Board, and am the incoming President-Elect of the Colorado Section Society for Range Management.
Range monitoring, the Howell Ranch
San Luis Valley, Colorado
I had my first solo photography exhibit at Off the Beaten Path in Steamboat Springs, and finished my third oil painting at Montrose Center for the Arts.
Moving cattle on the Baca National Wildlife Refuge, San Luis Valley (oil painting).
And, of most blessed fortune, our extended family grew by one this year: Hill Matthew Johnston was born to my sister Erin and her husband Josh in October.
The celebration of birth, of renewal, in myriad forms yet one theme, at this time of year seems universal. The slow return of Father Sun to Mother Earth has already begun, that unending play of yin and yang, emanation and dissolution, the harmony of the Uni-verse, the One Song. May all our stars lead to the newborn promise, the one truth of many names, the unity that is beyond names.
