Never Burn Your Moving Boxes (eBook)

A young womans struggle with marriage and motherhood onsome of the most remote ranches in the American West.Jolyn Young grew up in the real northern Californiatheforgotten area at the tip-top of the state with small towns, extreme poverty,and about 40 miles to the Oregonian mountains. In a childhood defined by asubdivision, she decided she wanted to be a cowboy, and two years out ofcollege, she saw that dream through, taking a job at a Nevada ranch in thesearch for a lifestyle subsisting of horses, cattle, and the wide open range.Falling in love was never part of the plan.Jim Young was tall, strong, and could ride a bronc and ropea steer like no ones business. And before she knew it Jolyn found hercowboyin dreams overtaken by a new and intoxicating cowboy reality. With longdays side by side in the saddle, nights sharing a bedroll, and the deep satisfactionthat came with hard physical work in a place filled with natural beauty, itseemed life was all a strong-willed young woman might want it to be.But when a baby-to-be suddenly spun her wild romance into avery practical marriage, and one decrepit ranch trailer home led to the next,Jolyn found her young family desperately seeking stability in what is bydefinition a transient lifestyle that moves with the seasons. Often hours fromthe nearest grocery store and half-a-day from the closest hospital, pregnancy,childbirth, and illness required a do-it-yourself mentality. With days,sometimes weeks on her own as Jim worked the farthest reaches of whateverranchlands they currently called homeand first with one child to care forandeventually with threeJolyn fought profound loneliness, finding comfort inwriting and company in her camera.As the cowboy lifestyle pulled them further toward the brinkof civilization and Jims drinking became a liability, losing him jobs andsending them packing, again, to yet another, different, distant cow camp, Jolynstruggled with the knowledge that she was choosing a life of scrubbing filthymobile home floors and bunkhouse bathrooms in order to keep her familytogether. It would take leaving it, and Jim, for her to determine whether aworld built on risk could coexist with the responsible mother she had needed tobecome.With a memoir that is brave, honest, and heartbreakinglyfunny, Jolyn Young has written the story of every young adventure-seeker, everynew mother, and every partner who has loved an alcoholic in a whole newlightthat of a campfire, on the edge of the desert night, miles away from cellphone reception.