Page 19 of The Rancher’s One and Only

“Well. That’s nice.”

“I forgot to ask you if you made any big discoveries today.”

“Oh, not big ones. I think there’s a layer with footprints. Preserved. At least that’s what I picked up but I have to approach it really carefully, because if I do it wrong, I’m going to disturb the layer with the footprints. There is one place where I might need to bring in dynamite.”

“Dynamite?”

“It’s very effective. But you do have to make sure that you’re not actually compromising specimens. But if I can actually get down to this layer, I’ll have an idea of where I need to be.”

“How long do you think that will take?”

“Probably by tomorrow I’ll have some definitive answers. At least I hope so.”

“And you think these are mammals?”

“I do. Though I have a suspicion that there will be some smaller dinosaur footprints in there as well. Oregon was a late addition to the North American landmass. It was built up by volcanoes toward the end of the Cenozoic Era. And that means that it wasn’t the home of Tyrannosaurus rex or of the other thunder lizards, so to speak.”

“Well. That’s kind of disappointing.”

“It’s not really. It’s what makes this such a dynamic ecosystem. This place is volcanic. Which I’ve always felt changes the whole makeup of the place.”

“In a scientific sense?”

“No. In a vibe sense.”

“Do scientists acknowledge vibes?”

“I do. I’m not one for… There is definitely a kind of scientist that lacks whimsy.”

He looked over at her, and yet again, he had that mystified expression on his face that made her wonder if she was going too far for him.

“Please, expand on that,” he said.

She felt warmed, right at the center of her chest, and she couldn’t explain why. Maybe because he’d asked her to expand, rather than looking at her like he wished she’d contract.

“That just isn’t me. I find that science is full of whimsy. And we can use it to explain a lot of things. But science is the building block of a story. And oftentimes in storytelling, you find the miraculous in the absurd. Science is no different. Some people want science to explain everything. I want science to explain everything it can. And then I find even more wonder in the things that it can’t explain.”

“I will admit, when I said I thought of prison as a prelude to hell, I sort of thought you would tell me hell doesn’t exist.”

“We don’t know what dimensions exist. The reality is, time is something of a mystery. Once you start pulling at that thread, you realize how little we know about anything. Which again, I don’t find confronting or contradictory.”

“Except Jurassic Park. You don’t seem to like Jurassic Park.”

“I just don’t think it’s realistic.”

“Do you want realism from all your stories?”

“No, but I think it pushes where I’m willing to suspend belief.”

“How? It’s a bunch of people doing the thing they were warned not to do, all because they think it would make them money, and it would be cool. That sounds like human nature to me.”

She didn’t really know what to say to that, because in many ways, he wasn’t wrong. There was definitely an element of human nature in that facet of the Jurassic Park story.

“Maybe I just don’t like it because I’ve had to listen to countless people—mainly men—ask me if I’m going to clone something with a mosquito.”

“Sorry to perpetuate that harm.”

“Well, it’s just not as original as you maybe think it is.”