Meet wrangler Chase. He has been a member of the Cherokee Park Ranch family for three years now. Chase wrote this just a few days before he arrived this summer and it really struck a chord with us. He really captures the incredible feeling of coming back to the ranch and that sense of comfort that washes over you as you pull up. It feels like you are home….

It’s Like Going Home

By: Chase Claburn

There’s nothing like the feeling you get when you come over the top of Callbox Hill and you catch first sight of the gate. Emotion stirs in your belly like grasshoppers coming out of the tall grass in the Spring. You make the turn up the drive and you know something special is about to happen. You take the driveway slow, marking the sights, the smells, and the sounds. A hound brays in the distance. Lord only knows which one. You round the last corner and there’s the Lodge looming before you. All the granger and history tied into its boards, mixing with the joy of hundreds and thousands of stories and memories.

The mountains surround you. The vastness you just drove through swallowed you and you’ve entered a wonderland of God’s own beauty. It’s not the buildings, the stock, or the country that make the place special, though. It’s the people. There’s Christine greeting you with all the warmth of family. Caree running here and there, canine entourage in tow. Townsend making his work look almost like play. Dickey driving hell for leather to whatever task he has. Each integral in making the Ranch what it is.

Words don’t describe the feeling the place evokes, or just how special the people there are, but this is a start. There’s no other place like it on God’s Earth. And every time I see the sign on the mailbox, “Cherokee Park Ranch,” it feels like going home.