Back in the Saddle at Jawbone Ranch

(it appears that there is no end to the cheesy titles i can come up with...)

so we went to the most amazing place to do some filming on saturday.

darin and stan had told me all about it the first time they met the owners and scoped it out, but i just had no idea it was going to be THAT RAD. 

we spent the day, i could have stayed forever.

please enter through these sweet swively old-timey saloon doors...

it is a place called jawbone ranch, like an old encampment of rustic wooden buildings made of 100 year old timber, scattered on a green hillock just a couple miles out of town overlooking the red leaf and pinetree valley.

 this is the cowboy bunkhouse, well cowgirl i think i should say. the proprietess does all her own decorating and antiquing and is absolutely obsessed with the wild west.

she collects all these antique quilts, teddy bears, long underwear, bed frames, saddles, candles, sheepskin rugs, furs, mirrors, bloomers, pitchers, tincture bottles...everything a little lady would need to keep a tiny charming rural home in the 1800s.

and then she deposits them lovingly into cozy corners of the bunkhouses and saloon and invites all her friends to come drink and dance and talk and sleep there.

dreamlife.

i was enchanted by all the victorian ladythings like this little black velvet cap.

the loft bed, up a sturdy wooden ladder and overlooking dusty wooden rafters hung with coon skins.

the old miner's cabin, off by itself on a green knoll, is mrs. teie's favorite nook in all her magical land.

no electricity, cozy woodstove, rain on the tin roof, rusty aluminum coffee pots and gold pans.

another life, a rowdy time, a stretch of country rough and wild.

a place where plants could still speak, grizzly bears danced, and the moon illumined wolf tracks on mountaintops.

i found an ancient top hat crudely stitched of handfashioned black leather and cord.

it seemed to tell stories of harried wizard preachers on runaway mounts across ice fields in december.

meanwhile the friends were hard at work.

the feet were flying, the ideas were flowing, they thought up camera angles and lighting tricks galore.

this is how rogue artists must work, free, quick and crazily enlightened.

behind the scenes:

adam murphy:

jorden mingle:

lesley macdonald:

darin coelho spring:

wesley and jamie and banjos:

nick savino with bone (john mcdonald) in the foreground:

tim yancey getting ready with help from his lady kelly:

darin and stan and jamie in action:

even yours truly did a bit of acting. (i'm terrible, but i don't mind being an extra)

i was proud to go pick up lunch goods for re-fueling on the saloon deck (built up encircling around a perfect pine tree) as the skies turned gray.

magically it rained on the tin roof as darin did his crazy dance (it's a melodramatic silent film-style western in which darin stars). it is a scene inspired (fictionally) by a vicious thunder and lighting.

we like to think he danced in that rain.

then this, the crazed man after the storm and a misty rainbow.

some friends of the proprieters were hanging out working on a building project and putting up christmas lights.

they built a rustic bonfire that crackled as sunset time crept through the clouds.

all this has me dreaming of sleigh rides drawn by big prancing horses, whiskey spiked coffee, patchwork quilts and wool blankets wrapping like clouds, twinkly lanterns guiding us home over a winterland dark and quiet.