I am disabled. I can’t work full time, I can’t drive, I can’t go to all the parties, concerts, and events.

I am routinely medicated, stabbed with needles, put under anesthesia, injected with steroids, and tortured by well meaning physical therapists.

I won’t pretend to be happy about it, I won’t lie and say I am okay. I have decided to do something about it.

My biggest heartbreak has been a decrease in my ability to help people. I have had to close down my law practice because the stress makes things worse. I have had to move from an employee to a contractor at work because I can’t go to an office every day. Worst of all, I have had to reduce my volunteering efforts to next to nothing.

I was in crisis this week. I spent a week in medical offices getting treatments and always left feeling worse for the wear. I missed work all week. I missed attending a board meeting, a pot luck, and other events. I am turning 40 and feeling as though I was more put together at 9. I was in dire straights.

So I decided to make a choice. I love working as a volunteer for the Southern Plains Land Trust. I love raising awareness, money, and volunteers. I love protecting my precious prairie dogs and patrolling the preserves during hunting season and putting up fence to protect the land from grazing cattle. I can see the difference I am making with every second that I volunteer.

I am going to work for SPLT for a living. I started a CrowdRise campaign to raise the money for a part time salary for a year. I can work from home and do what I love. I don’t have to give up.

I do need your help. Please view my video and pass it on. If you can donate, even $5, that would help immensely, but passing my information on to others will help just as much.  You can visit my campaign at https://www.crowdrise.com/helpmesavecoloradose/fundraiser/mistyewegen.

Thank you for taking a moment to watch my short video and read my appeal. Thank you doubly for sharing it.

Help me do what I love. from Misty Ewegen on Vimeo.

Tracy delivered me safely home and sporting only a moderate layer of southeastern Colorado topsoil.

Our pronghorn protecting adventure ended with me gently coaxing some trespassing hunters from our preserve this morning while Tracy diligently took down license plates and descriptions. We were on our previously uneventful patrol when we saw a truck and camper top rumbling up the hill into the middle of one of our preserve pastures. They went straight past the clear “No trespassing” sign and continued inward looking for prey. We pulled in, I waved them down, and they left with a polite social lie about thinking they were further North. But they left.

Then we visited with other pronghorn protectors, visited some prairie dogs and burrowing owls, and made the long trek home.

Here is some of what we left behind:

Open range cattle enjoying the wind farm neighboring the preserve.

Valleys and buttes.

Scenic vistas.

A lovely spring.

Vast open land protected for wildlife.

Some people take cars full of gear to go camping, this weekend we are camping in a car. Hatchet and I have removed the seats from her mini-van, covered the floor in mattress pads and sleeping bags, and driven far east to monitor SPLT preserve lands for trespassing hunters.

We have found some lovely things along the way and made new friends.

Our creek and beaver dam.

Someone fuzzy lives here.

Another lovely water spot.

A busy tarantula walks by.

Another stops to say hello:

Our “dinner table” and the foot of our bed.

Tomorrow we patrol the borders and protect pronghorn. Tonight we attempt to overcome our fear of peeing in the dark surrounded by tarantulas.

Update:

This is what lunch looks like:

And this is the turtle we herded off the road:

Update part deaux:

We are stalking beavers!! There is a stream/creek running through the preserve and in it are beavers. We have seen proof of them!

Okay, we were wrong, we’ve seen proof of racoon.

We have also gotten to see monarchs!