Never Burn Your Moving Boxes: A True Tale of a Real-Life Cowboy Wife

A young woman's struggle with marriage and motherhood on
some of the most remote ranches in the American West.

Jolyn Young grew up in the "real" northern California--the
forgotten 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 a
subdivision, she decided she wanted to be a cowboy, and two years out of
college, she saw that dream through, taking a job at a Nevada ranch in the
search 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 rope
a steer like no one's business. And before she knew it Jolyn found her
cowboyin' dreams overtaken by a new and intoxicating cowboy reality. With long
days side by side in the saddle, nights sharing a bedroll, and the deep satisfaction
that came with hard physical work in a place filled with natural beauty, it
seemed 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 a
very practical marriage, and one decrepit ranch trailer home led to the next,
Jolyn found her young family desperately seeking stability in what is by
definition a transient lifestyle that moves with the seasons. Often hours from
the 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 whatever
ranchlands they currently called home--and first with one child to care for...and
eventually with three--Jolyn fought profound loneliness, finding comfort in
writing and company in her camera.

As the cowboy lifestyle pulled them further toward the brink
of civilization and Jim's drinking became a liability, losing him jobs and
sending them packing, again, to yet another, different, distant cow camp, Jolyn
struggled with the knowledge that she was choosing a life of scrubbing filthy
mobile home floors and bunkhouse bathrooms in order to keep her family
together. It would take leaving it, and Jim, for her to determine whether a
world built on risk could coexist with the responsible mother she had needed to
become.

With a memoir that is brave, honest, and heartbreakingly
funny, Jolyn Young has written the story of every young adventure-seeker, every
new mother, and every partner who has loved an alcoholic in a whole new
light--that of a campfire, on the edge of the desert night, miles away from cell
phone reception.