Downs Rural Services

About Downs Rural Services

Out past Chadron the country opens into ranch ground and pine-topped ridges, and the driveways get long — a quarter mile of gravel between the mailbox and the house, with Bordeaux Creek cutting the draws below. Downs Rural Services works at that scale, where a yard is not a rectangle but the whole ground around a house, a shop and a shelterbelt. Autumn on the high plains sharpens every line: cold dry air, wind steady out of the northwest, the grass turning tan while the pines stay dark on the rim. Mowing it, trimming it, and pulling the whole place tidy out to the fence takes a long afternoon and pays it back. A kept place stands out for miles up here, because up here you can see for miles.