In a round pen, a horse trainer sends the horse circling the fence, lap after lap, until the animal decides on its own to turn in, lower its head and stand beside the person in the middle. Nate Ostrander trains horses for a living through his Eastern Washington company, Two Eyes Horsemanship, and “Ramble” describes a relationship that moves the same way.
The two people in the song spend most of their time in motion. They chase their own stories through another night, get drunk enough to start a little fight, knock each other around and still decide the cup is half full. Even the falling has a rider’s logic to it: one of them falls in while the other falls off, the two ways a person can come loose from something they love.
The chorus answers all that wandering with a chant of possessives, yours and mine passed back and forth until they blur into both. In the last verse the circling slows. The evening goes calm, the talking runs out, and the pair sit watching the night pass with one honest question between them, whether they have enough to make it last.
Ostrander made the song with his friend and mentor Donnie Emerson, who recorded the cult album Dreamin’ Wild with his brother Joe in 1979, and whose live shows Ostrander once watched for hours to sharpen his own acoustic act. The student ended up writing beside the teacher, and the song names that kind of return in its refrain: “we circle round in time.” Like any good session in the pen, “Ramble” ends with two partners standing still in the middle, and neither one would have it any other way.
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