Saved by the Green

You can't go wrong with a St Patrick's Day pie. Especially if it is from the fruit you picked last year and froze and it's mulberry, blackberry, blackcherry. Especially if it is for your 40th wedding anniversary.  That's B for berry.

40 year anniversary pie

It's hard to believe we've been partners for 43 years. The first three years, while dating, we were mostly far apart, sometimes on different continents. Alaska, Germany, Washington, Minnesota, Oregon, Yukon Territory. When we finally decided to get married and go to work on a ranch, we thought we might be spending more time together. 

Bridge railing supplies

We soon found that ranch work involves long distances and often long separations. I've always loved working with Mike, even though sometimes we 'disagree' on how to get things done. He decides. I consider. Then we negotiate.  About half the time we come up with the same solution. The other half of the time I'm right, or he is. Either way the jobs get done, or they don't, but we try hard and mostly we do good work. Together.  

Gabe and Mike install railing on new bridge

Sometimes when Mike worked for McClarans, if we wanted to spend a night together we had to sleep in the old travel trailer at the heifer lot on Cow Creek. All four of us. Mike and I bunked on the bottom and the two kids bunked on top, about 18 inches over our heads. This was BZ. Before Zeke.

Our home place back then was at Brown Canyon near Imnaha. Mike only got one day off every few weeks and most of that was spent driving back from Cow Creek, doing laundry and fixing stuff. You can see why I thought the heifer lot was better than nothing.  

Don't fall in the river Mike! 

Gabe and Prairie had a blast getting into stuff, helping chore, 'driving' the truck. I think they were three and four. It was the same year Grey Ghost, a McClaran pack horse, went berserk packing fence material. She bucked off her pack and ran all the way back to Cow Creek, where she jumped off a little rim, knocked open a swinging gate by the yard, gathered up the saddle stock and ran them into the pasture where the kids and I were walking back to the house. The horses thundered towards us with Prairie obliviously running ahead of me to 'win the race.' I yelled at her and she stopped and saw the horses. Maybe she was petrified, but she stood stock still while the running horses parted around her like a river around a rock. Scared the beejeezus out me, but I learned something. A horse isn't likely to run over you if they can avoid it.  

Abby 2 1/2, looking like a little Mongolian

Just like Prairie did, Abby sometimes wears attire that I concoct from whatever is on hand. I made Prairie overalls and dresses on my beloved treadle sewing machine, using fabric cut from old garments, curtains or tablecloths. Sometimes I got wool at the mill in Pendleton. With Abby, it's mostly my vests, when she forgets her coat at the house and the wind comes up when we're choring or fishing. It's not quite in keeping with her fashion standards (she takes after Cammie), but she tolerates it.  

Cammie and Abigail on the way to Witch's Hat

McClaran's are celebrating 100 years on their ranch this year. Sometimes when I meet Scott on the river road and we stop for a chat with our windows down, we talk about all the changes we've seen over the decades. The people who've come and gone. The people we miss. And sometimes we marvel at the fact that of all the people who have come and gone, we're the ones still here following the cattle, riding the range, packing salt, driving bad roads. 

Skinny cow that tried to take Sara down

There's a saying that there are only two kinds of cowboy poetry.  The kind where somebody dies, which is tragedy. And the kind where they survive, which is comedy. So I guess it was comedy when a cow almost gored me back in March It was right after Snowmageddon and she was so poor I could count her ribs. We kept her in when the other cows trailed back to the bench so we could feed her hay by the box elder grove. I was hauling a couple buckets of water for her from the river and I looked up to see the 'feeble' cow jumping over her pile of hay and coming at me like a freight train, head down, horns forward. 

I dropped one of the buckets and backpedaled as fast as I could over the hummocky hard ground, yodeling for Mike, who was somewhere behind me at the truck. "Drop the bucket and run!" he shouted. But I couldn't. The bucket was the only thing between me and the cow and she was already butting it. Right when I started to stumble, I heard Mike come up behind me with a stockwhip and the cow reversed gears. I dropped the bucket and turned around, wobbling my way to the truck. For days, I cringed every time I thought of those pitchfork horns just wide enough to fit one on either side of me as long as I stayed on my feet. Every time Mike thought about it he laughed.

Weston made it to the top!

That's the nature of a good partnership, reliability. If you add up all the disappointments and the disagreements and the misunderstandings and the frustrations, they still don't amount to near as much as the times you saved each others' lives, which in the ranching business seems to happen more often than usual.

Mid March and still snowing

And even if all you need is moral support, you can count on a partner to share the load.  Whether it's bad storms, a sick horse, a brokedown truck, climate change or social upheaval, when you're the one down, your partner helps you see the future with a little more acceptance, a little more gentleness. And when they're in a dark mind, you take your turn to paint a picture of good things that might come again.

Hallelujah! The grass is growing at the end of March! 

And so green finally came to the canyon again, transforming in its magical way the hungry bodies of ruminants. And I'm thankful for all the animals who can rise up on this nutritious food, and for the power of spring to rejuvenate us in this corner of the world. And I think of the people who have lived here for thousands of years, and the ones who have been here just a hundred years, or maybe even just forty.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Bad Trails Shifting Loads

Packing salt in early February did not go as planned. Although the West bench was mostly dry, it turned out that even without snow, the East bench was treacherous.

East side, half frozen and greasy.

 Mike and Andrew wanted to give Looking Glass a packing lesson, so they loaded her up and set out with Chester and Sedona.

Andrew and Mike headed upriver

After they left, I fed the yearlings in the weaning pen and the early calver with her calf "Dirty Snowball." He was born at Pumpkin Creek just before we trailed back to the Imnaha.

Dirty Snowball and his mother Little Red on the chow line

I kept an eye out and eventually I saw Mike climbing the steep trail to the bench. He was riding Sedona and leading Chester and even from a distance I could see Chester lunging for footing. The question was, where was Andrew.

Looking Glass  getting ready for packing lesson

After a while, Andrew came back, leading Looking Glass along the river. He told me she slid off the trail and rolled her pack. They switched the pack to Chester and Mike continued on up the trail. Looking Glass was okay, but it wasn't a good day for a packing lesson. Andrew and I got busy with other chores and in the late afternoon, heavy snow clouds began to roll in.

Snow moving in

There was no sign of Mike. I thought he was taking an awfully long time and I started to worry he might not get back before dark.  That's when I spotted him coming off the bench on foot.  He arrived at the barn, weary and dirty and reported the trails were goo. Even in sharp shoes the horses couldn't keep their feet. After both Sedona and Chester slid on the trail, Mike got off and walked the whole rest of the way. He fell down a couple times too, but he got the job done.

Cork gouge near the coronary band. 

I kind of wished he'd given up.  In the scramble to get his feet, Chester corked himself, gouging the top of his left front hoof with the rear caulk on his right front shoe. That was some fancy footwork that kept him on the trail, but left its' mark, and I hoped it would heal okay in the muddy conditions.

Snow top to bottom in the canyon

Next morning, we woke up to snow clear down to the river  It was the beginning of a long hard spell so I guess it was a good thing Mike got the salt out after all. 

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef 

Little Red