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| Wallowa Valley looking west |
Sometimes the moon reminds us. Year after year, night after night, sailing across the sky or smothered by winter clouds, whether we see it or not, it's still up there easing along. And when we do see it, a small cheerfulness, a contentment is often the result. I don't know why.
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| Andrew gathers cattle to take to Pumpkin Creek |
Perhaps I like to see the moon because it means a storm will only be wind and cold and not the snow or mud that burden our movements. No blizzard erasing what is ahead and leaving us without landmarks, feeling our way down through lurking cliffs with footing that gives way on steep norths. When this happens, I don't like to be alone. Caught in a fast-moving storm, barely able to see where my horse is about to take his next step, the breath and creak of another rider close behind comforts me.
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| Can you see anything? |
When the trails are bad, I don't feel like going but I don't like being the one stuck back at the house either. Waiting for late riders to come in, when I don't how the work unfurled that day, whether the cattle were found and moved, whether the trail to the salt ground was passable. And I look up toward the bench, thinking of where they might be, right now, making their way down the face of the canyon.
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| Trailing home from Pumpkin Creek |
We are thankful not to have had bad trailing so far this winter. Coming and going to Pumpkin Creek were both pretty good. When it was time for the cows to come back to the river, Andrew gathered and brought them down the creek and up to the bench and handed them off to Mike and I. A quick parlay by the hawthorn thicket, then Andrew headed back to Pumpkin Creek and Mike and I took the cows the rest of the way. It was an easy day. Nothing too muddy or half-frozen, no rain or snow, just clouds hovering along the ridgetops as a storm licked slowly toward us from the southwest.
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| Mike's power nap after cutting out a fallen tree in the corrals |
I'm happy to say some people have been doing better at taking it easy around here. One would be me. Mike would be another. This means that fencing and weed chopping and old feeder demolition are supposed to take place in shorter increments.
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| Hooded and gloved for one more patch, just one more |
The cockleburr invasion caused me to violate my oath. A heavy load of seed was carried onto the river bar by a flash flood last August and quickly germinated in the low spots. Now the vile injurious weed lured me and my hand scythe into one patch after another. Four hours later, even Mike was telling me to call it quits. I wanted to get the seed down on the ground before cattle or horses had to graze here. I hate the red and oozing ulcers sometimes caused by these sharp torpedo-shaped burrs burrowing against tender skin and I know how challenging it is to extricate them when they are tightly woven into an animal's hair (or my own braid for that matter).
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| Road work ala Sara and shovel |
And then there are the jobs you don't anticipate. Like digging out the bank above the road up Pumpkin Creek where the same flash flood last summer cut too close to the track. A few feet of extra width made it a little safer until we can get equipment up there to do a better fix.
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| Pulling nails |
More satisfying is making progress on jobs that have been on the list for years. Replacing the old feeder down river on the east side is one of these jobs. Last year we rebuilt the fence along the old driveway and now we can rip out the old feeder, salvaging what material can be repurposed into new panels. Someday we might use this little pasture for weaning, instead of the temporary feeder that we have to put up and take down in the corrals every year. But first we will have to build a fence along the river and put in a water gap...jobs that will be on the list of winter work for a while yet I reckon.
Especially since we are learning to 'take it easy.' Part of which is feeling time. Standing still once in a while to just take a look around. Maybe spotting the moon travelling by, headed west.
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| Resting |
From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef
