Honest Failure 

The other day, I was in town to switch out my winter tires and while waiting I dragged a chair outside the tire shop to eat my lunch and read. During the hour and half I was sitting there near the front door, I noticed how exposed I felt as other customers came and went. At the same time I noticed part of me really wanted to see people and be out in the open.

Late May storm in canyon

Since the pandemic, I've been sticking to my list when I go to town and not interacting with people much, so when a woman I know pulled up, I was delighted to find myself compelled to go talk to her. Our lives have intersected over the decades, not often, but in a variety of ways and across several generations. We are both ranchers working to keep our businesses going and we've collaborated to plan community food systems projects. We're both moms and grandmas. She's part of a fifth generation ranch and I'm part of a first generation one. We are alike and we are different. 

Maggie pup late May

A few years ago, after we had known each other a long time, we connected in a new way. She heard me read at Fireside, a winter program where the Fishtrap literary organization invites local writers to read for the community. Afterward she came up to me and said, "I didn't know that about you." Did she mean that I wrote poetry? That I was a herder?  Even living in a small place with not that many people, it is easy to make assumptions about who people are, what they believe or how they live their lives. 

Here is bit of the poem I read, which is about herding cattle:

Sometimes there's a jam, like when a branch catches in high water, 

and if you don't get it out right away, all the stuff coming down the crick piles up, wedged so tight you can't budge a thing.

But if you quick ease out that one willow slip, something else will shift and suddenly everything flows smooth again.

 

Or the way your horse moves kind of like a dog sometimes 

quietly threading the prairie behind the cattle

sometimes flanking, sometimes trailing 

sometimes heading, loping shoulder to shoulder with a heifer

 and turning together back toward the herd.

 

Or when you’re back-riding in a fall storm, three riders hunting thick timber for sign, listening for the bawl of cattle when they hear us coming through the brush.

Everything wet and getting wetter, thunder crashing so close and rain falling so hard you pull up and hunker three steaming horses wedged side by side under a stubby fir on the side of the draw, all of you knowing in a moment you’ll step back into the rain, hooting dribs and drabs of cattle out of their thickets, losing daylight and needing to go.  

Sara gathering cattle in canyon

I wanted my friend to thank her daughter for reading a story at another Fireside event a few months back. It was the daughter's first time reading in public and because of the virus she had to read online in front of a computer screen, with no way of knowing who was in the audience watching and listening. She looked vulnerable and uncertain, but I could also sense the necessity she felt to share a part of her life. 

Lush river bar, late spring

In the story, she had been working on a remote ranch, calving out heifers during a severe winter. Night after night, she pushed off the weight of exhaustion and crawled out of bed every few hours to do what had to be done. On the night of the story, she slept through her alarm and woke up thinking of the heifer her boss warned might calve soon. Out in the swirling snowstorm, the beam of her headlamp caught first the wild eyes of the heifer and then below on the ground, the black mound of a dead calf. And all the voices of the naysayers in her life came rushing back, "You are too lazy and too selfish, and you will fail at ranching." 

Sara, Cammie and Abigail on day three trailing cows

But she didn't give up. Eventually she met her partner and is finding her own path toward raising a family, tending livestock, feeding community. As the story came to an end she told us how being woken in the night by the cries of her newborn what she sees first in her mind is not her son needing comfort, but that heifer's calf frozen to the ground. 

Gabe and Cammie turning out on the prairie

I was moved by this story and the honesty required to admit that we sometimes fail. We can't control the weather, but we have skills and resources and we try to use them as best we can to care for the cattle, horses, dogs and people we work with every day. It is good for us to remember that we all fall short sometimes. And by sharing the stories of our failures maybe we can learn from each other, not just how to do things or how not to do them, but how to listen, how to feel empathy and see the interconnectedness of life, the interdependence of all living beings on one another and our world. 

As drought and uncertainty unfold this summer, I'm sure I could use more of that kind of learning. 

Wishing for rain like this and not thunderstorms


From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef