Category Archives: Photographs

Limited Edition of 76 copies, 26 of which are lettered and signed by the author for presentation to friends.

$10 (cash or check only) includes shipping.

Dry Crik Press
P.O. Box 44320
Lemon Cove, CA 93244

Douglas Thomason – December 2010

It’s been quite awhile since we canceled a branding because of a rain, but we’ll gladly take the moisture. The road into Greasy is probably too wet for multiple goosenecks and pickups, and the corrals too slick and muddy to work the calves. We’ll try again tomorrow.

Meanwhile, we’ll get some hay up to the 100 pairs in the gathering fields this afternoon, whatever the weather allows. A little concentrated feeding won’t hurt our thin cows, supporting calves since September. Judging by temperatures here on the creek these past two or three weeks, I imagine temperatures at 2,500′ have dipped into the low-20s, cows busy burning calories just to stay warm.

Happy New Year- Happy Birthday!

This week responsibly gathering calves to brand Sunday, watching the rainy forecasts, hoping to hold the cattle until Monday if the weathermen are right. Some pairs have been in the gathering fields where we are feeding hay, since Wednesday. We branded a little bunch Tuesday, New Year’s Day, trying to get our calves marked before they get to be too big. We won’t get them all done before Elko, but we’re trying to get to as many as we can, making it a little easier on them, and us.

All our neighbors are in the same boat, working around the weather, scheduling branding and ground crews that utilize one another’s help while getting their own cattle together. We began this week with a clear weather forecast for the next ten days. Then there’s the meal after the branding to coordinate around all the last minute changes.

We look at one another in the evening with tired grins, weighing options as we fine tune plans, knowing if we change days we may not have the help we counted on. It’s what we do this time of year.

Received the paper for the new chap, day before yesterday. I’m a little disappointed in the weight of the card stock, but you’ll like the poems in this limited edition of GATE LEFT OPEN to all the spirits and gods as I explore my life’s sense of place, memories triggered by personal landmarks as the past steps up to blend into the present. A philosophy that has evolved from stories and experiences that I think is shared, at least in part, by the cattle culture, and missed entirely by Hollywood, which unfortunately is most people’s view of cowboys and cattlemen. I trust that the effort has value if it adds to an understanding of what we do. We are a minority in a society addicted to consumption, focused on instant gratification, but we need the majority’s understanding if the ground, and its lessons, are to remain intact. A quixotic exercise I allow myself, and hope.

It’s been a good year for us: a new granddaughter, a handsome new son-in-law, a little progress on the ranch, here and there – life is good.

Love,
J&R