Our Merry Christmas weekend—to utilize our time around the Christmas and New Year’s holidays for branding calves and/or feeding, we have moved our family get-together to the springtime. The weather is warmer, travel is less hectic, most of our cattle work is done while Dry Creek is usually colorful instead of gray. Though unconventional, it makes perfect sense to us.
Back to basics with the loss of power that lasted until late this morning due to an isolated thunderstorm yesterday afternoon bringing nearly 3 inches in an hour or so. Robbin and I got the dominos and candles out.
Cattle people trying
to manage grass
in the West
dare not cuss the rain
or otherwise risk
pissing-off the gods
that might be related
to the ones who care
for the ill and dying.
Seed
Rain
Grass
Seed
all the basic elements
we need
to continue living.
A wonderful couple days with our dear Canadian friends, Denise Withnell and David Wilke of Cowboy Celtic as wildflowers bloom like paint spilled, growing puddles of color everywhere you look.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Thank you, Maureen Sudlow, for making me aware that some people have not seen our Golden Poppies up close. This photo is from March 26, 2010.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
It was difficult navigating Dry Creek Road over the weekend for all the photographers parked in this narrow thoroughfare. I have a feeling that the conflagration is just beginning.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Terri Drewry photo
There’s a lot to be said about not knowing when you were born. But I just checked Toby’s papers to find that this Montana Doc son was born in 1994—me 1948.
I tried every way possible to wriggle out of helping Craig Ainley brand his 4-5 weight Wagyu X calves at Mankins Flat, an hour’s 4-wheel drive from the asphalt to patched board corrals. I reasoned that the calves might be too big, too much work for old men in muddy pens. But we owed him for his help branding our own calves, and with all our other neighbors busy helping one another brand on the few days between rains, and he short-handed, I had no choice, no lame excuse for horse or me.
Craig wanted our whole crew, Robbin, Terri, Allie, Bob and me. Terri Drewry and I roped with Garth and Audrey Maze, Corrine Ainely Manes and Donnie Castle, finishing up an hour before the forecast 2” storm while wind gusts lifted snow off the Great Western Divide, the Kaweah Peaks and Sawtooth, seemingly a stone’s throw across the North Fork—a fun and beautiful, overcast day!
Shoulders sore, the old men recuperated while it rained.
In his Model A, Bill DeCarteret stopped by our branding yesterday along Dry Creek Road. His visit with Tim Loverin, owner/operator of the Cedar Grove Pack Station, and me was much too short. We’ll do it again soon.
Low snow up canyon, cold
rain at dawn, vernal pools
in the pasture stand full
waiting for Wood Ducks,
waiting for spring.
Sycamores stripped naked,
their white limbs wave
from across the creek
upon these ponds of water
in the evening sun.
Headlights slash the darkness,
a caravan of jeeps
and 4-wheel drives
whine down canyon—
weary songs back home.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2019, Ranch Journal
Tagged photography, poetry, snow, Sulphur Peak
Light dusting this afternoon down to 2,500′ on Dry Creek. Exceeding the forecast, just shy of an inch of rain overnight and this morning. It’s wet out there.
