the pastoral muse: May 2022

Anna and Cole moved home to the ranch this month. They’ll keep their day jobs and help on the ranch when they can. Cole needed a chance to participate in the multifaceted daily-goings-on of this business we call a cattle ranch - to sort out options for the future.

He took off work to help us make the 5-day trek to the mountains with the cattle, and we’re sure glad to have his help. He and his dog, Roy, were everywhere, working the drag, the flanks, and the lead as needed as we walked the herd past a myriad of obstacles, lawns and wheat fields, steep mountain grades, through creeks and brush, past campsites and fisherman. Cole makes an excellent team member. He’s ready and willing; he pays attention and is eager to learn.

The annual move to the mountains is a deep cultural part of our ranch. Mark and I grew up on parallel operations and both of us made memories as children driving cattle to summer range every spring. This mountain trail, every bend in the road, each river overlook, has a memory for each of us. Our kids grew up the same way and have their own memories tucked away. For Cole and Leah it’s all new.

The first day of the trail, we were just getting lined out, when who should appear on the road behind us, but Leah with Emma in a stroller! Well, not a “stroller,” more like an all-terrain baby buggy. Leah worked her dog, Ruby, and hustled a content Emma behind the herd, dodging this way and that to keep the calves coming ahead. At lunch time, Emma, at just over one year old, protested when we wouldn’t let her walk up to the cows and calves. She would kiss them if she could, like she does the horses and dogs. What a joy to have the sixth generation learning to love the land and animals as we do.

At the end of one long trailing day, just as we were about to tuck the herd into the field where they would spend the night, a calf jumped sideways and fell over the lava bluff that borders the road. Luckily he landed on a grassy ledge not too far below. We could see his tag number; he looked okay. Cole and Seth were able to find the cow, and with great difficulty, convince her to leave the herd and take a circular path through a gate and down into the ravine to circle back to where the calf was. The calf stood up and they looked quizzingly at each other from a distance, but it wasn’t until Seth and Cole gently nudged her closer in, and Seth bellered at them, that the cow finally realized the calf was hers and started talking to him. Straight away the calf scaled down the incline and picked his way through the fallen rocks to her side. At that point we all breathed a sigh of relief. As Seth said, “the only place for a scared calf is with his momma.”

It was a fine end to a long day. Watching these two young men work together, bantering back and forth on their walkie talkies, I was reassured. It is my sincere faith that this shared commitment to the task in front of them, this same comradery, will serve them successfully in the years ahead. The mix of aggressive action when needed (getting the cow separated and down in the canyon) and patient finesse (getting her to relax and look for her calf) were spot on. Just the type of skills needed to run a ranch and raise a family. And the women they married are just as intelligent and dedicated, just as true in their friendship and mutual support.

Who knows how it will all sort out. There will be challenges because family businesses are hard and ranching is hard. You just keep doing the work and hope for the next sublime moment when the calf is okay and he finds his mom, when lunch miraculously appears at noon, the payments get made and we keep talking to each other.