Get Up and Move!

We had a last fun day before Callie went back to the East Coast. Seth and Anna were already gone so it was just her and I. We walked to Bonny’s first thing in the morning. As we were visiting, Callie was doing her usual moving, bending, stretching, rarely sitting. Bonny asked if her back was hurting. “No,” Callie said, “I’m just stretching.”

Bonny keyed right into that and proceeded to tell her how old people quit moving far too early and bring on the very ailments they habitually complain about. Then she mimicked an old person hobbling from one sitting perch to the next around her dining table and scolded an imaginary senior: “Hell-a-mighty, get up and move!”

We laughed and said that the quote would go great on the wall of Callie’s someday studio - in big letters where her clients could memorize the message ending with a flourish of credit to “grandma Bonny.”

It is remarkable that these two women, Cal at 29 and grandma at 96, are of like minds when it comes to movement. Bonny doesn’t know “saunter,” instead she rises from a chair and takes off double time (yes, we cringe when she does it fearing a fall, but alas).

In Bonny’s day, of course, you worked hard just to survive. She was driven by a depression era work ethic and a will to get a lot of things done every day. Grandpa was a hard worker as well. While he tended the livestock and crops, she steadfastly defended the home front. After I married into the family, grandpa’s cousin and a good friend of Bonny’s gave me some advice, “Don’t try to keep up with Bonny!”

On a side note Bonny admits now that she was too fussy about white, whites and impeccable organization. I think she wishes she had taken more time for personal enjoyment. But that’s another blog.

Our Callie, a modern dancer certified to teach yoga and restorative exercise, preaches: you are how you move. And that good physical health is not hitting the treadmill in the basement, going to the gym, lifting weights or running marathons. Instead it’s about how you move throughout your day. We should all take heart. What great news!

I’m trying to incorporate what she teaches. Don’t just sit while doing sedentary activities, change it up. Get on the floor while watching TV, vary your sitting position or create a standing work station when you’re at the computer. Keep those ham strings and calf muscles stretched out to negate the consequences of sitting. Train track your feet straight ahead when you stand and walk. And walk, walk every day; it’s the perfect exercise.

And there’s more. Bonny was born with scoliosis. Her little back is twisted terribly, but she still has better carriage than many folks half her age. Is she perfect? No. Can you and I do better from her example? Hell-a-mighty yes!

67 years apart and not that different

Steadying Birdie while Mark takes her shoes off for the winter

A Silver Anniversary

The breeze has been coming from the north for over a week. That means it’s cold. The other 99% of the time it blows out of the southwest and is much kinder.

We marked a milestone during Thanksgiving week – 25 years of marriage. We didn’t really celebrate, just enjoyed having the kids home. We’re trying to think of some grand purchase to mark the occasion. Our bedroom furniture was second-hand when Mark moved out of his parents’ home 27 years ago, and still shows the permanent marker scribbles made by Seth as a youngster. Our TV was new in 1988. I’m still waiting for steps off the back terrace instead of a rotting stump. But those things don’t matter. We’ll tend to them eventually. I truly want for nothing. Nothing except time to do everything that interests me.

We emptied the mudroom of warm clothing to get the kids outfitted to move cows from our highest elevation pasture with 10 inches of snow to a lower pasture with about 5 inches. We took the four-wheelers which we can load in the back of the pickup instead of dragging a horse trailer through the snow. The machines are handy for sure, but we use them judiciously, preferring to use horses for most jobs. A horse needs to be needed. Use a four wheeler too much and your horse won’t be any good the day you go to saddle him.

We had the mountains to ourselves and as the rest of the crew tended elsewhere, I brought up the drag with the dogs, Nan and Kate. Snow herding with dry cows is the quietest of jobs. The herd especially enjoyed the bitterbrush and I was happy to walk through the snow urging the dogs out around the wanderers.     

The morning of our anniversary, before the kids arrived to change the empty nest dynamic, Mark and I laid in bed in the dark and talked over memories from a quarter of a century together. First I cried because it went so fast. Then we laughed when I talked about Mark’s naiveté when he married me. I'm sure he thought it would be easier than this. Oh, to find out the vagaries of a woman! A "tiger by the tail” comes to mind. 

Someone said (actually maybe it was me): “Look for your mate with a magnifying glass, but look at your mate through rose-colored glasses.” Mark does that for me. One time he said, “I don’t see your faults.” But that was a long time ago. Now he could make a list! Let’s just say he glosses over my faults. And that is a gift. Not silver perhaps, but precious nonetheless.    

photo by Seth

Temporary Measures

We spent another day in the mountains moving cattle. It was cold and windy. I dressed warm but not warm enough. Riding a 4-wheeler is even colder than riding a horse, except for the heated handles. Mark and I traded off driving to warm up our fingers.

The cattle moved easily except for one head. Everyone else came to meet us. T44 blue was reluctant to cross a far-off creek. Mark saw her outline from a distance and tried to impress me by correctly identifying her. I’m not easily impressed. Tell me why he knows her from a speck on the horizon and he didn't notice my new jeans?

T44 blue is 8 years old now and Mark remembers her as having her first calf as a 2-yr-old in January. She was one of three that year that were accidently bred early and calved in January instead of March and April. She’s the only one of the three still in the herd. We drove around the long way to fetch her. As soon as Mark knew who she was, he knew that her docile temperament would allow me to walk her on foot to a better creek crossing. How does he know her emotional traits and keep her straight from all the other hundreds of cows? His answer: “I’ve been around her for eight years!”  

She indeed was a nice, calm cow and Kate and I got her back with the others after a pleasant walk-about. We followed her by a spring that rises out of a bowl in the sagebrush and quickly turns into a substantial creek. Were those baby trout I saw darting from bank to bank?

super conditions for winter grazing

how Kate gets a drink

There’s always odds and ends to attend to besides the cattle and today was no exception. The lovely arch we inherited at the mountain ranch is falling over. Thank goodness Mark had delivered a stout post this summer to do the repair work. He never got to the repair, but the post was handy for what we call a “greasy sacker fix” to prop up the arch ‘til spring.

a better fix will have to wait until next year

Then on the way home we spied another gate in disrepair. We’ll need this later on when we walk the cattle home. It’s on the county road adjacent to a cattleguard. We stopped so Mark could reset a post that had been knocked over. The gate needs extended, but for now a macramé of plastic baling twine will work to connect it to the brace post at the end of the cattleguard. Like the arch, Mark called his fix a “temporary measure.” He referenced one of his favorite humorists, Patrick McManus, who says that a temporary measure is in danger of becoming a permanent measure if it lasts long enough!

using the window to hold up the wing of the cattleguard 

"our best is none too good"

A Nuanced Season

November is a quiet month, a subtle month. And as the year gets older, the landscape looks more and more like my wardrobe – neutrals. I own one melon colored t-shirt, a red wool coat and a couple of teal tops. Everything else is brown, gray or black. Hmmm. What does that say about me?

Maybe all it says is that I think neutrals are beautiful. That nuances are beautiful. And November is nuanced for sure. Even its holiday, Thanksgiving, the start of the cluttered Christmas season, is still bathed in neutrals and subtleties. Most Thanksgiving days are mocha colored, the color of bare tree limbs. And what’s not to love about mocha?

The cows are still in the mountains. We moved them to a new pasture where tall bunch grasses reach above the few inches of snow. A little snow is fine if it doesn’t get too cold or too deep. We walk around with our fingers crossed. Every day now is a gift away from the haystack.

The calves are grazing here in the valley. We took the heifers to a pivot of wheat owned by a man who isn’t afraid to let cows on his farm, a rare commodity in our community.  A farmer willing to run the pivot after the wheat is harvested and fall fertilize. He says the calves will reprocess the fertilizer and leave it for next year’s crop. The conditions were perfect this fall for good regrowth and there was plenty of seed since a rogue hail storm put 10% of the crop on the ground before threshing. Still it's an experiment and a bit of a gamble. Deep snow or super wet conditions could derail the grazing days/acre needed to make the whole thing work. 

We’ll share the labor, and when it’s done we’ll share the figures, and hopefully it will work out to the plus side of both our ledgers.   

Mark and Jesse strung an electric wire along the pivot so that we can move the fence by rolling the pivot every couple of days to give them a fresh paddock. We call this “rationing” of stock-piled feed. Statistics say you’ll increase utilization by up to 40% doling out the forage instead of letting them have it all at once. 

So it’s about cows as it always is. And it’s about trust. And about continuing to seek new knowledge. Fitting for November when one feels reflective. When we take stock of the year behind us and think about what the next season has in store.  

calling the cows to change fields
"come on cows!"

rolling the pivot to change fields

Finding Doc

It was cold yesterday. I wore my coveralls all day. I’m still in my summer skin - still pumping my summer blood - so the extra layer was wonderful. I thanked Mark over and over for suggesting I throw them in the pickup.

We went to the hills to let the herd into another field. They could hear us coming on the 4-wheeler and jogged to meet us. They know the deal.

We were surprised to see an antelope in their midst. Actually, he was out in front getting the heck out of the way! We think of antelope as flatlanders; what was he doing up here in snow country?

The next job after letting the cows through the gate was hauling the bulls home from an adjacent pasture. We had left two horses, Doc and Jane, at the mountain ranch to do this very job, but when we went looking for them, we found Jane by herself. Any horseman knows this as a heartsick affair. Horses are eternally lonesome for their own kind and to go from two horses to one horse usually means disaster. My mind had him dead from a hunter’s bullet or from getting tangled up in fencing wire. We searched nearby and found nothing. Knowing that Mark’s folks were waiting at the corrals, we proceeded moving the bulls with a sick feeling.

When we got the bulls loaded and the trailers headed for home, me driving one outfit, Mark searched for Doc one more time to no avail. He had a thought, though, when he remembered a lone sheepherder’s horse next to a sheep camp due west of there. It’s on the route home. Could Doc have somehow gotten out of our pasture, traveled cross country over a ridge and attached to this horse? Turns out that’s exactly what he did. Mark spied him with the binoculars, rode Jane out in the field, slipped the halter on the visiting buckskin, and left the sheepherder’s bay to himself again.

I was already home and had delivered my load of bulls when Mark called. He was on top of a mountain where he could get cell service. I was in the garden. They were calling for a heavy frost so I was pulling the hold-out onions and beets, and cutting the last two purple cabbages. It was almost dark. What a relief to hear his good news!

I washed my produce in the light from the dining room window and laid down on the lawn. I could hear the bulls bellowing from their fall pasture just a quarter mile away, and in the background the rustle of leaves falling off the cottonwoods. I said my “thank you” to the universe and felt the solidness of the earth beneath me. My only care was that I was a day late to enjoy the hunter full moon.

they do love fresh feed

Through Donna's Eyes

My sister Donna moved to the east coast over thirty years ago. She went for an adventure. She didn’t really mean to stay that long, but stay she did. She’s the reason we’ve seen most of the Smithsonian museums, Gettysburg, Colonial Williamsburg, Mt. Vernon and Monticello. We’ve sailed the Chesapeake Bay, driven the Blue Ridge Mts., and strolled the boardwalks of Rehoboth Beach because of her. We’ve missed having her here these long years, but it’s enriched our lives having her home as a pinpoint on the map of the U.S.

It was her turn this year to come out west. When she pulled into our driveway she immediately started taking photographs of our freshly rained on fall-colored home site. She’s never been the one taking pictures, but with her smart phone has discovered a new hobby. Her images see our home from a different perspective.

She was here for sister retreat, our annual trip to reconnect us six sisters. This year we traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah, to the south, and Stevensville, Montana, to the north.

We viewed our grandmother’s “special collection” at the JW Marriott Library at the University of Utah. The staff had us put our bags and cell phones in a locker at the front of the collection and slip on white gloves to view the photographs put away by our grandmother many years ago for safekeeping.

We had gone to Salt Lake City for a history lesson. On our Mom’s side, we found our great grandfather’s simple grave marker among the 120,000 souls interred in the Salt Lake Cemetery. And from our Dad’s side, we searched the military rolls at Fort Douglas for a civil war soldier that played a poignant part of our history.

In the evenings we laughed in the hot tub, played Jenga, and assigned each sister the task of coming up with a one-word characteristic to describe each of us.  “Selfless,” “tough,” “eclectic,” “peacemaker,” “poised,” “over-thinker” all made the list.

We got back home and added our brother for an afternoon tour of the local graveyards looking for ancestors. Merle, my genealogically minded sis, had a list of names and photos, which along with colorful oral stories she knows by heart, made it an afternoon to remember. Bright sunshine and fall leaves scattered over the graves made the scene complete.

We’re now all immersed in our lives again. Left with the emailed images from a cell phone camera back at work selling houses in Maryland. The images, the impressions, of my East Coast sis - or as she calls herself, "our faraway sister."  

Jemmett headstone at Hillcrest Cemetery

storm over Higham's Peak

the olive and grandpa's table

fall pasture

October's freshly blooming black-eyed susans 

Reid Valley apples

To Everything its Season

We’ve had a string of cow-working days. Preparation for winter means weaning calves and processing individuals to update their vaccinations, and giving them their annual dose of parasiticide. The bulls are taken to their own pasture. The calves are trucked to the valley where they can eat our best feed. The adults stay in the mountains until snow forces us out.    

Ask any cowman or woman, and they’ll tell you that fall is their favorite time of year. The weather has cooled, the horseflies are gone. The mature perennial grasses are a soft, buttery color. The trees and brush go from yellow and rust to shades of grey. And when the calves come off a silence descends on the herd that’s like winter herself.  

We walked the cows to their fall pasture yesterday. They stretched for more than a mile, walking single file. Watching them this time of year, I always think of the word “resolute.” They know where they’re headed. They trust us.  

My sis rode with us a couple of days. She enjoyed it a lot, and having her along made me remember why I married a rancher in the first place. Riding horses and trailing cows was a grand activity when we were kids. And I still love it, it’s just that the burden of ownership gets in the way.  

Yesterday was near perfect. Not only was the weather sublime and the cattle willing, but we had some excitement before the day was over when we collided with a band of sheep. The big white dogs that provide predator protection to the sheep started chasing our cows. The sheep got in the action and all three species came barreling toward us scaring our horses. Kit took her frightened horse out of the melee and I got off Jane, afraid that in her fear she might remember she knows how to buck. Mark got control of his Doc horse and with the dogs got the sheep collected and away from the cattle. In a few minutes all was quiet again and the herd was safely through the gate.  

Kit has come back to riding horses. She was too busy raising kids, and working and owning a family business, to commit the time, energy, and money required to keep a horse fit. Never mind the tack and pickup and trailer to have on the side. She had an epiphany a couple of years ago when she had a rare day off and happened to ride a friend’s mare, one of those memorable horses that is kind, responsive and an absolute joy to handle. Kit remembered just how much horseback riding had meant to her as a young woman. Now she has a good, safe horse, her own saddle and her own transportation.

Most of all she has the luxury of time . . . and a post-fifty mindset that says, “it’s later than you think." Time to put first things first.

counting them through the working corrals

my sis and me

weaning day

Doc and Jane, our helpmates

before the sheep incident