Perfect, perhaps

Mark and I are catching our breath after moving cattle here and there for the last couple of weeks. We’ve had lots of rain and our world is a verdant paradise. After a mild winter and dry March, the moisture came out of nowhere and just keeps coming.

We laid in bed for a few luxurious minutes this morning. It was warm enough to leave the window open all night for the first time this spring and a cacophony of birdsong woke us. Mark called their clamoring, “the excitement of a new day.”

We had one perfect day in the mountains with the kids before they left for the summer. We took up a load of bulls to deliver to the cows and calves (seems we intend to do this all over again next year). Then we had to move the herd across a creek and into an adjoining field.    

I say the day was perfect, but that’s not entirely true. Seth got annoyed with me when I parked my 4-wheeler right directly in the path of the bulls so I could get a photo from the right position. An artist has to get her shot! Then Anna was perturbed when I had a different idea of how to get some straggler calves to cross the creek. Somehow my long experience with cattle herding (while they gallivant around the countryside) carries little weight in my kids’ minds!

Then Seth proceeded to tell me we didn’t do enough to protect the stream banks for fish habitat. “Easy to say when you’re not here to make it happen!”

Annoyed with them, I left to put out salt while they watched the herd settle in. When I returned, still in my not-so-pleasant mindset, I found them in good spirits singing cowboy songs! Another lesson for me. A brief moment of annoyance is just that - a moment - not a habit. Let it go.

And the photos were worth it, don’t you think?