Life Imitates Art in Unexpected Ways on Unexpected Trips.
I find myself on a cattle ranch in the Crazies in Montana.
It’s early May. I’m snug in the guest bedroom this night while a blizzard rages outside. We headed out earlier to check on the cows. They’re dropping their calves. When we rode out, it was windy and spitting rain. By the time we returned to the ranch house, it had begun to snow and within fifteen minutes, the snow became a howling blizzard. Now the rancher I’m staying with has to go out again. Two more calves were born this evening and he’ll probably have to bring them in, along with any other calf he finds that has been born in the past couple hours. This country is rugged, harsh, beautiful. Here, life is pared down to two simple facts, life and death. I saw the death pile earlier - the cows who died giving birth, the smallest calf of a set of triplets that died before the rancher could get to it. Their dark carcasses are piled in a small ravine. Scavengers will take care of them eventually.
It’s serendiptous that Siren recently contracted for Anytime Darlin’, a romance-suspense involving a cattle rancher up here in the Crazies. One of the pivotal scenes is set here during calving season - in a late spring blizzard.
I know the Crazies because we’ve been coming here for five years to spend time on a neighboring cattle ranch. I’m not the best at driving cattle. I merely do what I’m told and stay out of the way of the people who know what they’re doing. Last year I was surprised when the owner, who happens to be a woman, told me to round up the stragglers and get them beyond the last fence, all by myself. I was even more surprised that I managed it without incident.
Tomorrow, we’ll be up at 6 a.m. Weather permitting, I’ll borrow a horse and we’ll ride out to cut some heifers and a couple dozen steers that have been sold. We have to bring them down out of the foothills to the pens near the hay barn. It will just be four of us. This oughta be interesting…
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May 3rd, 2010 at 9:29 pm
If Julia doesn’t post tomorrow we will send out a search party.
May 4th, 2010 at 2:55 am
You always manage to amaze me with your life. Be careful.
May 4th, 2010 at 5:19 am
Geez, woman, is there anything you CAN’T do? If there is, I don’t know about it. I think it’s fair to say that I’ve never “met” a stronger person. You keep your softness and kindness but messing with you would be like tussling with a pile of cougars. I’m in awe.
Be careful, hon. Can’t wait to officially meet you this fall in NJ.
May 4th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
It’s partly cloudy, spitting snow, and the winds are gusting to 70 mph. I nearly got blown over an eight foot fence I had to climb. Finally came in out of the wind after five hours of sorting cattle. My job was to keep the heifers out of the pen the steers were headed into and count the steers. I used a metal stick to direct them and my body to block them. Picture anywhere between five and eight six hundred pound steers running toward you at one time and you need to get them into the right pen. Nerve wracking for the first few minutes, but then I realized that for the most part, the steers part around you like water.
It’s a good thing these cowboys have loads of extra gear because all I have is one long underwear shirt and a sweatshirt. I’m a California girl, after all! So now I’m decked out in long underwear, tops and bottoms, jeans, muckluks - or whatever they’re called, a silk scarf over my face, baseball cap and Carhardt jacket with a sweatshirt, undershirt and long underwear underneath. Still freezing my ass off!
Every once in a while, the wind dies down for a second or two, but my god! When my daughter and I got in the truck this morning, I had to climb over the console, hold her car door to keep it from literally blowing off the truck and then grab her and drag her into the truck…that was after the wind blew my door open, dragging me off my seat and out of the truck along with it!
This is a post in itself. I’ll write another post for tomorrow!
May 4th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Oh, by the way, it turns out to be 140 steers and about the same number of heifers.
May 4th, 2010 at 2:27 pm
I love Montana…some of the most gorgeous, fabulous and dangerously beautiful country on the continent.
May 4th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Enjoy and stay safe! I’d probably end up in the “Death Pile” in the ravine… lol
XXOO Kat
May 4th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Hope not, Kat! I agree, Fran!