Riding for the Brand on Early Alderspring Ranch

As I pulled Melanie’s saddle cinch tighter than her young arms could, I looked over the barn roof up at the gathering clouds. Not good. It was October, and I wondered which direction the weather would go. If it got any colder, it felt like it would snow. As if to make its decision known, the wind answered with a cold snapping gust to my face from the North. As I set the latigo, I looked up at 6 year old Melanie, mounted on her mare.

“You gonna be warm?”

“Yeah…I think so.”

“It could snow on us.”

“But it’s not winter.”

“It is here.” I grabbed my stirrup and stuffed a boot in. Swinging a leg over, I checked my grey mare’s reins back with a quick tug. She always tried to move out the second I put my leg over. Sally was solid horse with a lot of cow sense, and could rope and cut, but she had her bad habits.

She was gutsy, though. I rode her to gather a rogue bull just a few weeks before, and the bull took after us, repeatedly ramming us in Sally’s chest and shoulder. I asked her to keep after him, and she prevailed. She was as gritty as her former owner, Ron Alder, the old cowboy we cut a deal with for the ranch in the first place. She came with the outfit, along with 7 cows and a bull. I guess you could call it a turnkey ranch.

Alderspring. It was named after the Alders who bought it from the Carpenters, who bought it from the Shoshoni. The place sat at the foot of the Continental Divide along the terraced foothills broken and carved by the sinuous curve of the Lemhi River. We got it for what today one would call “a song,” partly because we were willing to create a lifetime estate for the Alders, so they could live out their lives on the ranch that Ron had been born on. It wasn’t a very large place, but was all we could pull off, as we had little money. And little money meant no hired help.

Our home was a 10×40 1969 mobile home. The corrals and logs that made up the barn walls all came from the woods above the ranch. It was what the county agent called a “starvation outfit.” But it was home, and it was ours. Our meager herd left us short in paying the bills requiring Caryl and I to two-time it and take town jobs. When I needed help on horseback, I relied on Melanie. Abby was still a tad young at 5, and although she’d been on horseback she lacked the control I needed to gather and move cattle.

I looked over at my 6 year old in her winter hat and pack boots, mounted on older mare Bonnie, former mustang, tamed after being captured from the wild ranges. She came for free from the owner of the next ranch over, which we leased. Bonnie had raised all of their daughters, now gone off to college. Although she wasn’t much to look at, she was a solid and stoic little mare that was kind to kids and would never freak out. Plus, as a bonus, she had these bulletproof black mustang feet that never needed iron on them. She had never had horseshoes on; judging from her character, if you tried such a thing, you might find yourself in the next county when you picked her feet up. I had always left well enough alone.

We rode off from the ranch buildings onto the high terraced meadows of our home place. On a clear day, you could see all the way to Allen Mountain above the North Fork of the Salmon, 55 miles away. But today there would be none of that. The wind whipped in gray clouds that looked like they could bust open with moisture, and the breeze came from all compass points. The clue back at the barn was confirmed as the wind settled on the direction that brought weather down from Canada’s high Arctic. It was a north wind, increasing in speed and power. I was running out of time.

The ride wasn’t a long one. I just needed to bring the herd down from the windy and exposed breaks that we call “the bars” to the bottoms where there was shelter in the thick scrubby willows. It was almost the season to feed hay, but there was still adequate graze in the shelter of the brush that we held for a time like this. The calves that were our yield from this entire year of work would be vulnerable to losing weight from exposure. There were only some 35 pairs to find on the terraces at the base of the foothills. It would be an easy gather.

There wasn’t much to say on the ride up to the bars. The wind whipped our voices behind us as the words came out, so we rode mostly in silence as the wind wailed through the leafless cottonwoods that lined the terrace-like openings of the fields above. We trotted as we crested the break on to the high meadows of the hayfields where the cows resided. We split up and started bringing them out from the fencelines and joining them together.

In only 20 minutes or so, the 70 head were in a nice bunch, and heading back to the ranch. Easy peasy. The nice thing was that the wind was at our backs as we brought them up the bar and cattle like moving away from the wind.

Little did we know that our helpful northwest wind was about to cave in to a surprise attack from the Great Divide. The East wind was our worst, a wind driven by very cold air in the Big Hole Valley to the east spilling over the low spot in the divide (Lemhi Pass) and roaring like a runaway freight train without brakes downhill along Agency Creek to our little ranch. The east wind was always cold, and always very strong, and usually brought moisture. Depending on the temperature differential between our valley and the Big Hole, the wind could blow out in under an hour, or blow relentlessly all night.

The wind switch happened instantly, bringing thick white flakes that plastered our faces with cold and wet. The cows didn’t stop to reckon their options. They were immediately convinced that it was pure foolishness to continue their eastward walk. The snow was caking their eyeballs shut. The old girls in the lead did a turnaround in something like 5 seconds, and soon the whole herd went tails up to the sky and running butts to the wind back from where we had come. We tore off with them, and when we got to the fence, started the chore over.

It was a fight. I kept calling instructions to Melanie, but the wind stole my words. She was on the other side of the bunch, and I could see she was getting frustrated. Her little body was caked with snow. But we were making progress, and I noted she had the sense to get right on those old and smart cows who tried to cut her. I figured she couldn’t be too bad off if she was still minding the work at hand. I couldn’t get up to her, because if I did, my side of the bunch would make a break for it. It wasn’t like there was shelter for them to head to. They would just pile up along the barbed wire at the end of the bar and freeze there.

The ground was now white, and was a tad slick. After an interminable half hour fight, the cows finally lined out, as they got in the lee of the ghostly shapes of skeletal cottonwoods. The snow kept coming hard. We were almost home free, and they were only a quarter mile away from the quiet shelter of the creek bottoms. As they lined out, I finally trotted up and checked on Melanie. Not happy, a little snow caked, with tracks of former tears etched on her wind reddened face. I got a little smile out of her, as the wind in the cottonwoods was less and the snow no longer driving.

“You cold?”

“Yeah.”

“Gonna make it OK?”

“Yeah.”

I looked away from her to the herd, and spied some calves trying to shortcut it off the steep and rocky break to the thick willows in the bottoms. What they didn’t know was that there was stretch of barb wire waiting to stop them at the base of the hill and calves are often too dumb to head back the way they came. I dug my heels to Sally and raced after them, trying to cut them off on the steep sidehill.

It was fresh snow on steep and rocky mud, and before I knew it, Sally’s feet were flying out from under us. She went down on her side, and we careened and tobogganed downward, sliding sideways down the break, both of us flailing to gain footing. We finally came to a stop, shook it off, and regained our feet.

Melanie rode up far above, as I checked my gray mare over for any cuts or bruises. The mud protected both of us, and the soft ground had given way to our bodies and bones, leaving us caked with mud, snow and leaves, but nothing else.

“Are you OK?” Melanie yelled. She sounded a little frantic.

“Oh yeah. We’re good. A little scraped up and muddy is all.” I looked up to her. “You still got the herd?”

“Yeah. They are still moving out.”

“Good girl. I’ll be right up.” I walked around the calves to encourage them back toward their moms. I stayed on foot, letting Sally pick her own way back up to Melanie and the cattle. We had joined up with the dirt road that bisected the ranch, and the cows trotted happily, now without us pushing them because they remembered the new graze that lay ahead.

Melanie and I rode silently back to the ranch. The Big Hole cold air had finished draining over the divide, and it was now windless. The snow lazily drifting downward in the fading light of late afternoon looked peaceful and the past hour’s adventures dreamlike except for the mud caked all over my clothes. We stopped at the house. “I’ll take your mare from here.”

Her small wet and shivering frame dismounted and headed into the woodstove warmed kitchen without looking back. I knew she had enough. It was one of those days where I felt like bad Dad.

There are a few days where the best laid plans go haywire. That October day was one of them. There would be others, and these wild days make the stuff of legend for our family and our ranch.

But most of the days turn out to be an honest day of work that yield success for the land and life on it, for man (or woman) and beast. More often than not, the days of hard work provide a sense of pleasure for what has been accomplished.

The broad valley that we call home is called the Pahsimeroi, an island of prairie in a sea of high mountains. Our 600 acres of grazing ground has swelled to a little over 47,000 acres. Our home is a log home we built, still unfinished, but no longer the sardine can we used to live in.

And we still ride horses, and embrace the land and life before us. Melanie survived her childhood in spite of me and now goes to school in Montana. She still rides every day; more often than not now she rides green colts that learn all they know about humans from her. Abby is married to our top hand, Ethan. Linnaea is in college in Boise. Four more teenagers at home (all girls—and I’m still barely hanging on through that; call me if you have advice). I’m still very gratefully married to the same woman. All of us work on Alderspring, even the ones in college.

And thanks to all of you, we are still here. As many of you know, we will ship our 20,000th box of Alderspring’s wild wellness this week. You are all—both charter members and first time customers– honored partners in this, our vision of bringing you the best nutrient-dense protein from the remote and wild mountain landscape we call the high Pahsimeroi. So I stand in humble gratitude, friends, for persisting with us in our vision. You are the best customers. Trusting…and trusted. Thank you.

Happy Trails.
Glenn, Caryl and Girls at Alderspring Ranch