As the trapper climbed up through the thickly needled foliage of the stout fir tree, he couldn't have known that his rear end would be parked there on that rough barked branch for nearly 4 days. Unfortunately, he couldn't take his horses up there with him, and if they were swept away by the brown …
Old Cowboys, Ranching, and Making Choices
Casper, the hammered 1968 Ford four-wheel-drive pickup rattled across the expansive sagebrush of Eighteenmile flats. The blinding glint of the rising sun was just creeping over the Beaverhead range and shone brightly through the dirty windshield. I looked behind me in the cracked mirror at the dust …
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Alderspring and Crater Lake
The thought of the desperate terror the residents of the Salmon River Country must have endured made my hands tight around the reins of my mare after my eyes had wandered, stopped, and fixed on the exposed soil layer that told the grisly tale as plain as day. The fact was that Italy's Mt Vesuvius …
All Quiet on the Western Ranch
The half-moon high overhead intermittently beamed through the clouds last night as Annie and I quietly navigated the lumbering hay rack wagon loaded with 4000 lbs of preserved summer grass out to our waiting beeves. Red and Jingle, the hugely muscular draft geldings walked out in cadenced rhythm …
Frankenpies and the Death of Dirt
The wind blew our half mile long lane to the main valley road shut with drifting snow again today. This is the second day without mail; we are effectively stranded. It's a good morning to put some observations to paper about life on earth as I see it. As a rancher, things can sometimes look pretty …
A Near Barbeque of Cowboys and Cattle on Taylor Butte
The watercolor azure skies above our little band of cattle and riders were rapidly degenerating into a threatening black of charcoal on this particular August afternoon. Little did we know then what chain of events it would set in motion that would deepen in each of us cowboys a respect for the wild …
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