Dear Friends and Partners It was 1985, and it was raining. Hard. And spitting snow. Kneeling in the muck on a slope so steep that as I knelt, my feet began to lose purchase on the ground and I quickly reached into my near-frozen bag of trees for a Douglas-fir seedling. I put aside my hoedad, the …
Wolves and Wide Spaces
Dear Friends This morning I got a phone call from one of my neighbors down the valley. “Glenn, this is Tom. Just wanted to give you a holler on the phone ‘cause apparently you got a cow way up Hat Creek. She’s just had a baby, and there are a pack of wolves within a mile or so of …
Re-creating Recreation
“Hey you guys—make sure you check your shoelaces on this ice!†I looked up to my daughters, downclimbing along the 1400 foot vertical precipice, as they gingerly worked their way along the sandstone ledges covered with fresh snow and ice. My only saving grace was that they had a solid 3/8 …
Working into the Ground
The kids and I worked outside much of the day. It was a little bitter. Although windless, the temp never got above the low teens and the sun was hidden behind thick clouds that spat snow on and off through the day. There was hay to fork, cattle to sort, wood to cut, and dog housing to build (for the …
Coming Home for Christmas
It wasn’t Christmas yet, but it was dang close. The very next day would be Christmas Eve. My buddy Greg and I decided to grab Christmas trees for our families up on the Hat Creek Ranges this year because we both had little kids at home, and it was forecasted to be frigid cold. Normally, we bundle …
Working the Borders
There were cows up Lawson Creek yesterday, the long valley that goes up into wild country above Alderspring's headquarters. I was hiking cross country in the light snow on the sagebrush ranges, when Clyde, the border pup I had with me suddenly perked his ears up. He spotted them in the thick birch …