Cowboy Collin comes to us from Seattle. Culturally, the remote ranges of Idaho contrast a little with the highest espresso bar density in the nation. He’s worked on Alderspring through the winter, but he traded the coastal rainforest of Puget Sound for the high desert in coming here. June was a little tough on him, as it got pretty darn warm and dry, even up on the range. He is more comfortable with the weather now; it’s been cool and raining on and off for weeks, so much, that there are puddles up on the grasslands of the range. Trail dust has turned to trail mud.
I warned him that herding beeves up on the range is not for the faint of heart. It’s important we get beeves placed so that they can harvest some of the very best pristine nutrition in the world. But mountain climbing and extreme outdoor adventures are normal for Collin. He has climbed extensively in the North Cascades: Twice, he summited Mt Baker, and climbed Mt. Rainier once, probably one of the most technical snow and ice summits in the lower 48. His thinking was that climbing and summiting the back of a horse would be a piece of cake. After all, he had ridden before.
The problems started when he picked up a free horse back in the Seattle country, and brought her here. A cross between something like a thoroughbred (like American Pharoah and Secretariat) and Dutch Warmblood, she was tall as the Tetons: perfect for a mountain conqueror! Plus, she seemed a sweetheart, and he was sweet on her. She even has a sweet name: Brielle (no self respecting cowpoke would ever name a horse a granola name like that! Might as well have called her Pumpkin-Spiced-Latte). She was a show jumper, and still handily jumps fences up to 5 feet in height (frustrating to the other horses still stuck on shorter grass and their owner who has to catch her and put her back in). She looked like an alien when she showed up on the ranch; even all of Alderspring’s quarter horses treated her like one.
She proved up as a jumper on the second day Collin took her around the home place. He introduced her to about 300 head of Alderspring’s bovines that afternoon. The cattle took great interest in the new mount and curiously surrounded her. That was when she promptly took an Apollo leap skyward in terror and attempted a catapulted moon shot with Collin as the space capsule.
He brushed off dirt, got back on, and over time, Collin’s tenacity conquered all, and Brielle began to get the idea of cattle herding–sort of. Collin’s bruises began to heal (that mare could buck!) and we nailed some iron on her feet and sent her a packin’. She was off to the range to earn her keep, making Alderspring beeves go from good to great on the wild wellness of the high summer ranges. She would be a partner with Collin in the quest for great grass, and placing the herd on it.
It takes two cowpokes to herd the beeves on the ranges these days. They need to see us and rest in our presence–if they do that, they’ll eat without stress, and take time to select the best grasses for flavor and their wellness. They are not half alert for predators, like they would be without us. Without us, they would keep traveling, and perhaps not eat as well or do as well. I was in a meeting with several other cattlemen a few weeks ago where one of them related a scientific presentation he saw that showed that feedlot cattle, when blood tested, showed a significantly higher concentration of stress related chemicals in their serum than pastured cattle.
I wondered how much less our beeves are stressed than even regular pasture cattle because of the herder relationship that we have established with them. We provide security for them as we keep watch on the horizon for troublesome predators on the hunt, and keep them together, bringing strays back into the bunch. That’s the day to day of what Collin and Brielle have endeavored together to do.
Now, that mare’s got probably 300 miles of dusty and muddy trail behind her (sometimes Collin was behind her as well, brushing off the dirt). He’s been kicked, bucked, reared, treed and dashed to the ground more times than you can shake a stick at. He’s walked miles through the night trying to catch up with her (he finally did). This week, his spectacles flew off after ground impact in an aspen thicket, only to be trampled by 50 head of yearlings that followed him there. Not field reparable.
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But he still likes her and cares for her. And I think she may even be sweet on him. He’ll probably be good enough to bronc ride when he gets through the summer. Who needs the adrenaline of summiting K2 or Everest? Mountains don’t buck, after all. Still, I’m sure he’ll be back to bagging peaks in a couple of months, as those beeves he is herding in that wilderness will be ready for your table come fall when they make their trail back to the home ranch. It’s a worthwhile pursuit of wild wellness for you, our partners.
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