A Day in the High Meadows

I’m horseback on my buckskin mare as I write this, settling our beeves on a new meadow. It is a grassy sky island in a sea of high altitude coniferous forest, and even in late July, the grass is green. In addition, the air is thick with the fragrance of pine and fir, and a slight drizzle makes the scents even more pungent.

We’ve never had cattle in some of this country, as the 70 square miles of grass range we have is more than enough to get lost in. Because of the incredible diversity in the montane landscape, we learn new details about it every day we ride. Often, we can let the beeves lead the way as they pick up the scent of water or lush green. This morning, they sped off and lined out down a draw nose to tail. We followed them there only to find a lovely clear pond set in a lush 10 acre meadow. I’ve ridden this range for 11 years now, and never knew of its existence… until today, thanks to those cattle who are genetically intact enough to still have wild inclinations and can smell water.

You’ve got to watch those ponds when your horse drinks out of them. I was watching Jeremiah’s mount Natalie the day before while she drank heartily out of one of our mountain ponds. She stepped back after drinking, played with her snaffle bit with her tongue for an unusual amount of time, and quickly swung her head in the direction of the pond. Arching out in the air from her open mouth came a flying frog who splashed back in the middle of his home and swam to safety!

I have two of my daughters riding a few day stint with me, and we’ve already been riding for about 4 hours since leaving cow
camp Texarkana (so named for reasons we don’t know by some hunters who camp here every fall for a few weeks with their families). It was a cold morning for a July day—and I found myself looking for a touch of nightfrost on the cast iron as we made an early breakfast. I noted the cowboys left a guitar in camp”¦I had high hopes of picking a little while up there, but never had the time or the energy to pick it up. I asked the girls if they slept warm, and they did once they got their bedrolls warmed up. There’s not a lot of glory to living out on the range with the cattle”¦and as cowboy Jeremiah said, “you fall into bed after supper off the Coleman stove, and at sunrise, it starts all over again.” Those cattle are ready to go to breakfast too, and our job is to bring them to lovely grass each day.

Where I’m writing this, we are just a couple of miles above cow camp, but nearly a 1000 foot climb in elevation. As the winding trail through the thick Douglas-fir forest entered this new park (it’s what the old timers called grassy openings in forest) our horses took notice of the huge studpile marking the meadow’s entrance. This is a purposeful and strategic manure pile left by the black stallion leader of a band of feral (domestic gone wild) horses. He has claimed the area as his. It makes us acutely aware that there could be trouble as he could try to entice or fight our horses, so we are always watching our horses’ eyes and ears for the telltale signs of attention. They’ll likely see them before we do. Jeremiah ran into the stallion last week, who was prancing arrogantly in front of his mares, nostrils aflare and blowing. I’ve bumped into him at a distance, and had my girls get off so they could get in front of their mounts, and handle them more effectively with bridle in hand on foot in case of confrontation.

Most of the day, the beeves want to move out and explore new grass opportunities throughout the range, and we ride with them, keeping all together and safely away from cliffs, predators or dry country with no water. Occasionally, they just want to take a break and lay down to chew cud for a while; we take cue from them and do the same. After a quick saddlebag lunch, we’ll take a short siesta in the shade with one of our horse’s halter ropes in hand; if we hold the lead mare, the others will just graze around us while we doze. This day, I opened my eyes to find the sky black above me: a 1000 lb steer stood over me, front legs to my left, and rear to my right. I shifted a little and he launched skyward (and thankfully landed away from me!). I rolled over and saw another steer with Melanie’s smartphone in his mouth (thinking selfie?), and looked behind and saw our black mare’s leg in my lunch sack. The girls left me high and dry to get a few herd quitters back on foot! Then I noticed I still had hold of my trusty buckskin, Ginger, with end of her lead in my right hand. Sometimes I wonder if those beeves are a little too comfortable around us, like sheep are with their guardian dogs and sheep herd.

Sheep roamed much of this country here, and we found an old sheepherder’s camp at the edge of the meadow. There is very little evidence of humanity here, and his old camp stove is all that’s left, I think, but then we see what are probably his initials carved on the paper white bark of an aspen tree: D.S. ’47. The bears didn’t appreciate his mark much; they left their bigger claw marks all over the same tree.

The beeve’s appetite seems to be like the bears: big as the country. They feasted on green grass from the get go on the trail climb from camp to here this morning. Then, as if they had enough grass to eat, they started in on the herbs. They eat yarrow and cinquefoil by the mouthful, and a variety of forbs that only Caryl, my sweetheart with a doctorate in botany, would know. (I bring her pictures and bedraggled samples of plants to identify). We spend a lot of time observing what they eat. They are learned behaviors, now, that they have been on the range for going on two months, so I am thinking they are selecting flavors that they have discovered to need for optimizing their wellness.

And well they are. Occasionally, we’ll note a runny nose in the herd, or an eye that seems to be sporting an early infection, but we have yet to doctor anything up here as those maladies only last for a day or two. I think it is because their immune systems are optimized because they are allowed to choose their own ration. Our job becomes pretty simple: just present the salad bar of wild forage diversity, and they will select based on flavor chemistry that suits their needs at that time. In turn, that chemistry is what makes our beef flavorful and healthful to us as well.

The only problem is that the beeves like to eat at all daylight hours. That means 12-14 hours in the saddle, every day, for at least two of us. Thank God it is beautiful country, and really hard to get tired of.