The first light of dawn unfolding at 5 AM woke me. I had slept well at our new camp in my usual spot on the ground under the cook fly, only wakened by the occasional stirring of doggie dreams from the border collies True and Gyp who liked to sleep with their backs against mine. The night before this one, mice woke me on several occasions as they danced on my face and feet, apparently trying to find their way into my warm bedroll.
I got up, fired up the coffee pot, rolled up my bedroll, and picked up the horse blankets I used as padding. Grabbing a camp chair and shaking out my boots, I reflected on the truism that you never know what may find its way into a warm boot; I’m dang wary of rattlers parking there for the night.
As I poured some hot liquid from my fire blackened coffee pot, I cast my eye over the rolling hills of green surrounding camp. There were some yearling antelope engaged in a game of tag on the hill above. Rain spattered on the cook fly and the pungent smell of wet sagebrush filled the morning air. I could hear the deep breathing of beeves all around me as they too stirred in the tall sage in their night ground.
Linnaea and I broke Camp Number 2 at Little Hat Creek yesterday and loaded all the gear and food for 10 days on the backs of four horses for the climb to Larkspur Springs (Camp Number 3). We finally arrived with our horses and gear at 7 pm, and were supposed to rendezvous with the cattle and their herding crew. But all was quiet when we arrived except a solitary elk who watched us suspiciously from atop a brushy hill as we rode in.
Daughter and cowgirl Melanie was running the crew on the tablelands high above Larkspur Spring that day. The others on her crew were two newer cowboys. Anthony was on stint number two, and was learning well the art of partnering with his paint mare, Roxy and beginning to mentally engage on the nuances of stockmanship: convincing 250 young and sometimes unruly and athletic beeves to want to go where you need them to go. Control was important in a place where the first fence was 10-15 miles away and hungry packs of wolves could conveniently pick off any strays.
Her second protégé that day was Jake, a young man of 18 who was new to everything, having arrived at the ranch just 3 days before. I rode with Jake the first day of his time on the range earlier this week. There is a lot to learn, and the first few days for anyone new are both mentally and physically exhausting. Jake was an eager learner, but I could tell he was really tired and the long days and short nights were catching up to him.
Linnaea and I were both thinking we might have to drop camp setup and climb back on horseback to find the herd and crew, but finally, as dusk was just coming on strong with a little breezy rain with it, I spotted the herd descending from the tablelands. Melanie spoke to the guys quietly as she expertly directed the beeves down the draw from her palomino, Ruby.
The thing that really impressed me along with her accomplished horsemanship and stockmanship skills was her ability to route-find her way with the herd and the cowboys across a vast and featureless tableland. There was no GPS to guide her, let alone a tree or building. There were only the undulating waves of hill and mountain on 70 square miles of sagebrush ocean. She had never been to Larkspur Spring before. I had simply described it to her and she managed to plug it into the rest of the mental map she had of the 70 square miles of rangeland. It was navigation by feel, and she pulled it off. Her years of life on the range had come to fruition already even though she was only 23 years young. I was a proud Dad.
Linnaea and I had little time. We started sprinting with fence posts and electric fencing (which is powered by a solar battery). We had to have the night pen set up for the cattle before the herd arrived, and we just made it. Melanie, Anthony, and Jake herded the cattle into the half acre night pen, the cattle got a good drink, and then laid down for rest.
But no rest for us yet.
We worked together setting up camp in the gathering darkness. We unpacked gear from the horses, deployed sleeping tents, set up the cook tarp and gear, stowed the saddles and other horse gear. It was around half past midnight when Melanie, Anthony, Linnaea and I realized that we hadn’t seen Jake for about an hour and a half.
It took some bellering on Anthony’s part to get his muffled response from deep in the thick and tall sage. He had been moving some gear away from where the cook fly was going up, and thought he’d just set a spell after all day on horseback in sun, rain and wind. It was all it took. He was asleep almost instantly. We cajoled him back to the camp kitchen where he got some much needed victuals before turning in to his bedroll in the wee hours.
Larkspur is a very remote camp, tucked into a basin in what is and always has been a sagebrush ocean. As I said, there are no trees, and only big sagebrush 6 or 8 feet tall. Cowboy Anthony, who is studying range ecology at the University of Idaho, says it’s the biggest sage he’s ever seen, but it’s typical for these deep black soiled draw bottoms that also harbor great basin wildrye, a native grass that can also grow 7 feet high. It used to cover valley bottoms all through the intermountain west, and early settlers would often lose their cattle and horses in the tall grass that went on for miles.
But as with many good things, the very grass that encouraged folks to settle in this country soon disappeared. In just a few years, it was gone. The culprit: continuous grazing. Bison and wild sheep ate it and left. Now, domestic cattle never stopped grazing it.
I’m happy to see a lot of basin wildrye colonizing our summer range again. It’s because our grazing use mimics that of the bison and the native plants respond in kind. Sometimes it takes years to see it in our harsh and wild environment, but the changes in this untrammeled landscape are becoming more profound with every year we graze up there. Aspen forests are rejuvenating, willows are proliferating, and all of us on horseback this season have noticed that elk and antelope appear fatter and healthier than many others we’ve observed this year in other places in the mountain west.
And then there’s the Larkspur Spring itself. I recall when I first ran cattle up to it 13 years prior. It was hammered by unsupervised cows who camped there for the entire grazing season, relentlessly grazing all things green, even the willows and chokecherries that called the spring home. A ramshackle attempt at a stock tank proved poor bait to keep the cattle from the sensitive wetland vegetation that was a green oasis in the sagebrush sea for the wild critters we shared the land with.
After expressing my desire to protect the springs, the Bureau of Land Management (who owns 26,000 acres of Alderspring’s grazing lease) agreed to help with protection of the critical habitat and an improved stock watering system for us. Now, nearly every time I visit the now completely ungrazed and protected springs, I meet elk and antelope who share its habitat with our occasional use of the surrounding grasslands. Willows are coming back, birds are nesting, frogs are exploding and Basin wildrye is recovering. Cherry seedlings are everywhere, and soon, the black bears will follow (they love cherries in the fall).
Our visit to Larkspur will be for about 10 days as we daytime graze the surrounding tablelands, gathering flavor on the diverse wild plants that have lived here since the last ice age. Then, we may not return for several years. I am humbled and grateful for the beauty and the scale of the wilderness we graze on, and honored to be a steward of it. Thanks for being a part of our journey of capturing flavor and wellness. It’s wellness of both wild landscapes and the wellness of the nutrient dense protein that they yield.
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