Dear Friends and Partners As we made our way through the switchbacks cut into the rock pasted against the cliffy bluffs, the crystal clarity of the Salmon River rolled lazily by below. An orange sun worked its way down to the horizon. Like us, I think the sun may be getting tired of forest fire smoke. The fires keep going into this month of …
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On Making Horse Sense
The forest-fire-smoke-induced-orange ball of sun broke the jagged 10,000 foot spine of the Continental Divide as I braked my truck and trailer to a gentle stop. I had the big gooseneck with 8 horses on board, and I chose the open grassy spot next to a massive crack willow trunk. The spreading branches arched over the two track that ushered arrivals …
When Flint Meets Steel
There’s some sort of mystical bond between young girls and horses. It’s rare to see this in boys, but it often happens early in a girl’s life. They’re drawn to horses, even before they set their hand or hearts to one. On the outside, especially from the viewpoint of a male it looks like girls can go horse crazy. And all of our girls grew up with …
Bringing Them All Back Home
It was a cryptic message, but I knew what it meant immediately. When I read the text, the two-week open window that had been a pesky nuisance in my mind finally slammed shut. I reread the satellite phone message from daughter Linnaea: “Got ‘em loaded and about to drive out.” That’s it. Out of the blue. Up until then, it had been radio silence …
A Tale of Two Ranches
August 17: three of us, standing over a six-inch diameter pipe sticking out of the ground, in the middle of the broad field, staring at the 1 inch of water in the bottom of it in a windstorm. Boiling, threatening clouds of green, brown and gray rise up in the west. We all cast furtive glances to the dull nearly indistinguishable horizon. Linnaea …
Hope in Fire Season
I bashed my head on the frame of the pickup in an unconscious attempt at sitting up, perhaps dream initiated. This was the second time. Awake, first forgetting where I was, but rudely brought back to reality by unyielding steel on forehead. I’m surrounded by the noise of truck traffic, helicopters in landing and take-off, and incessant radio …
Sutter’s Mill and Salmon River Sediments
The Salmon River is running chocolate milk, and I think it saved us. I had been clattering on the rough cobble of the rocky shore, threading my way through downfall and impenetrable willow brush with my mare, Sunny, tracking a couple of steers in the early morning light as more rainclouds scudded across the short-lived sun. I scanned the steep bank …
Beaver As Teacher
Beaver camp, July 2019. We call it that because there were at least two colonies of beavers there, thriving in the waters of upper Little Hat Creek, just a few hundred meters from where we were living as well, in a five tented temporary settlement of cowhands and horses, high in the backcountry at the foot of Table Mountain. They didn’t seem …