Fresh out of the showroom, and on the way home from church, the 1972 red Pontiac Bonneville with a faux rag top cut a path through the early spring whiteout conditions on the high plains of Colorado. Sheepman Dave Jolly was behind the wheel, and his wife, Albertine, rode shotgun. She alone was the gravity and force that required travel on this …
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Black Ice in Deep Canyons
Dear friends and Partners “Are you OK?” I tried to gain eye contact of the obviously more than a little dazed driver. His jeans were freshly shredded, coat impregnated with the reddish ocher of Salmon River cliff-rock, and had a few fresh and bloody scrapes and bruises on his ruddy complexion. He was aimlessly walking around, staring at his …
A Christmas Quest
Dear Friends The bright daylight of the brilliant winter sun in crystal clear skies was starting to fade as the horizon of rugged mountains gained the sun. And that meant it was already getting palpably colder. The other problem was that we were still a long way from the truck, and even that bus ticket out of the mountains was questionable. I …
The Story of the Grulla Gelding
Often the horses I work with teach me more than I do them. The difficult lessons of patience and humility are best learned through experience and training and riding horses is full of experiences both positive and negative. There is the elation when we are both on the same page, moving as the same unit, in time and balanced. And there is the …
Safely Gathered In
Roxy and Bobby returned home this week. For Christmas, you might say. And indeed, they have, although they likely haven’t a clue about the significance of the 25th of December. It’s because the equine brain isn’t founded on watches and calendars. Instead, they build extensive maps made 3 dimensional by sight, sound and smell. Their knowledge of …
When King Quits Crown
Dear Friends “Push me up!” Susan scowled from her perch, halfway up the ladder to the high seat on the hay wagon. She was fairly heavy, and her skin-tight oversize western jeans created a fairly intimidating view of her backside, hanging precariously in mid-air. She was stuck there and couldn’t quite get enough traction to launch her abundant …
“Gas” Fed Beef
Dear Friends and Partners, After pulling up to the pump I slid my credit card in the slot for a quick scan, and after the prompt picked my poison. Eighty-five octane with E10. Ten percent ethanol. It’s ubiquitous these days, that pesky ethanol. It comes from corn, ironically now being produced at a greater expense than the petrol it is …
A Day on the Range
This week's story comes from the third sister down, Linnaea. We've been reviewing applications and interviewing potential summer range riding interns for much of this week, so this account of a typical day up in cow camp seems appropriate. After all, green pastures and long, hot days are in our not-so-distant future. Waking up is hard. The …