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 […]
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 […]
The Lost Great Pyrenees
It was a cold mid-December day when Allie and her best friend and border collie, Clyde, made a run for it. They occasionally do, just exploring the river bottoms adjacent to the big pastures on the Alderspring prairie where our beeves run herd for the winter. They ran off like Mutt and Jeff, big, white, […]
Fire and Morels
Dear Friends and Partners, It was an uneasy sleep that night. Despite the tumult just beyond cook tent, I tried to sleep on the ground in cow camp on the banks of the river, eyeing the sprinkling of stars through the latticework of bud-bursting cottonwood trees. Linnaea lay passed out beside me, in peace for […]
The Shocking Truth About Sandy
The county fairgrounds are unusually quiet for the week before the fair. It’s yesterday afternoon, and it is cool. Big thunderheads cruise over the mountains that reach up to the sky along this valley, the Lemhi. The clouds promise at least thunder, and perhaps a shower. I have many memories here, with my 4-H daughters […]
At Home on the Range?
It was our second day on the range this past spring. Chilly williwaw winds buffeted the open rock and hill country we rode in. They brought squalls of icy rain and spitting snow streaming downward from the precipitous snow-covered heights above us which were partially obscured by low and fragmented clouds that foamed like ocean […]