As I was crawling up Larkspur Canyon in my non-late model Chevy pickup, I kept my eyes peeled for the huge rocks that would roll down on to the densely vegetated two-track from the steep walls that soared above me. Only we drive this remote jeep trail smack dab in the middle of our wild grazing range and sometimes several years pass before we head this way. Last season we had a remote cow camp up here but today, I was bound for Larkspur Springs to check flow at the springs at the end of the road.
The track was covered with tall sagebrush and grass, and it was all I could do to see the trail. Keeping up the high concentration level, I began to notice a nagging feeling from the alarm side of my brain that I needed to look above the brush instead of below it.
And so I did.
And that’s when I saw it. All I could see was the area from the midsection to the hindquarters. At first, even though it was only a few yards away I didn’t know what it was. The color was off from the familiar. The huge body that loomed in front of me was buckskin red. The butt was like buttercream. My mind tore through the animal rolodex—I actually paused for a brief second at Aurochs, the ancient and now-extinct cow progenitor.
Then her head pushed its way through a seven-foot tall sagebrush. It was unmistakably a huge cow elk, and now I realized she was in the rare color cloak that told tale of her diet on rich spring green. Up until recently, all the wild elk I’ve been seeing still carried the bedraggled cloak of winter fur ready to shed out. But now, temperatures were up and their diet of wild plants gave a newly polished sheen and depth of color in her short summer hair coat. She was simply stunning.
I stopped and she froze. For several seconds, time stopped. As with her body, her head and neck were smooth velvet of unusual color: a very deep and warm shade of brown: burnt umber. We were so close to each other I could see her nostrils flaring as she tested the canyon bottom winds for who it may be.
And in the next second, she smelled the unmistakable scent of man. And was gone. Her presence was like a dream, vivid, persistent.
My mind lingered over the glistening look of her coat, and what got it there. She is a product of what she eats. Our beeves roam these same ranges, and eat of the same green. Caryl estimates that there are over 300 plant species that are eaten by our beeves on our wild summer ranges. Compare that to an average cultivated domestic pasture with, at most, 20 different species of plants. There’s an incredible choice of graze-able plants out there, and from horseback, I watch our steers sample nearly all of those. It always intrigues me, to see them exploring diversity; they’ll try just about everything from bitterbrush to bluebunch.
I think that is the reason why sickness in our steers is so 
low. Food is medicine, they say for us, and in the case of an Alderspring steer, a multitude of wellness creating compounds is harvested in those 300 plants on soils that have never seen plow, herbicide or spray boom.
It’s also why flavor is found on Alderspring. Those same compounds eaten by steer end up in steak. Maybe we aren’t in fact what we eat, but our wellness is affected by what we eat, and what our food ate. So, in a sense, you partake of the same diversity that our steers did. Your vicarious grazing of these wild pastures brings wellness and flavor to your table as well.
Thanks for grazing wild mountain ranges with us.
Happy trails.
Glenn, Caryl, Cowboys, and Cowgirls at Alderspring Ranch
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