May Mountain, cloaked in winter. Winter firmly laid hold of our high country this week. Yesterday morning, while driving my pickup through Stanley Basin up the Salmon River from us, the ice fog was impenetrable by even my off-road lights. The mercury read 24 below zero at the Stanley Mercantile. It wasn’t quite daylight, and I have often run …
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War Comes to Idaho
Dear Friends and Partners, After the ground crew pulled wheel chocks, Howard Thompson, Flight Officer aboard the B-17 Flying Fortress fired up the 4 Pratt and Whitney engines while Commanding Officer and First Lieutenant Joe Brensinger worked through the preflight. It was late Tuesday afternoon, on March 30, 1943. It wasn’t their first training …
A Thanksgiving Card Fom Alderspring
It was the weekend before Thanksgiving Day. Winter had already staked claim on the country, but we had to ride. Thirteen-year-old Melanie and I left the woodstove warmth of our cozy kitchen after a breakfast washed down with hot coffee. In the mudroom, we put on silk scarves and oilskin slickers over wool and leather to ready for whatever winter …
When Food Fails Great Minds
I stand in the backyard before anyone else is awake. It’s just me and the big white dog, Allie. My hands find the thick ruff of her neck, and she likes it. And I have the sense that there is no atmosphere and that there is nothing that stands between the heavens and us. The rosaceous dawn light is slow to creep into the valley at this time of …
Love on the Range
In retrospect, I know now that it was a love affair. Her name was Missy, and I believe it was mutual. I didn’t even try to keep it a secret from Caryl. I knew that she figured it out early in my forays into distant rangelands with the then nineteen-year-old Missy. We had been discovered in our not-so-secret relationship. Interestingly, I actually …
Big Dogs and Wild Protein
“Put your hands where they can see them…and FREEZE!,” I brusquely commanded the man who stood in the lane in front of our ranch house in the frosty morning air. His fully camouflaged person stopped midstride, and froze, just as our two Great Pyrenees stock guardian dogs descended on him, circling with teeth bared and hackles …
2016 Inherding SARE Report
Abstract: The summer season of 2016 marked the second year of trialing “Inherding” as a viable way to meet the growing complexities of grazing cattle on public (and private) rangeland. In concept, “Inherding” is quite simple. Rather than managing cattle with a “keeping out” paradigm and working to exclude livestock from sensitive areas, cattle are …
The Best Friend in Border Pups
The Salmon River was starting to swell with the first release of spring snow melt, and it flowed like a ribbon of liquid cold steel. Twelve-year old Melanie and I stood horseback, wordless, in the spitting rain on the rocky shoreline and eyed the 20 or so cattle on the opposite bank across the swirling stream of opacity. Escapees from our first …
