The Things We Do for Fun

This being the frozen tundra, we don't have a whole lot of outdoor rodeos until the beginning of June. This weekend was the official opening of the Northern Rodeo Association season, with shows in Browning and Conrad, both of which are conveniently located close to where I live. So of course I entered. And of course, it rained. For days. And inches.

I was pleasantly surprised by the condition of the arena in Browning. They've hauled in a lot of sand over the years, and didn't get near as much rain as we did, and none fell during the rodeo. Which was good, because it was only forty five degrees outside.

Yesterday was gorgeous, sunny and warm, and today was close to the same, so by the time we arrived in Conrad for the world famous Whoop-Up Days, the arena was looking pretty decent. 

Ugly black clouds gathered, but slid off to the south, close enough to hear the rumble of thunder, but not a drop of rain fell...until over halfway through the rodeo. And of course, the breakaway roping is the second to the last event. The sky opened up right at the end of the barrel racing. It rained, it hailed, it thundered and even tossed a few bolts of lightning around. And no, the rodeo did not stop. The only event they cancelled was the little kids' mutton busting, and it wasn't because the kids weren't game (wimpy parents). 

It was coming down by the bucketful during the saddle bronc riding, but cousin Beau still managed to spur one to first place. His grandmother was very pleased, because, as she said, "I was afraid his horse might slip and fall and I need him to run that damn ranch." 

What can I say, we're a sentimental lot. 

We hoped the storm would come and go, but instead it settled into a steady downpour. I've cracked out a new rope horse this year, and this is only her sixth rodeo. She'd like to have a look at her contract, because she's pretty sure she didn't sign up for this....

She handled it like a champ, though, gave me a throw to win first or second, but I roped the calf around the top of the head. Still, I was pretty happy with Tick's performance, if not mine. Shouldn't take more than a week to get my saddle and blankets dried out, but I'm thinking that rope will never be quite the same. 

We sloshed back to our rig, soaked to the skin, and realized the down side of rodeos that are close to home. No need to bring the camper, so no dry clothes to change into. And despite the seventy percent chance of thunderstorms, it never occurred to me to toss any in the pickup. So I spent the drive home like this, trying to dry out my socks (notice the stains from soaking clear through my black boots) and the backside of my jeans:

Ah, yeah. Good times. 

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The Not-So-Wildlife

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We heard through the grapevine that this was supposed to be a long holiday weekend according to non-farm and ranch people, so we decided to run a little wild and head for the mountains. Our intention was to leave right after lunch, but of course there were a few things to do first like a quick roping practice session (summer rodeo season kicks off Friday), fix the air seeder, move the rollers over to the far north field, and a handful of other odds and ends, so we didn't get gone until almost three. Lucky for us, we get seventeen hours of daylight this time of year, and it only takes an hour and a half to get from the ranch to Waterton Lakes Park in southern Alberta, assuming you know the special short cut across my aunt's cow pasture. And since I finally remembered which chore coat I was wearing the last time I used the camera, you even get pictures.

You can't beat Glacier National Park for scenery, but Waterton Village has an edge in amenities because people live there year round, so there are several great restaurants, lots of cool stores, and an ice cream shop on every corner (except this is Canada so they call them confectionaries). We were also hoping to see some wildlife, but I'm not sure it counts as such when it's camped out under the elementary school jungle gym.

According to the flyer we were given when we entered the park, Waterton Village employs a woman and her three collies to keep the wildlife cleared out of town. I don't think she's winning. 

We ventured beyond the main lake and the village for the first time, to Cameron Lake. The day was absolutely perfect, sunny and barely a breeze (big news in this part of the country), and we spent much of our eight hour vacation doing this:

While our son tried to fill the lake with rocks:

And a pair of these gave us a thorough scolding for not bringing along suitable offerings. 

We meandered back to the village, had some very respectable barbecued ribs for dinner, then walked across the street to the beach and lingered there watching the lowering sun light up the mountains and reflect on the lake. Then we reluctantly headed home, but Mother Nature put on one last special light show as we crossed the border back into the U.S.

Not bad for a half-day holiday. 

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Yeah, yeah....

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I know. Like everything else on this ranch, the ol' blog is running behind. No, it's not still winter as the header might imply, I'll get on that. Or else I already have by the time you're reading this, and you're seeing green grass and sunshine instead of snowdrifts. It did finally stop snowing the last week in April, we have green grass, the trees are starting to get serious about leafing out, and the blizzards have morphed into sweet-smelling spring rains.

I'm sure glad the weather has settled down, all those April storms were killing my bad toe. Of course I'm not cool enough to have a bum shoulder that acts up whenever a cold front rolls in. Nope. I get shooting pains in my crooked fourth toe. And no, I didn't break it while fending off a charging bull. I tripped over my son's footstool one morning in a pre-caffeinated haze. Not much of a coffee shop story there.  

I remember back in the old days, the boys down at the cafe΄ comparing aches, a cluster of grizzled, human barometers. "Yup, gonna rain tonight," Art might declare. "The knee I messed up back in '68 is throbbing like the devil. You remember when I did that, Bob, down at Birch Creek when my colt blew up…"

Followed by a full recitation of the events of the day, beginning with how many spoonfuls of sugar Art had stirred into his coffee that morning and ending with a vivid description of the resulting blood, gore and permanent deformity. Uninterrupted, because no matter how many times the rest of the crew had heard the story, it's proper coffee shop etiquette to listen, nod, and gasp on cue. Besides, as with all good cowboy stories, the wreck got better with every re-telling, so it was always worth listening to hear the latest embellishments.

Art would barely wind down before Bob would pipe up, waving the stump of a digit that he'd caught in the coil of his rope back in '75. Kept the severed part in a jar on his dresser to show unsuspecting visitors until his second wife figured out what it was and made him give it a proper burial. "The way this ol' thumb is tingling, I'll betcha it's gonna snow. At least a coupla inches. Prolly get down close to twenty degrees 'fore mornin'."

Then someone else would chime in asserting that, no, if it was gonna be that cold the ankle he busted two years ago woulda let him know. And around they'd go, each convinced his scar tissue could produce the most accurate short term weather forecast.

Ah, how times have changed. Last month we went up to High River, Alberta to a three day Senior Pro rodeo, what was once--less politically correct, but more accurately--referred to as the Old Timers tour. We were due to head home on Sunday, but a blizzard was predicted for Saturday night so we were keeping close tabs, debating whether to leave early. I mentioned this to a cluster of over sixty team ropers as we all sat horseback, waiting to compete.

Four of them whipped out smartphones to check the forecast. Not a single mention of aching joints, not one good wreck story. Just squinting and pecking at their palms. As I mourned the loss of yet another fine tradition rendered moot by technology, Bob said, "Well, now, that doesn't sound right to me, Art. My website says only three inches of snow, and it's not gonna start 'til after midnight."

"Bah!" Art dismissed Bob's forecast with a wave of his hand. "There's gonna be close to a foot, guaranteed. You gotta use my website, it's way more accurate."

Another guy cut in, shoving the screen of his phone under their noses, insisting that no, his website was obviously more reliable. Why, if it said the storm would start at midnight, you could put money on the first snowflake hittin' the ground by 12:01.

And me? I just smiled, thinking maybe some things don't change that much after all.  

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The Short End

My son rode out in the pasture with me last weekend, one of his first trips that involved traversing real landscape, and I was reminded of how it was to be a kid in the saddle. Especially a really short kid.

Horseback riding is not friendly to the vertically-challenged, unless you happen to be a Kentucky Derby jockey with a groom on hand to give you a leg up. Think about it…the shorter the person, the shorter the stirrup leathers, and therefore the greater the distance from stirrup to ground, when I already started at a serious disadvantage compared to my longer-legged cousins. How is that fair? 

Sadly, I never found any spare grooms loitering around the barn on the ol' ranch, although the hired man could be pressed into service in a pinch, if I caught him passing by on the way to the shop for whatever the only tool was that hadn't been packed in his toolbox, but turned out to be essential to replace a broken section on the swather.

More often, I had to make do with a hay bale or a bucket. Want to guess how long it takes a horse of average intelligence to figure out all he has to do is sidle away from the bucket to keep you from mounting up? About thirty seconds less than it takes a meaner than average horse to realize it's more fun to just knock you off the bucket. Or reach around, grab the hay bale with his teeth and yank it out from under you.

Somehow or other, I always managed to get aboard. Feet in stirrups, reins in hand, ready to go…except the horse didn't move, because a horse doesn't see a lot of sense in leaving the place where he gets grain and hay. 

"Just kick him," my dad always said. 

Yeah, sure. Easy for you, your feet reach down past the saddle blanket.

Once I got free of the barn's gravitational field I'd be on a roll, until we crossed the first slough west of the house, where the grass grows belly high. How was a horse to resist reaching down for a bite, ripping the reins right out of my hands? They'd slide clear to his ears, and despite hanging upside down from the front of the saddle by the tips of my boots I couldn’t reach them, so there we'd stay, the horse happily grazing, until someone noticed we'd stalled. 

My horse had two speeds: plod, and bone-jarring trot. The average rider counteracts a rough trot by placing weight on their feet. This is somewhat more challenging when your legs are stuck straight out on either side of a flat-backed, hog fat kid pony. I'd be pulling on the reins for dear life, every slam of his front feet on the ground bouncing me a little higher, until I looked like a paddle ball on the end of a rubber band. At some point my butt would fail to contact the center of the saddle and plonk! Off I went.

The north pasture was a field of horrors for a kid rider. Right off the bat, we'd have to cross a coulee. Going down usually wasn't bad. Going up was steep, though, and my horse would break into a lope, lunging for the top. If I wasn't screwed down real tight, he'd blow me right out the back of the saddle. Plonk! Arse over teakettle off his rump.

The absolute worst was crossing creeks. Now that I'm an adult, I own a whole herd of horses that will step sedately over and through waterways. Not so when I was my son's age. Back then, my horses approached creeks much like Evil Knievel approached Hell's Canyon, settling back on their haunches, winding up, and launching. My neck would snap, my feet would pop out of the stirrups, and…splat! Kid, meet creek.

Or hole. Or ditch. Or tree branch. Or plain old dirt, thanks to a rabbit or grouse popping out of the brush and sending my horse ten feet sideways. Good thing the ground wasn't near as hard back then as it is now, because most days I considered it a major victory to only fall off once. On the rare occasion I made it all the way home without a single tumble, my horse had one last trick. The shaking started at his ears, grew in magnitude as it traveled up his neck then burst into a full body earthquake, rattling my teeth, jangling my brain and rearranging every vertebrae in my spine.

Figures, that'd be the only time I couldn’t seem to fall off.

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That'll Leave a Mark

I bruise often. No, I don't mean easily. At any given time I have two or three random bruises, and there's nothing easy or comfortable about most of them, although I often have a hard time recalling where they came from. Currently my left knee cap is a lovely shade of plum. I have a vague memory of whacking it on something. Under a desk, I think. It's hard to say. Not because it didn't hurt at the time, but because I blunder into so many obstacles that it's hard to decide which one left a mark.

Take the heater in my bedroom, one of those black cubes about six inches square. Every night I turn it on to warm up the icy floors before my husband takes his evening shower. And every night I turn it off before I go to sleep. Nearly every morning, I trip over it in the dark and stub my toes because I forgot to shove it safely under the end of the bed.

The trailer hitch on my Jeep is another notorious assailant. You'd think after the fifth or sixth time I raised a goose egg on my shin hauling groceries out of the back of the car, I'd get a clue, but somehow that hitch always comes as a total surprise.

Some bruises have not only left a mark, but a permanent impression on my psyche. The worst, hands down, was the first summer I lived in South Dakota. I'd gone to a friend's house for roping practice one sunny Saturday, the weather warm enough for a thin cotton tank top. I roped a big yearling, missed my slack, and instead of around his neck the loop came tight on one back leg.

My horse stopped. The calf kept going. And the breakaway hondo on my rope…didn't. Not until the rope was stretched taut, the five hundred pound calf dragged almost to a stop. Then, snap! The rope recoiled, straight back at me, the end lashing around my torso and bare upper arm like a bullwhip, the hondo nailing me in the ribs. 

There is a frozen moment, between the impact and the pain, when your brains scrambles to figure out how to eject from your body before the hurt sets in. I failed. I can't even describe how it felt without tears springing to my eyes. I peeled my shirt up to find a perfect impression of the hondo on my ribs, with a welt that snaked in a full coil across my stomach and arm. A rope tattoo, complete with the spiral ridges, that gradually morphed from red to purple to green then yellow over the following month. 

More recently, my child was invited to a birthday party. After driving an hour into town every day of the week to work, getting me into a car on a Sunday is like stuffing a cat into a barrel full of water. My husband offered to take our son to the party if I would help my dad bed down the calving barn. Fine by me. First I had to open the big double doors, which are held shut with a spring-loaded metal bar. Unfortunately, I miscalculated the distance between the bar and my face, and when it popped open it smacked me in the cheekbone.

I walked around with a purple smudge under one eye for two weeks, looking as if that half of my head hadn't slept in a month. My husband declared it proof of what he'd always suspected: I would rather punch myself in the face than be sociable. 

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Family Outing

My dad graduated from high school in the little town of Ennis in southeastern Montana. When he was in college, his parents moved to Bozeman and remained there for the rest of their lives. Then my sister moved to the Gallatin Valley twenty years ago. Altogether, I've been going to Bozeman for visits and holidays my entire life.

This year we met my sister from Spokane here for Easter, and this morning we marked the occasion by going for a hike. Not just any hike, mind you. We trudged up the side of a mountain to the big white 'M' that honors Montana State University, because nothing says resurrection like nearly dying of a heart attack. 

Here's the view of the M from my sister's back yard, it's the white smudge right in the center of the picture: 

Doesn't look that high from the bottom. Whole different perspective looking down from the top, and your car is nothing but a speck in the parking lot. Or maybe that was just one of the dark spots dancing in front of my eyes from oxygen deprivation.

Once your vision clears, the view is its own reward. The highest peak in the distance is Lone Mountain, home of Big Sky Ski Resort. And down there on the right side of the photo is the campus of Montana State University. I think you can see why I was in no big rush to graduate. 

In case anyone doubted us...photographic proof that we didn't just send the camera up with one of the crazy people who actually jog laps on this trail. 

Happy Easter

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Meadowlark

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Back in the way back when I was younger and fairly new to the writing thing, I still took myself seriously as a human being and author. After a few years, I figured out trying to think deep thoughts is sort of painful, and it's a lot more fun to just laugh at yourself. Before that epiphany, I took a writing class at Blue Mountain Community College, and as an assignment I wrote a short story, which I later submitted to one of those obscure literary journals that sold about fifty copies of each edition, mostly to the contributing authors.

For the first time since then, I'm working on a piece of fiction that, like that story, is set on my home turf. Plus it won't be long now 'til we hear the first meadowlark trill, and they always have been my favorite, probably because they were the only stinking bird I ever got right on the nature walks in grade school. When my friend BA Tortuga asked me to do a guest spot on her blog, this old story came to mind.

So here you go. Probably the most sentimental thing I've ever written:  Meadowlark



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