The Shields River Valley
Yesterday I had a ridiculous Montana experience. Three of us from the ranch headed up to Whitsal, Montana, about an hour north of the ranch to help out, that’s right we participated, in a cattle branding. We were out on the Lazy S ranch, where they have thousands of head of cattle, including around 800 calves, which needed to be branded. So we drive out to the Shields River Valley and have to hop in this old cowboy’s truck to get up to the corral where all of the calves are being held. There were probably 25 people standing around, wrestling calves, branding calves, roping calves, injecting calves with vaccines, and drinking a whole ton of beer. Everyone other than the three of us was dressed in chaps, cowboy hats, and pearl snap button downs. These were real cowboys, working ranch hands and horse trainers. Working dogs were running all over the place, including an old blue heeler with three legs who was never far from his weathered and wrinkly owner with a big old gray handlebar mustache, wranglers, and even spurs on his boots.
Basically what happens is as follows: about eight people herd all of the calves on horseback from the pasture into the corral. Once in the corral a couple people on horseback go in and rope the calves, that is to say, they try to slip a rope underneath their back legs so that they can be dragged out of the corral towards the lines of people waiting to do the dirty. The bigger guys grabbed the calf’s upper body, while smaller folks like myself grab their back legs. So I had to hold the bottom leg down with my leg, untie the rope and then hold the upper leg out so the guy with the red-hot brand could come over. The brand itself made a horrible smelling smoke, but after maybe my tenth wrestle it didn’t seem all that bad. I feel like I got an inordinately large amount of feisty calves, no runts for me, just big over-fed calves that loved to try, and sometimes succeeded, to kick me. So that was cool. And it actually was. It was really interesting to watch and really fun to participate and I got to hold and feed a lamb called Winona, further strengthening my love of sheep.
The hiking around Mountain Sky is epic. Wednesday was my first day off, so I set out with an all-around staffer Blair and a guest for what turned out to be a four-hour hike. You could hike all the way into Yellowstone or over to Big Sky from the ranch, plus Emigrant Peak is right across the old highway. The wildlife out here while frightening to think about is also pretty cool. For example, on our hike we saw about seven deer right off the bat, wolf tracks, fox tracks, and moose skeet. There are fairly constant grizzly and black bear sightings and I definitely need to invest in some bear spray.
After my hike and chowed down on some guest leftovers, Parmesan, sundried tomato, and spinach stuffed and breaded chicken – we eat pretty well out here. And headed into the town of Livingston, where I was able to get cell phone service, go to a coffee shop and pick up some essentials. I definitely felt pretty out of place there, it’s only a town of 7,000 and people seemed to be staring a lot, but there are a lot of good (and semi-famous) restaurants, coffee shops, and little kitchy western stores. Back at the ranch I ate a quick dinner and then, shortly after I made the comment that it had not snowed all day, it started to snow, hard. But that didn’t stop Barrett, the maintenance guy and me from going on yet another hike around the horse pasture – which was even more beautiful in the snow.
It was the general managers birthday on Wednesday and so we ended up having a little staff shindig in the Saloon. I feel like dirty hip-hop, strong margaritas (cinco de mayo you know) and after full days of work with at times, needy, guests resulted in some serious bonding. The wranglers and the all-around staff don’t get to spend a huge amount of time together in the season, so it was good to have everyone together for a bit.
After work a few of us went on another hike around the ranch (so many trails!) and it was quite possibly the most beautiful hike I have ever been on. I really need to get a charger for my camera! We could see the whole Absorka Mountain range, still covered in snow, the beautiful Paradise Valley and about fifteen miles in the other direction the largest downhill ski area in the West, Big Sky. Right after we started the hike we saw huge grizzly tracks in the snow and they were really fresh, it was awesome and also scared the crap out of us!
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