cowboys – Karen's New York Love Affair

What, more cows!?

It’s been a while since I wrote about some mysterious winter visitors that I thought could be wild horses. A friend had recently told me about encountering wild horses near Merritt in the 60s, and the idea of wild horses is very romantic, so I guess I wanted the creatures at Monkey Valley to be wild horses. I’d seen a herd of these beautiful creatures after my first vision fast in southern Wyoming, and loved the idea that they might have been wintering on my ranch.

What happened was my mom, sister, and I were at the ranch for the first time since winter, celebrating my mom’s birthday. I noticed some droppings near the house that looked like horse apples. Round, dry droppings, all around the outhouse and near the steps to my back deck. So we tracked the droppings, following them south down the valley. There were lots of droppings, making it seem that a small herd spent the winter here.

Finally, near the south end of the valley we came upon the herd. It was cows. What, cows again!? The poor things had gotten locked in when I left Monkey Valley in December. They had managed to survive the winter by eating dried grass under trees, where the snow didn’t fall. Unlike horses, cows don’t know how to paw at the snow to get to the grass underneath. So it was very lucky that there wasn’t too much snow this winter, and the cows could find some grass to eat. And it was the dryness of their diet that made their droppings look like horse apples instead of cow pies. Yum, apple pie, anyone?

I called the Douglas Lake ranch, and my cowboy friend Steve came out with another cowboy the next day. They were rigged up on horseback, and they herded the four cows out the gate and up to a small pen they had erected on Dillard Road, where they gave the cows some hay. Once they were fed, they loaded three of the cows into a trailer. One cow, which my mom thought was the leader of the small herd, collapsed after she was fed, as if now that she’d led the herd to safety, she couldn’t take another step. It was fascinating to watch the cowboys use their horses and ropes to drag the last cow into the trailer. Even though all the cows were skinny from their sparse winter diet, that’s still a lot of weight!

I later learned from Steve that the downed cow gave birth within the next few days, and another cow did too. How lucky that they were rescued just in time! How lucky that my mom and sister and I went to Monkey Valley for my mom’s birthday!

More cowboys!

This morning when I was up on the roof for the daily conference call with my client, the wind brought men’s voices over the tree tops. I looked to the southwest, but couldn’t see anyone, and figured it must be hunters at the top of the ridge. After I was finished with the call I went down to the barn and circled around it, just in case they’d come down the hill from the ridge. I called out “Hey!” every now and then, so they wouldn’t accidentally shoot me if they caught a glimpse of movement.

I didn’t see anything, except to notice how the once-bare muddy ground is covered with a layer of moss and grass now. Eight years ago the ground was a diesel- and oil-soaked mess, on account of the previous owners’ carelessness in feeding their five 10KW generators. I had a lot of help to clean up the physical mess, and afterwards my mom and I did some energetic cleansing using Reiki. In fact, my mom gave me the master’s-level attunement out there one summer day while we were cleansing the land around the barn. I still recall the glorious green light shining through the plants as I knelt on the ground to offer healing to our dear earth mother.

Anyway, no sign of hunters, so I went back to the house to get a fire started. I was on the balcony by the master bedroom, when my eye caught the movement of a bird high above the field outside the gate, so I paused to watch it, listening for its call. Soon enough I heard the raven caw. Then I spotted two riders on horseback down in the field below the raven. I called out a greeting, and walked down to the gate.

Two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl… Hey! Up came two young cowboys, Riley and Wacey, and their black-eye-patch cow dog, Pirate. We passed the time of day a little. Nice morning. They were looking for stray cows. November 12, and the range laws say all cows have to be in from the range on October 31. So they’ve got to find all the loose cows before they run amok!

It is a glorious sight to see cowboys doing cowboy things. They were wearing round-brimmed hats, and those long overcoats called dusters. The horses were brown, robust, and lively. Each cowboy had a rope coiled over the saddlehorn. Even though I’m a vegetarian, I like seeing these older ways of life continue. Ways of life that are close to the land and living things. May there always be cowboys, out on the range!

Cowboys rode up to the gate

Cowboys, dogs, and dirtbikers: unexpected visitors to Monkey Valley

The Douglas Lake Cattle Company has the grazing rights for the land all around Monkey Valley. So it is not really surprising that I’ve seen quite a few cows—and a fair number of bulls, too—but that’s another story. It was a real thrill one August morning to see a couple of cowboys, who rode up to the gate to let me know they were bringing the cattle in to graze the piece of land on the other side of the fence. They were on horses, and wore cowboy hats and jingling spurs. Real cowboys!

Kurt was about 15, and the other one, whose name I’ve forgotten, was possibly in his 60s. They were real polite and friendly, and invited me to come visit the cow camp where they all stay for the summer. I never did go, but maybe one year. Now and then over the years I have seen their trucks and horse trailers parked beside the road, when they are in the process of moving cattle from one area to another. In the spring the cows are turned out to graze at low elevations where the snow has melted, and they gradually move higher into the mountains as the summer goes on. In the fall they move back down again. The workers at the cow camp move the cows around, and tend to injured cows and calves as well.

~* Oh, the life of a cowboy is lonely… Campfires and beans, and bitter dark coffee… *~

It’s a way of life that has been romanticized in the movies, and settlers in BC have been raising cattle for up to 120 years. I led a Northwest Earth Institute discussion group on sustainability in Merritt in 2006, and we talked about the kind of land in this area and what food sources it will support. According to one of the participants, whose family has been ranching in this area for decades, the land around Merritt is dry and hilly and supports cattle grazing on the grass but would not be suitable for growing soybeans. I respect her point of view, and think she’s probably right.

However, much of the land on earth that is suited to growing crops and diverse plant life has been razed for cattle grazing to supply us with cheap beef. We’ve all heard from people like John Seed’s Rainforest Rescue organization about how a large percentage of the earth’s rainforests have been burned to the ground. Here’s a plea from Matthew Fox, author of Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth, from the chapter of the same name in The Soul of Nature (p. 214):

«Today we need to have ecological virtues. For example, vegetarianism or semi-vegetarianism is an ecological virtue. There is no longer any excuse for a human being in the so-called first world not questioning his or her amount of consumption of meat. In fact, if North Americans alone were to cut back just ten per cent in their meat consumption, sixty million humans would eat today who were starving. The amount of land, water, and grain we are using to feed an addictive meat habit is simply unsustainable in our time.»

This is one reason the Monkey Valley Retreat Centre serves vegetarian food.