Big Timber, Montana: A Place of Wonderful Memories- Final Copy

             I never knew I would learn so much in one day. It started out early, about 7 in the morning, I had just finished eating breakfast, and the group of us, my dad, my brother, my grandpa, and I and a few other relatives were getting ready to head out to the ranch. It was a cool, fall morning and the mountains were very visible off through the valley.  The peaks were all shiny as the sun illuminated snow covered mountains. Oh how I wish I could go snowboarding was all I was thinking about.  I had no idea what today would hold for work out at the ranch, but I quickly learned what kind of work we would be doing the rest of the day, and all I could think was I hope I don’t screw this up.

            When we arrived out at the ranch, the first thing we did was get out of the truck; Leo came up to us and said we would be herding cattle today. I thought to myself oh wow; I’ve never really done anything like this before. Little did I know how involved I would be in this whole process. Leo then talked to Lloyd for a few minutes while we waited around. These two are both close relatives of mine. Lloyd came back and he said we would be going out to the other barn down the road, taking out the hay truck and loading hay into it. We did this so the cattle would have something they wanted, so it would make it easier to move them.

            The next part was the part I had never expected to come. As we started to walk away, Lloyd calls me over; kind of like he needed to say something to me, well low and behold he tells me he is going to have me ride behind the cattle on the four-wheeler. I figured, hey this couldn’t be that hard, but then he takes me in to get the ATV and this is when I find out it’s a manual. I knew how to drive an automatic, but not a manual. At this moment I was secretly freaking out inside. I made myself take a deep breath, after all, what the worst thing that could happen, all I really needed to do is have Lloyd give me a little lesson on how things ran, so he took about 10 minutes to show me how everything worked, everything was pretty self explanatory, the only thing that really gave me any difficulty was trying to get it set in reverse, but after a few tries it got better as we went on.  I figured, it didn’t really matter if I couldn’t get it because I was in a field, so really all I had to do was drive myself around, to go the other way.

After we got out to the other barn, I got on the wheeler and backed it out of the trailer we used to haul it down with. Everyone else piled into either the hay truck or the other pickup truck. All of us headed through the field and up a very steep hill. I felt my heart just sink as I took a glance back down the hill, realizing how steep it really was. I continued on up the hill; as we reached the top, I felt as if I was on top of the world. It was crazy to see how much we lined up with the mountains in the distance, and it was noticeably colder and windier, so I knew we were pretty high up.

            Once in the fields, we drove around looking for the cattle. After about 30 minutes of looking, we found them way back down in a valley, resting and eating in the shade. We had to get close enough to them with the hay, so they would want to leave and follow it. As my dad was getting the truck closer to the cattle, Lloyd directed me to drive back there with the four-wheeler and try to get the cattle moving. After about 30-45 minutes of this, we had finally gotten all the cattle out of the valley and moving onward to the other pasture. I was told I had to keep behind the cattle and to cross back and forth from side to side to keep them all in one general area, and not allow them to spread out. This trip to the other pasture was somewhere between 1 and a half to 2 miles away. A few times along the way, some of the cattle started to mess with the other cattle and they would get into little fight. There was one moment where I thought the two cattle that were fighting were going to run right into the wheeler, but the sound and size of it spooked them just enough to get them moving right along again.

            This whole move took about 2 hours but we got it done, and really had no issues along the way. I couldn’t believe what I had just done, and how well I did it. This was something that was totally new to me and I had just learned moments before doing. I was so proud of myself. I felt like I had worked very hard to get something very important done, and it seemed to be pretty fun all along the way. This made me really want to do it again sometime.

            Later that day, we were doing some light work around the ranch, when my brother spotted a coyote out in the lower pasture, where some cattle were. Lloyd and my Dad wanted to go shoot this coyote and if they were unable to hit him, they wanted to at least scare it off. So I was then told to go get the wheeler and run along the far edge of the pasture and slowly creep my way over to the other side of the ditch where the coyote was hiding out in. He then told my dad to go set up himself and the gun down in the ditch about 200 to 300 feet from where the coyote was.

            As I crept up on the coyote, all I was worried about was that it would go the opposite way of where I was trying to make it go. I was just hoping I wouldn’t mess up. Then all of a sudden it took off, and the next thing I heard was a gun shot, but my dad missed, and I looked and saw the coyote running up the hill across the valley, then I heard another gun shot, but the coyote didn’t stop running yet. As it was approaching the top of the hill, I heard one last shot go off and next thing I knew, the coyote was down. We did it! I was so happy with how things went, the only way it could have been better, was if the first shot would have worked, that way we could have gotten rid of the dead body of the coyote, but it was too far up the hill in a part that would be difficult to get to so, we decided we would leave it there for the other animals to eat.

            After a long day, I never knew how good it could feel to do all this work and learn so many knew things in one day. It’s a good experience seeing how people make a living in different parts of the United States, it makes you see how hard people have to work to do what they do. I also think that this experience was a good way to see how the world around us and everything in it play a role with everything else. It was a great way to experience life and what it takes to survive or make a living in the natural world around us. It is a way to see life and death, and hard work and respect all in one place at one time. Every day since that entire week I was in Montana, I have wanted to go back so bad and help out at the ranch again and spend time in the beautiful scenery. Big Timber, Montana is one of the most peaceful and relaxing places I have ever been and it is the place of many, many wonderful memories I have made.