A Voyage of Discovery: Betsy and Bubba on the Road

I know that I’ve not written for quite a while, but it’s still winter, so not to worry, you haven’t missed much. It has snowed for the last two days, about 8 inches this morning, the Canyon road closed by accidents after I got to work, raising the spectre that I’d just have to keep working until spring.

So it’s time for some reflections on winter here in Montana. It’s a far cry from the winters I have known

* the dryness of it. I was struck by the first snowfall, and my wonder hasn’t stopped. No snowballs to be made here, at least until today’s wet snowfall. When you go to shovel, you’re not actually sure there’s something on the shovel. It’s light, airy, and, as the air continues to dry after the storm, the moisture is sucked out of the snow on the ground. As I leave home early in the morning before the sun is up, the headlights catch a million individual diamonds on the roadside.
Of course, it’s not for nothing that there’s a huge market for skin cream and hair conditioner here.
But, unless the wind is up, there’s not much of a sense of being cold in this wonderful dry air. I’ll set out on the porch of a morning, having a cup of coffee, and it’s only 30 degrees. Other than the coffee chilling pretty fast you wouldn’t know it.

* the sun. For years after I got out of college, I remembered March as gray and rainy, even on days when the sun came out, they were just doing it to trick you. Here, there are few days when we don’t have that brilliant huge blue sky. The color is so intense in that cold dry air…I know, I know, I’m still colorblind, but it’s damn blue to me, perhaps just not the same blue you would see. And the sun is warm at this altitude: 5200 feet at home, 6800 feet at work. A day outside and sunscreen is an essential.

* the stars. The nights are nearly as brilliant as the days. At the house, once the Christmas lights were taken down in the neighborhood(and trust me when I say that no expense is spared for the holidays. My neighbors were done out in red green and white, with a professional Christmas decorating company crane truck doing the installation) about the only lights around are from the towers a mile away in a pasture down the road for a local radio station. I’ve seen as many, even more stars, but certainly not from home. What a treat to step outside at night, listen to the coyotes across the road- and they are noisy- and see this incredible array

* and the views. I live in very flat bottom land. There are mountains to the northeast and southwest, and hills to the south, east and north. I can watch the weather move across the valley. Tonight, the tops of the Bridger Mountains are lost in the snow. When it clears, I see the snowy peaks. The day before yesterday, the snow was only at the higher elevations. It looked as if someone had snapped a chalkline against the hills, and frosted everything above the line.

* finally, the length of it. At the solstice, it was dark when I left home and dark when I returned. I relished the lengthening days, then this bizarre early time change plunged me back into morning darkness. It’s still dark when I feed the horses and run Bubba before I leave for work. The evenings are long now, working up to those luxuriously abundant hours of daylight in June. I enjoyed a few evenings out in the field, with Bubba at my feet and May hanging over my shoulder, before winter set back in, but we could have snow irregularly until June.

We had about two weeks of temperatures climbing into the 50s, and, I confess, I was really enjoying it. Things were starting to dry out, namely the three inch deep mud in May’s paddock in the back yard, and I was picking up rocks, cleaning up old hay, rigging some electric fence (with a solar charger, if you please) and generally pretty excited about what the spring would hold Now we’re back in the thick of it. But I’ve gone back to school, after a fashion at least. I’m taking a six week class in pasture management, taught by a young woman who’s incredibly knowledgeable and enthusiastic. First class was last week. For my homework I’ve been mapping my property: fence types, soil types, locations of wells, drainage ditch, septic system, and documenting my vision for the rancho. So, of course, I’ve developed a mission statement-can’t just make this simple, can I? And of course, goals and objectives. Some of you remember the painful process of developing our goals and objectives for Newport’s comprehensive plan. To think that I’m doing this for fun! I overcame the desire to go home and rip everything out of the yard after the first class. I love the class approach: looking at each parcel as part of a landscape and an ecosystem rather than an isolated spot. So I know you want to know what I’m thinking: it includes improving the pastures with warm and cool season grasses, getting rid of my own personal noxious weeds, getting rid of as much lawn as possible (I’m getting too old to spend much of my time mowing!), using native species only, creating some shelter belts that will encourage birds. Lots to learn. The average precipitation per year in RI is 45″. Here, it’s 14″. So my new term is xeriscape. Check it out.

Oh, I do have another new venture. I’d missed my days singing with the Island Music Experiment, and mentioned it to one of the women I worked with. Well, she schlepped me off to a rehearsal of the Bridger Mountain Harmony, our local chapter of the Sweet Adelines International. Yes, for all of you who’ve belted out “Heart” from Damn Yankees with me, I’m finally singing barbershop. Here’s the tricky part: they get all gussied up for their concerts, so I have to wear some sort of a one-piece undergarment (I think the whole chorus gets catheterized before concerts), and sequined pants and tops, not to mention makeup and false eyelashes for the shows. I’m trying to convince myself that it’s the price I have to pay for getting to practice with them. I’ll be missing the regional competition, and a trip to Boise, in order to be at Sarah’s graduation. But we have a concert in Ennis the end of the month, and they promise they’ll help me with the false eyelashes. Yuck.

And were you wondering if there were two horses in the picture at the top of this entry?

Here’s Ms. Kate, just before dawn in the snow today. Kate is a 9 year old mustang, taken off the range by the Bureau of Land Management when she was a year old. She was injured getting loaded on the trailer that day, and never treated by her new owner. They rode her for about 5 years, but her knee injury became more and more of a problem, so, for the last three years, she’s been turned out to pasture. She was advertised in the paper: free horse to a good home. The wranglers at the ranch picked her up to see if they could use her for pony rides. She can’t flex her knee, so trips a lot on rocky terrain, which is all we have in Big Sky, so they didn’t feel she could safely transport kids. May’s behavior with the young men was pretty vulgar, and one of the boys was going to hurt the others, so she’d been cooped up and I was looking for a companion for her. Just in time! Kate moved in Saturday, and is taking no guff from May, who’s used to bullying the other mares she’s been turned out with. I’m convinced we can get that knee fixed up, and am looking for a kiddie saddle so that my friend Andra’s grandkids can go for some rides around the yard. And now the boys are interested in both of the girls. Welcome home, Katie.