Not everything on a buffalo ranch looks like a romantic view of the new or old West. Some things are not the least easy or pretty or fun. Some are frustrating, difficult, and downright ugly.
Ugly is policing up windblown trash like rigid insulation that comes in from who knows where. Ugly is policing up roadside trash along the one and a half mile road (River Road) that leads to our driveway, trash thrown out of car or pickup windows, including bottles, cans, and fast food containers. Ugly is someone not closing a gate, thereby letting about one hundred and seventy buffalo wander maybe four miles into a neighbor’s ranch. Ugly is those people who don’t think about things like that, who don’t consider what their actions will impose on others and who lack respect for others, for the world at large, and possibly, for themselves.
Frustrating is not the bringing of the buffalo back; it is the having to do so because of what someone else did or failed to do. It is not very hard bringing them back; they usually return the way they came. Erney calls them the “most goin’ back son of a guns in the world.” Thankfully, I think he is right. Frustrating is putting a fence across the river and that night it rains, which is good, and takes the fence away, leaving an opening and an invitation for the buffalo to stage a great escape.
Difficult is untangling the remaining wires, retrieving steel posts from the river sand and mud, repairing and re-stretching the wire, resetting the posts, and all the while wishing for the rain and sort of hoping it doesn’t rain. Difficult is finding a workable solution to the river-crossing problem. The river provides water for that pasture. That pasture is in our grazing rotation management plan. So far our best solution is to move the herd off that pasture when it looks like rain. Frustrating is when we do that, and the rain bypasses us. Also there is always the possibility of rain somewhere upriver that takes us by surprise, which may be difficult, but may not necessarily be ugly.
Today, according to my calendar is Armed Forces Day; it is also my mother’s birthday. She would be 98 or 99; and today is Jilian’s graduation from New Underwood High School. It is a warm, breezy, sunshiney day; and despite some of the ugliness and difficulty of this day, it is a perfectly beautiful and glorious day. The river crossings are in, as are the buffalo, and a beautiful, young, intelligent woman, surrounded by family and friends, is in her cap and gown-smiling.