After Ben Cunningham returned home to Switzerland in mid August I went to Oklahoma, for about three weeks. My travel had a three point purpose: 1) to relax and take a break, 2) to replace an old fence around my property there, and 3) to bring my oldest brother, Les, back to the ranch with me for a couple of months.
Replacing the old, board fence quickly put an end to the possibility of the hoped for vacation. The fence became and almost full-time job, but with my brother’s help I was able to finish the project about two days before returning to the ranch, where I knew that more fencing work lay in wait for me to complete in preparation for turning the buffalo out into the US Forest Service ground in November. I knew I would be helping our neighbors gather their cattle and move them off the government land, and then I would make a circuit of the twenty-six miles of fence before we turned the buffalo out. This fence checking job is not easy. It takes up to a week because of some of the difficulty of the terrain. It is, nevertheless, something I enjoy. I like being out in that rough country. It is surprisingly beautiful in a stark, unrelenting way. Everything that lives there is a survivor. The cedars in the draws, the cacti and yucca on some of the side hills, the grasses in the pasture areas and the cottonwood trees along the waterways and riparian zones have learned how to survive in a relatively hostile environment. This holds true for the birds and animals and reptiles as well.
There is a place, a steep and deep cut bank along Indian Creek on the edge of the Badlands that houses a colony of Cliff Swallows and another that houses a colony of Rock Doves (basically a wild pigeon). These places and residences are rather distant from almost everything. Occasionally I see the Rock Doves in an area near us. The swallows, however, migrate south for the winter; but when I am there during the mid/spring or early summer, I see them doing what swallows do–flying high and catching insects.
I see Antelope or Muledeer or Porcupines and Prairie Dogs, Rabbits, Rattlesnakes and Buffalo there, when I am alone with my horse or with Dan. I look at the creek bed and grasses, the hillsides and cedars, the cut banks, cliffs, and swallows, I sometimes think to myself an altered line from W. B. Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium:” “That is a country for old men,” because we do not “neglect monuments of un-aging intellect,” the change of the seasons, the life of the Great Plains.
And early in November after a quick trip to Oklahoma, I will return to the ranch thankful for any moment of relaxation that may come my way while not really in anticipation of it, but mostly I will try to remain open to the unexpected.