Three people in the cab of a pickup truck pulling a horse trailer and approaching yet another gate. That’s the situation. Here’s the question: who is the real cowboy/girl? Answer: the one in the middle–doesn’t have to drive, doesn’t have to get the gates.
Okay, same three people arrive at their destination, maybe at a river’s edge, somewhere in the Badlands, or on the top of some hill. They unload their horses, put on the bridles, tighten their cinches, and mount up. Now the question is: where do the buffalo roam? Answer: anywhere they want to. Here’s the situation: we have a general idea because Dan flew in an airplane a few hours ago. But still, they roam. So we are charged with finding the buffalo in several hundred square miles of really rough country; don’t get yourself lost; and get them to where you want them to go–the summer pastures at the ranch. Question: who is the real cowboy/girl now? Answer: the one who stayed at the ranch.
That was the situation a few days ago. Dan, Jill, and I, the three in the pickup truck, rode those hills and valleys, draws and ditches, bare-clay badland ridges and steep, downhill slides, creek crossings and mud flats, cedar trees and rocky outcroppings until we found what we were looking for, buffalo. Now, being modern, thoughtful people, we each carry a handheld two-way radio.
“Hey, I’ve got buffalo here.”
“Where?”
“Right here. Quarter mile ahead of me. I’ll back off and come toward you. Where are you?”
“I’m over here.”
“And I’m way over here.”
“All right, we need to meet up and make a plan.”
“Right.”
“Hey, I can see you now. Stay where you are. Better yet, come toward me. Just go the way you were going.”
“Right.”
“Hey, now I’ve got you, too. Be there in a few minutes.”
And that is the situation. Now the question is obvious. How do we accomplish our mission? First we will want a Plan A, a Plan B, a Plan C, and if those fail, we will improvise. Second we cannot afford to spook the buffalo, which is easy because they have some calves on the ground and the mothers are super sensitive. Third we have a two to three mile wide area along the river that we have to hit. Think of a huge funnel: twenty miles across the top, and two to three at the small end. No problem, right? We are only three riders at the top of the funnel; they are many at the bottom; and they don’t know a funnel from a sieve. At the lowest end of the funnel are several twenty-foot wide gates. For us, any one of those will do. For them, well, who really knows for them?
So we kind of know where we want to go, but we have no foolproof idea about how or if we will get there. We’ll do something somehow to get somewhere sometime. That is all of our Plan Options rolled into one. “Well,” says Dan, “let’s go, and remember, finishing is everything.”
We ride slow and easy and we’re probably never closer to the buffalo than three hundred yards for the first three or four miles. They were moving along well according to at least one of our plans. Finally they seem to have learned that we were not there to harm them and they let us come to within about one hundred yards without spooking. Or are they simply getting cranky and ready to fight the horses if we get too close. Now we are closing in on our target gates, and after a few minutes of heart-rending indecision, they chose gate number three. Gates one or two would have been fine. Any gate calls for a little celebration and a little Crown Royal.