I've broken out the complicated nuance to moving cattle in their different forms. The process has helped me get to know them, and get to know me too.
HEIFERS
There was a sinking feeling when I saw the pair of heads leading the stampede turn.
When those heads turned, it meant that they wouldn’t make it through the open gate just ahead, to the grassy field beyond. They wouldn’t make it past the ditch and into the coral, where we would sort them for the next few hours, in the sweltering 97 degree heat; one of three sessions that day. They wouldn’t pour out of that bottleneck - these giant, darting heifers, no - because they were too busy looking at me.
Me, with my single braid that I only started wearing in the last 6 months, in an archery cap not mine, moving in too close, too fast, with white knuckles socketing my saddle horn. A classic blender. The heifers knew, I’m sure.
Heifers are the tween girls of the cattle world, young females not yet bred (once proven as a successful mother - they will stay producing in the program as a cow, or be sold under contract and harvested). Before me was the equivalent of a rampage of the shrieking girls from a boy band concert, rife with estrogen and youth, and the reckless immaturity that pairs so elegantly with it, overlaid with the moods of the horses and egos of the rest of us. But here I was, the no-time defending champion, on my horse (I mean, the horse I commandeered from The Cowboy’s 5 year old nieces and nephews), Belle. And we had just unknowingly volunteered ourselves for the most technical, senior position of the rioting, galloping herd - at the “head.”
If I crowd them at the gate, they’ll push right through. It was a lovely concept, in theory. But this gate was not just any gate, it was a new gate. It was the first time for the youngsters, and seeing the new gate, at this speed, overlayed with the triggering sight of me in my Montana drag, we reached a tipping point. Herds (especially this clamouring pile of angst) hold an amassed group-think rivaling something like an insect infestation. They put numbers on the board that smart just can’t beat. I watched in horror the heifers fragment like a popped bubble, dissolving any semblance of order at the same pace they arrived there.
Suspended in slow motion, the stampede of 1 ton coal black creatures unhinged before me, with long lashes and wavy tails and silky webs of spit flying balletically in the air. They began the process of doing what they like to do when they are absolutely freaked - returning to wherever the hell they just came from. Sometimes it's yards, sometimes it's miles, sometimes it's chaotically into the thicket of pines, cliffs, snakes and marsh. But right now, it's breaknecking towards three of the people I came here with (one of them, a potential in-law) and the beasts they are riding. Just behind me, some of the most widely experienced riders of Montana I knew - The Cowboy, his mother Julie, and cowgirl extraordinaire Holly - sucked air through their winced teeth and watched the unraveling they likely saw coming long before I did. Like a well-seasoned team, I make out the three of them, through the rolling tsunami of stomped dust and shame, begin to clean up my mess.
Belle, spins to face the direction I’m looking all on her own. She surprises me when she does this sort of thing, my little mind-reading Na’avi phoenix. She surprises me in other ways as well, for instance, coming to a complete standstill in the middle of a field while everyone around us is high functioning, appearing to simply to “catch” a “vibe,” or to eat grass. She is so firm in her decision, plus she’s a dinosaur in horse years, and so I usually just let her. I consider some well-seasoned advice from Julie,“If something is funky, the horses know before us. Listen to them.” which gives me the perfect excuse to greenlight this bad behavior.
Come on, Belle. We’re doing it all again. Let’s go. Let’s go, let’s go. I am saying this to her and also to myself, because if I give a second to marinate in the hell I’ve just raised - I’d sooner trot off to go drown myself in the 3 foot irrigation ditch below. I give her a couple kicks and a lot of rein.
We are now running. I’m up top, making some more questionable decisions for the both of us - talking to her with my legs, my hands, my words. She brings the power, watching the ground for me, and let’s us fly. (Except over water. We can be full-sprint and this bitch will come to a complete halt to saunter and sniff through the water before crossing, and cranking it up to 10 again). I witness the playing field exchanging pressure from the team’s various positioning. I see my outsides, cornerback and safeties weaving and tightening, whistling and yipping to get heads turned.
And then, a shift. Something clicks with the frenzy and the mass of black corrects itself, and with seemingly complete erasure of the last attempt, trot casually towards the passage and release successfully through the open gate. The shows over.
Our four horses, snorting and shaking their manes in release, chivalrously trail the cows through the gate (chivalry as in French term chevalerie, translated to “horse soldiery,” which makes me feel like this is all somehow appropriately connected), their necks round in a proud collection. We push the heifers up and into the corral, and can now begin the work of sorting them in the baking heat of the sun over the plumes of dust and roar of their bellers.
The ministry of ranching is that something will always, always go wrong. It will be wild, tired or mean; rusted, broken or dead. When inviting nature and man’s variabilities into an arena together, you will find it is your reaction to these forces at play - and acceptance of the inevitable fucking up - that determines wether the remainder of your day is going to be a good or bad one. I can attest, with certainty, that the number of events on the ranch that you play the lead in taking sideways, will humble you in ways you have never known.
I come home to a quiet house and slug a tall glass of cold water, feeling my cells plump up as the icy flow gurgles audibly down to my stomach. I stand in the kitchen, transfixed in a way only exhaustion brings, looking out at the valley, processing the heat and the work I’ve just completed. When I’m ready, I wash off everything in a cold shower; scrubbing clean the filth in residence under my nails, from the band collected in my baseball cap, and like sleep in the corners of my mouth. The Cowboy comes home. I perch on the side of the bed, clean with wet hair brushed back and watch him. He stands in front of me, moving his hands like fish in a game of charades, rolling the tape in review. He shows me where I was, what happened, and what will work better next time.
He used to shout over the roar of the animals, where I would lock up and then unleash later in a way that nobody won. Reviewing here in a calm collection before we both dress up and go out for a nice meal, I realize he is learning how to love me too.
PAIRS
“So who fucked this up?”
It was Holly asking - who I was petrified of at the time, dogearring a poetic kick off to the litany of inevitable cattle screw ups I would host that year. The fact that she was high on her horse was just perfect. Three of us from California leaned nonchalantly against a truck, almost as if we hadn’t just let seven pairs of cows and their calves blow right past us. We had little cowboy outfits on, and a time lapse of the move recording on my phone, which means a traumatic video exists that I can’t bring myself to watch, of my own assf being handed to me.
In a moment of panic minutes before, I left my one and only station - a gap between the truck and the fence - to fill a space on the other side of the truck and another fence, where a few mothers and their babies started “exploring.” I made the call and shuffled over quickly, imagining my pending acknowledgement as a visionary for this sort of judgement call, a natural cow-person, who has a real way about her. The reality was, instead of one hemorrhage, I had just created two.
Cows are generally seasoned veterans in all manners regarding pastures, roads, paths, and gates. They have been making the same journey at the same ranch for years, and as herd animals, hold the general proclivity to stay together. So we had that going. On the other hand, they are no dummies. So when the greater group of moving pairs witnessed my scramble and clocked the unmanned station, the decision was already made. The cows walked through as though they were casually shoplifting and the babies followed, bellering and baaing all the way. Holly and her niece noticed my grave error and galloped their horses to the rescue, to collect the traveling team of rolling stones. I stood there stunned, unable to start correcting in the midst of my own processing. I stared at a calf munching on a neighbor’s pink rose bush.
Within a few minutes, every pair was collected and ushered to safety through the gate to their new pasture, and it was time for Holly to host a make-shift post-mortem. We laughed uncomfortably at her brazen original question, hopeful that was sufficient acknowledgement. It wasn’t.
“Really. Who fucked this up?” Her 15 year old niece watched the evisceration in silence, mouth agape.
I bolted a hand to the sky. “Me.”
I love taking the hit for mistakes because I heard once in a podcast that it’s the easiest way to get to a solution. It also helps if you were the one who did fuck up, which I was, but what the podcast didn’t mention is that the the flood of judgement, acknowledged failure, and evidenced stupidity, will cause your ego to start a witch hunt for immediate deflection. If we really rolled the tapes (the timelapse!), there surely could have been a number of perpetrators. Preferably Emma, my thick-skinned friend and usual scapegoat - who was pretty close to the other side of the truck, by the way (which should have been parked long-ways!). You are taking the fall for her! But she was manning one side of the highway, so that certainly has its place. The argument disintegrated.
Holly acknowledges my surrender silently before kicking her mare into a lope from a dead standstill, punctuating the burn in a way you just don’t see these days. All we saw after that was her strawberry blonde hair, matching her horse’s, blowing in the wind.
We rode in the stupid truck that also fucked up, by the way, up the hill to the house, my face immulating with the lethal cocktail of rage and shame. The Californians gathered in a closet and hashed it out. First, a tribal defense, us versus them. This kind of confrontation was outrageous, rude - don’t they know how to talk to people around here? You save this stuff for the CLOSET. Was it even us? Was it her? She was the one who had a horse. Then, de-escalation. Was it really that bad? Don’t they kind of assume this sort of thing will happen? We are free labor - you can’t get that pissed.
Every detail was cross examined, considered, dissected intimately until Adrian, Emma’s now-fiance, piped up. With his warm Irish accent (I batch him with us in the California group but he is actually born and raised in Ireland) that sounds paternal and calming, the final say came. “You have to keep showing them you can do it. It’s the only way.”
The mistakes I will make in my life are inevitable, how I push on is the only thing now in my control - the added pain I bring myself beyond what’s under the bridge is my own responsibility. Adrian’s wisdom entailing us to sack up was the singular most important piece of advice I could hear. Take the hit, shake it off, learn the lesson.
I’ve let three out of five gypsy cows break away and jog down the Old 93 Highway. Here I learned to use my voice. I’ve forgotten to return The Cowboy’s stirrups to his darkly worn in settings. With his knees up to his ears, I learned to say sorry, quickly. When I did finally remember to adjust them, but missed a placement bracket, I watched the Cowboy fall from his horse into a field with a detached stirrup on his foot. Curses echoed from the mountain valley. Here, I learned to turn my head to laugh silently, and then again, to say sorry very quickly.
I’ve let Nala the pony escape and venture into a field to banquet on thistle to her heart’s delight, and learned to shut the back-up gate. I’ve gotten Belle cats cradled in a tangle of yellow rope, and understood that Murphy’s Law is real. I’ve spooked Ozzy while closing a gate, and seeing him reared up like a mini T-Rex, learned the friction of bridle rope on your finger will make it look like it belongs - for 3 whole months - to a 105 year old.
Holly, on the day of the reckoning, was the last line of defense and the authority of this operation. It all fell on her. Similar to the pairs, she had something to protect here - the cattle, her craft, the neighbors' rose bushes. The gap, that was so clear to her with years in the saddle and a view from 15.5 hands high, rightfully left her with the burden of accountability. She had every right to exercise it. So it was not surprising to me that it was also Holly, who six months later, who would offer some advice I would never forget.
A white steer with a shiny pink petifore nose stared at Holly and I in the middle of a 15 acre field. We were all on the outside of a cross-jacked corral we should have been on the inside of, if not for this calve’s stunty little prison break. On our horses next to each other, while considering the best way to collect this pisser, we were momentarily backtracking to the pressure point of the fault. Holly here, offered:
“But when things go wrong - isn’t that the fun part?”
She broke off with her mare again, gone with the wind, to leave me in silence.
BULLS
I watched a stone the size of my fist make a ripple in his meaty white shoulder. He stared blankly, unenthused, chewing sideways on a mouthful of feed that stood just behind him in 3 provisional heaps. He looked like a crooked proprietor of the west, protecting his treasured dubloons. I did not want to be in this pen with him any more.
We had marched proudly into the ring with him just before, ready to collect this gargantuan, lonely bull. Quickly and efficiently. Two humans, two horses, and two dogs; a charade that made us look less like a special task force, and more like a pompous low-budget production of Noah’s Arc. Seeing through it, the bull promptly began to work his way through each species until we were forced to bring in the ancient guns of geology.
The Cowboy and I had first started in on our horses and were not well received. The bull saw us, and pivoted towards us, wanting a front row seat for the show he’d be staring in, and to keep his protected piles just behind him. With a few hips and hollers, we edged the horses closer. With this light demonstration of aggression, he answered back by lowering his head and lightly stomping. I mean, they really do that, just like the movies.
This lowering the head bit is opposite of cows, who with a head up, indicate a bridge too far. If you are not instantly laid out at this point by the cow or running to traverse a fence, you will likely soon be. Bulls are the opposite: with a head down, this means you have only one place to go (and the horse you rode in on). That’s up. I’ve watched The Cowboy trebuchet-ed by a red bull, nearly clearing a 7 foot gate. But that was nothing. Bulls can flip an entire car, and honestly kind of want to. So now, in this arena, when I am close enough to see the whites of this particular one’s eyes, all I’m really seeing is my horse on top of me, the both of us about 30 feet from here. Adrenaline is shooting into my heels.
We try a couple more pitiful charges before we decide to head down the food chain and send the dogs in. Doc, without any order, is already doing what he does best - trying to annoy the bull to death. He is zipping circles and darting with his tongue hanging out - thrilled to be contributing. The bull remains planted with a gaze fixed on us.
“Take him up, Bat.” Bat, the English Sheppard, has been in this career field for 21 dog years now and knows better. He stands between The Cowboy and I on the horses, the five of us facing the bull while Doc performs Swan Lake, but Bat is tucked a littttttle bit further back. His ears are perked forward like that one lizard that flares itself up with the Queen Elizabeth collar. In this moment, I am glad I am not Bat - with his pending request to perform. He is small from this high up and soft and currently touching the same lava ground as the bull. Bat pretends he doesn’t hear the request, still though, perked up like a statue. The demand is repeated by The Cowboy, and swollen in its projection. “Pick him up.” Nothing. With each coming iteration, the pressure builds under Bat’s skin, the stacking orders vibrating in his fur.
He is not going near that bull. He doesn’t want to. He will go flying. But he knows he has to do something. With a final punctuated demand from the Cowboy, Bat makes a split decision. Do I risk getting in trouble, or do I risk ending my own life? Bat darts left and violently bites the tail of Nala the pony. The Cowboy explodes. Things are not going well.
If you think you understand the size of a bull, my wish for you is to stand by one, preferably an old one, with some industrial fencing in between the two of you. They are large, land roaming creatures with hooves the size of dinner plates, foreheads the size of home plate. They have hunks of muscle that sit on their shoulders like a camel hump. They are the size of an SUV.
Despite their size, these guys can move. Understandably, the larger they are, the more it takes, but if you find yourself in deep water with one, be sure to cut circles. The tighter the circle, the harder it is for them to acquire their target. This shouldn’t be a problem if you stay on the right side of the industrial fence, but it can be if you date a Cowboy.
On the ranch in Montana, the dead of summer marks the conclusion of the bulls’ 45 day breeding season and summer of love. It is two menstrual cycles for the cows, enough to get the job done, and will mirror the exact time frame of calving season 10 months from now. By now, the bulls are so rife with testosterone that they are visibly more muscular, more sinewy, and more interested than ever in a fight. You can’t do anything with them without a brawl breaking out - in the field, in the corral crunching the wooden fences, kicking around in the trailer down the highway and making your truck teeter on its suspension. Their size, power and belligerence will cause you to acknowledge the world around you for the performance art it is. Fences are meaningless, humans are wet paper towels, power is simply perception.
About this time in the corral with him, I tell The Cowboy “I don’t want to be here anymore.” He knows he’s lost the potential for any sort of meaningful work at this point. I’m scared, the dogs are scared, and nothing in this world operates well from fear. He dismounts from his horse and picks up a rock the size of a bar of soap, and aims at the small dinosaur in front of us. When the river stone bounces off of the white bull without acknowledgement, a few more well placed lobs follow. The bull whips his tail forward like he’s waving a mosquito from his ear. By the 7th stone, the bull accepts the pestering - only a slightly higher level than the labrador - and lumbers reluctantly away from his precious piles towards the open gate, where he knows he was supposed to go all along. Sometimes it’s all about a mild, creative persistence.
But speed is the true way to manage a bull.
Our next stop of the day was a field of heifers that a neighbor’s bull had gotten into the pasture and had been living large for the past week. He was the second of the month to break into the promised land - they just seem to know or at least smell. Montana is an open range state - meaning, if you are a landowner and do not like cattle on your land, anyone’s cattle, it is your obligation to get them out. But it’s our obligation to get himmout. We were there to do just that.
We did not know this bull. He was young and pitch black, a bit smaller, a bit quicker. We filled the corral with the whole mixed gang, before picking off the girls in groups of 8, then 5, then two, until all that was left was him. It feels a bit like packing up for a move. You may be satisfied to see your house empty, but now you have to drive the Uhaul cross country, unpack into a new house, start a new job, get the kids into a new school and find new primary care doctors. We stared at each other.
The Cowboy had been on the ground working the gate through the sorting, a job that is terrifying to watch. Animals come at you when you are manning the gate, handfuls at a time, mixed and jumbled and with full force (they think they are escaping, after all). If one isn’t supposed to be getting out, it is ultimately the gatekeeper’s responsibility to keep it in the corral. From my horse I am managing the flow, trying to keep the bull in the back corner while sorting off the girls. But at some point the bull will realize what is happening to his girlfriends, and he would also like to make it through that gate, and for life to remain the exact same since before you guys all had to show up. I, with my horse, will have to come in and separate that bull from my boyfriend and that gate, and let me tell you - it will test my love. Many a day I do not want to do it, or simply cannot make it in time, and find myself wondering what I will say at his eulogy.
With this initial sorting gatework done, The Cowboy moves on to the next gate of the smaller holding pen. Like stacking Russian Dolls, the bull will be led through gradually smaller containments and more gates until he finds himself alone in the trailer and going home. With The Cowboy disposed of setting up the gates, the bull and I and Belle, sit in silence staring at each other. I conduct a quick scan for any red accent pieces on my body.
We are all there, for no reason other than for what is to come next, which is taking him away from here forever. Simply stated, it is awkward. I do not want to make direct eye contact with him, lest he takes it as an invitation to duel. If I go to the other extreme and turn my back on him, he will surely take his moment to kill me. I opt for a middle ground, which is my horse cheated towards him, but at a slight 45 degree angle. We are not staring directly at him like a UFC weigh in and we can dart if needed without the burden of deciding a direction. I have not passed this escape theory by any authority, by the way. It is just some good guesses from someone who knows very little about a lot of different things.
I am alerted that the Russian Doll gates are open and prepared for receiving the bull. It is my time to do something. The Cowboy asks me to bring the bull in, as though he is a patient from the waiting room. I am now Bat, with a pending request to perform. I do what I am comfortable with and stay as far from him as possible, imagining my mere existence as sufficient pressure. I employ a therapist-like tone to coax him. I will show The Cowboy there is a new way to deal with bulls. And so you can imagine my delight when the bull begins to move, by a miracle of God, into the next corral. I am doing it.
“You need to get on his ass.” I hear him, but reject the request.
The Cowboy repeats himself - a real theme here, I’m noticing. I don’t want to “get on his ass.” I’m fucking scared, and conveniently hiding behind these minor signs of success. I follow 20 feet behind the bull, fully off script at this point, and prepare to close the gate’s threshold he’s just passed. But before I can he stops, and turns back to look at me.
“GET ON HIS ASS, TAYLOR.”
Bulls do not do well with time to think. Well, technically, they do amazing with it. The rest of us managing them, do not. While they inherently understand that both you and the horses you ride on are more intelligent than they are, many of them are just mean. They want to be difficult, to find conflict, to fight. So while a measured consistency and calmly controlled pressure can be just the ticket for the rest of cattle, with bulls the work must be these things, but also fast. My relaxed coercion tactics were not going to cut it.
With this one look from the bull, I abandon my own moral compass and jump ship, driving my heels into Belle, scooting my hips forward and pounding my firsts with reigns in them. “Belle, LET’S GO.” But Belle knows my heart and desires and decides to stand in solidarity with my former decision, which aligns with her typical vibe. She barely edges forward. This flurry of activity is like calling “Action!” for the bull, who has now fully turned towards us and dropped his head down.
It is time for me to meet my maker.
I am left with no choice but to let out a scream that is both guttural and pitchy and so consumptively hellish that if I was offered $5,000 to listen to today I don’t think I could. It is not my voice - I will stand by that - but a sound of Satan I was simply conduit for - conjured from the depths of evil that before this moment I couldn’t acknowledge as existing within me. The beauty of a sound this disgusting, however, is in its surprise element. The bull, who had started to make his way towards us to complete the attack, was momentarily stunned by it, wondering the demonic entity that created it had slithered off to, so much so that he also abandoned his moral compass and veered right past us. For safe measure, I stayed in the scream a second longer, regretful of the fact I was ever born.
The Cowboy stomps past me (me, who almost just died, by the way) to mount Ozzy. Together in about 8 seconds flat, they gallop towards the bull and he runs to escape. The three of them breeze past me at top speed through all three gates. The Cowboy shuts the final one, wipes his mouth on his sleeve and tromping past me, mutters, “That’s why you have to stay on their ass.”
The lesson in bulls, for me, is one of boundaries. There have been times I have waved the opportunity to get in the pen with them, learning more from watching safely from the edge. We all need personal development and the pressure in that change is typically uncomfortable, but how growth works. That being said, you are simply not going to do what you do not want to do. Your horse will not do what you don’t want to do. Neither will your dog. And when that ball of pent up fear releases from you like a wretched exhaust from your throat, you will understand in its ugliness how fully how unmatched for the job you are.
At times like this, you can hand the keys over.
Just make sure whoever is driving stays on their ass.
STEERS
On an unseasonably crisp August morning, The Cowboy and I are in hoodies on our horses staring at a field of steers. These are boy cattle who have been banded as calves, like small bulls without the rage, and as “yearlings,” at about a year old clock in at a thousand pounds. Last night’s rain has left the air fresh and clear, washing out any smoke from the air and running it into the streams with cattails and river moss. The objective of this morning’s collection is easy, said in a singular, cowboy sentence. “Let’s ride the fence and bring them up the left.” Off we go.
I always like to start off these events with cattle at a leisurely stroll. If I have it my way, as attempted illustrated with the bull, the animals end up in the pen via whispers, positive reinforcement and subtle coercion. Belle and I stumble across some friends, tell them to tag along, and once in the corral I hand out flower crowns and we have an affirmation circle, and everyone goes home happy.
Smash cut to us 45 minutes into the task, I’m yelling at the dispersed animals like I’m in a room that's on fire. “MOVE, ASSHOLES!!! YOU FUCKS! LET’S GOOOOOO!!!!!!” There is that deep reverberation in my voice - so booming and full that I need vocal rest the following week. Despite this - I’m still me, and employing some alternative methods. I’m pointing to where I want them to go and telling them “Here! We are going here!” I swear this works - sometimes they get curious at what you are pointing at, and all I need is a head turn.
I am laughing but also still kind of pissed - these steers do not respect us. Genetically, they were almost bulls, and bulls are mean. Does that male rage not still exist within them? I assume for the convenience of my current feelings; yes. We get the herd going in one big promising direction, but then, three peel off at a time, karate kicking as they do. The Cowboy leaves to collect the three, eight more follow him. The usual group dynamics theory of cattle collection is being dismissed quickly, and by the time we get any into the pen it’s a thin group of five. I look at the rest of the animals following Covid distancing guidelines and say “DID YOU SEE THIS? THIS IS WHAT WE ARE DOING.”
It is not what we are doing. This small clustering slap stick behavior continues. Some escape to play peekaboo behind a small barn. One gazes up from ground level in a pit. We have to chase him out. I have thrown my hat away because it’s existence is distracting from the mission; Belle thinks it's a winged creature trying to attack her and nearly bucks me off. New kinds of swear words pour out me.
Our big wins come finally in two groups of twenty, with someone manning the inside the corral so that none escape through the opening, the other driving the groups from the left and from the right, and a third jumping off and on their horse to adjust the gate positioning on an ad hoc basis to time it with the approaching stampede.
Gates are a tricky part of ranching that I would like to take this time to give a quick crash course on. Gates, as a generalization, must always remain closed, unless agreed upon universally otherwise. If you are riding shotgun in the truck, you are automatically “GB,” aka gate bitch, and required to tromp through snow, muck, sludge, and shit to navigate through spiders and cobwebs and rust to lift through your legs and move the gate with the disposition of Lancelot’s sword. If cows are close to the gate, you can shoo them, but for the most part - they will stay where they are, becuase this is where their food is. I am still amazed by this.
When moving cattle, a gate should always swing out and away from the group heading towards it, so as to present a wide open doorway. If a gate cannot swing the right way (not the right way, necessarily, but the right way), it must be opened so far that there is no question. If it is not far enough, cows (especially calves) will get into whatever space exists between the gate and the fence and cause even more of a debacle - which is sometimes squirting out of the barbed wire if they are small enough. Then, you are truly screwed. If you are a person who is working a gate, and want animals to flow without hesitation, face away from them - your existence is startling. And ff you are in a group on horseback, “getting the gate” should be generally rotated. It is never a huge inconvenience, especially if it has been a long day on the animals and you need to get blood flowing to your legs properly again.
Gates will rust and break and stick in profound ways, some are held together by intricate twine patterns, or reclaimed wire hangers, and some gates may be layered with other gates on top of them. Some gates stick open naturally. The ones that don’t, offer a complimentary stick nearby for propping open. You must be prepared to master any gate. If you commit to memory the intricacies and nuance of those you come in contact with often, all the better.
Although it’s rather limpily, with a great deal of gate work, we get the job done. We load them into trailers and move them 15 at a time until they are all in a new, green pasture. As we haul, I review the workmanship in the car. “What was up with today? Why were they so uncooperative?” I offer my behavioral theory paralleling the bulls, my new greatest fear in life.
“Oh - the steers?”
“Yeah, why were they nasty.”
“They were just playing. They think it’s fun.”
I don’t know what to say. Fun? The whole time…. The madness and chaos, was a game?
As humans, we like to assume the worst and take things personally before we can rationalize other, more reasonable possibilities. I reconsider the event. The outcome was the same - animals were contained and transported to their new location. But how did it feel to completed from that space? Not great. If I consider most of life’s most basic inconveniences - forgetting my phone in your bed, getting lost in Texas backwoods on my way to a wedding, my father picking up parsley instead of cilantro - couldn’t these all be reframed into fun, a game? Because if the outcome is the same, wouldn’t you prefer the journey be more enjoyable?
Both parsley and cilantro make great chimichurri, by the way. It goes famously well with steak.
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