I think of this song every time I see a fire or evidence of one.
We live in the West. There are fires here. Lots of ’em.
We couldn’t really see the mountains in the west or the Big Horns this summer because of all the haze.
Some of them are accidents or carelessness, like the ones Smokey Bear warns you about.
“Fifteen illegal, abandoned, or escaped campfires have been discovered in the last three weeks. Firefighters have responded to five wildfires in the Bighorn National Forest this summer; three were caused by lightning and two were escaped campfires.” ~Basin Republican Rustler, July 31st 2014
Others, and the most around here, are from lightning strikes.
(Lighting, Photo: Kasey Baker)
Then the others are from prescribed controlled burns. Those are our favorites. Those are the ones that we don’t really have to worry about. There are teams there. They are digging fire lines, the teams have a plan.
(late summer prescribed burn)
They let others know of the plan…
“The Bighorn National Forest, Medicine Wheel/ Paintrock Ranger District will be conducting some prescribed burning through September 26th. O Areas include Beaver Creek South Unit #2 on Sunlight Mesa (44 38′ 56.84″N by 107 41’36.90″W) at about 400 acres. On September 25th and 26th we will be burning Mill Creek Unit #3 near Freeze Out Point in the Cold Springs area (44 22′ 1.43″N by 107 24’29.40″W) and will be approximately 400 acres as well. Smoke from both burns may be visible. Any questions may be directed to the Lovell Forest Service Office or the Medicine Wheel/ Paintrock District Fire Management Officer, Marvin M.”
I appreciate fair warning.
It’s the dry lightning that gets me every time.
(Dry Storm, Photo: Drew Mahr)
The spring rain made the wild grasses and plants grow, by mid-summer everything is dead if it is not irrigated. Dead, dry grass and plants make for excellent tinder. When storms are brewing and going up the mountain, there are some serious lightning and thunder that happens but we rarely get the rain.
By late July this summer we had already had three fires really close to the ranch. All but one was started by lightning.
(Volunteers. Photo: Kasey Baker)
Most of the time our great intern staff would be super close and could put out the fires with shovels and dirt. One 19 acre fire in the state park near our ranch required many, many volunteers, the BLM, and helicopter dumps.
One early morning Wooster had gone out to check humidity and moisture of wind rows around 3am. I wasn’t sleeping. He was on his way back around 4:30am and he saw a lightning strike just ¼ of a mile from our house on the ranch. I ran up to the intern house and got them out of bed. We walked out and saw the fire and smoke.
They jumped into trucks, got shovels and worked their way up to the fire.
The fire was in such a tricky spot that many of the volunteers couldn’t reach it without hiking in. No trucks, tractors or other vehicles could get to it. The BLM was called in with their more specialized wild-fire equipment with longer hoses to help put it out.
(Juniper Fire, Photo: Kasey Baker)
The fire was contained to just five acres. It took a great amount of time for it to burn out and be contained.
For more information about some of the fires, go to this great source and article:
Our little town is bustling….we are in hunting season!
This little blog has gotten some serious traffic in the last few weeks.
I think I know why.
Not those cute kids that live around here. No sir…but they sure are cute.
Or those riveting posts about ranch happenings, new swathers and making hay…
These…
I don’t blame you. It’s exciting and purely great to watch and witness.
So here’s a story if you are interested in reading. Well, two but I’ll keep them short. I promise that they are true, believe them if you will.
One day, while out walking with the girls the elk were high up on a ridge bugling and chirping. I made a couple of sharp whistles and I would like to think that the bulls were answering back. We kept walking along, visited Wooster in a hay field and made our way back about 20 minutes later. Low and behold near the place that I first whistled, one of the biggest elk was there waiting. He was less than 30 yards away. We stared at each other for a little bit, he would bugle and I would answer. (there were a few corrals between us). He would sniff the air, walk around and circle back. We did that for about five minutes until he lost interest. It was one of the best moments of my life while being here. Ruby just played in the dirt patiently and Clara was strapped in the stroller looking at books. My camera…of course…was safely in the house.
Just last evening, same type of scenario, except Wooster was standing with us at the shop. The elk were high on a ridge, bugling and calling. I did some shrill whistles and we kept playing/talking/working. Ruby was chasing cotton tailed rabbits. About five minutes later we could see a lone bull elk running in a far pasture. He ran down the pasture and stayed about 400 yards out. We did the same calling back and forth. He would smell the air and look, circle back, then stand. Matt pointed out that I was probably sending him to his death…he wasn’t far from passing over to another area and public land. Either way, this time I had a witness to the big guy coming around. Camera? In the house.
Okay…one more story.
With a video…
(again…sorry for the shaking and moving…and Clara is “talking” through it too.)
We were standing on the corner of our deck. The white noise sound you hear is the creek and some gated pipe irrigation.
Well….it’s really our front door, but I was thinking of the song.
But this is what’s happening most evenings around here. (sorry for all the shaking and moving)
(the little squeaks and chirps are of the mama elk and babies)
The managers here work to keep them off the hay, but most of the time it’s futile. In the video, they are eating some grass hay that is drying and waiting to be raked.
You can hear them coming.
The rut is in full force.
You can see the bulls running.
The other day I counted 9 bulls with countable antlers. Dusty, our horse trainer, counted 15 yesterday evening.
You might say that they aren’t very fun to look at unless you can hunt/shoot one. Well, you kinda have to be legal when you take one.
We aren’t exactly “legal” right now. We won’t be eligible as residents to get hunting/fishing licenses or tags until mid-October. We then can put in for tags for our area….and it will be for next fall…if we are granted one. BIG IF.
Our areas are 41 and 45.
There are about 150-300 elk around. Some start coming down off the ridges and into our pastures around 4:30 in the afternoon. Almost all are down in the pastures by 7:30pm. If the night is good and cool, they will stay down in the pastures all night and into the early morning. We hear them the whole time.
They are fun to watch, listen to and see out our front door.
There must be something wrong with my camera. I blinked and this happened:
And this:
My camera must be making objects appear larger, longer and older than they really are. Ruby’s legs look miles long and the littlest kid doesn’t look that little anymore.
By the way, the oldest is picking out her clothes now. Stripes with stripes? Yep. We have a lot of less drama when she gets to express or wear what she likes. Everyone wins.
Now…we just need to fix this camera….or slow down time….either one.
It’s September 11th. A day that most people are thinking about terrorist attacks, the unity of a nation, great bullhorn speeches, freedom, liberty and hanging flags at half-staff.
Here in good ‘ole Wyoming we were waking up to this:
The three year old that lives here is pretty excited. To quote her from a couple of weeks ago: “I’m tired of sweating. I want it to be super cold, wear a scarf that covers my face and you can barely see my eyes.”
Wished granted little one, wish granted. Or maybe it’s more like: “From the mouths of babes to God’s ears”.
Needless to say, she was quite excited to see snow this morning.
I had to hold her back from putting on her snow bibs, snow shoes and other layers.
The smallest one here…she wasn’t walking the last time it snowed in April/May. She’s enjoyed some parts of it.
Convening of the hoods….
Under the trees and eves there’s not much snow at all. All the green, pretty leaves that are still on the trees is catching all of it.
As of 1pm, we had about three inches on the ground and it’s still steadily falling. We will go out and walk later this evening.
HOPEFULLY, it will all be gone tomorrow and we can get back to this for a little while:
Well…not to us specifically. It’s new to the ranch.
The ranch got a previously owned swather. It came all the way from Nebraska. We girls spent an afternoon trying to find the truck driver. We must have been driving circles around each other, but he was eventually found and led to the ranch.
We were pretty excited about it. It’s wider than the other and slightly newer.
Summer was nice while it lasted. We’ve had some pretty mild days around here. Our highest temps the last few days and weeks have been in the mid 80’s with 50% humidity.
The next few days the NWS is projecting snow for our parts to reach between 8-12 inches.
People have been throwing around the S word the last few weeks. The farmer’s almanac is calling for a long, bitter winter. NIIIIICCCCCCCEEEEEE. They projected some of the first snows for the area to be later on in the month.
I hope it’s all wrong. The cooler days and nights have been nice and I even daresay “fall” like. We were looking forward to the fall. It’s one of my favorites…..But the snow….nah.
While we were at Cheyenne almost everything that could go wrong on the ranch, did. Things broke down, an intern had a wreck (but was okay), irrigation systems went wonky and one of our ranch vehicles was stolen up on the mountain at the ranch’s cow camp.
Oh yeah…by the way…about 600 cow/calf pairs were taken up on the mountain in mid-July.
Two interns stay up at the cow camp every week. Our lead intern always goes up every week and the others take turns. They leave the main ranch on Saturday night and come back down the following Friday night. The cow camp is a nice cabin with a generator. During day the interns work, gather cows, fix fence, doctor, push the cows to different allotments, make sure the cows have access to water, etc. They leave the camp on horseback in the early mornings and come back to the camp in the evenings.
They left one morning and when they got back in the afternoon the vehicle was gone. Nothing else was.
Word spread pretty fast up on the mountain about the stolen vehicle. The ranch called it in to the local sheriff’s office, they contacted the forest rangers, and forest rangers then talk to people camping, scouting, etc. Also, a state trooper was up on the mountain scouting for elk on his off day and heard the report on one of his walkie/talkies. He spied the vehicle through his binoculars, came back to the ranch and showed Wooster where it would be at on some of the ranches maps. The vehicle was located about a mile from the cow camp.
We got to ride up and find it, look it over and help drive it back down.
(our chariot. The General Manager’s side by side)
The ride to the rim usually takes us about an hour in our truck. In the trusty side by side it only took us about 30 minutes.
(our truck at the rim back in June 2014)
In our truck, we get out and are all nice and clean. The ride in the side by side? Not so much….
We got a llliiiiiilllllttttle dusty. Okay…a lot dusty. We were caked in dirt.
From the rim, you follow a narrow trail almost straight down. I don’t have pictures of it, because I was holding onto babies and we all were pretty dusty. From the rim to the spot to where the vehicle was, it took us another 30 or so minutes.
Everything looked fine with the cruiser. It is a bit temperamental and you have to do certain things to get it to crank sometimes. Sometimes you don’t and it cranks fine. We think that the people stole it, it cranked fine, and they got to this point and turned it off and couldn’t crank it again. They had the hood up and jimmed. But everything was fine.
They tinkered on it for a little bit and then it started right up. We then eeeasseeed our way back up and down the mountain to the ranch. The total trip took us a little over 3 hours.
For a little while now we’ve been musing over what was making some divots and spots around our foundation and other spots near the house. At the beginning of lawnmower season, our groundskeepers sprayed around things and areas that they couldn’t get the lawnmowers or didn’t want to weed eat.
We have a little patch of grass/weeds next to our back steps. It’s a very small rectangle and pretty awkward to cut. Our groundskeeper sprayed the area and now it is a patch of dirt. We don’t mind and the girls like playing in it.
But these started appearing….
I first thought some areas near the foundation were made by rats. Then I saw a prairie dog unusually close to the house and thought maybe they had made their way down to the house.
Nope.
It’s these three little cuties.
We are usually inside making supper, out walking or riding in the tractors when they come around. Matt just happened to see them one evening and they scurried up the tree as fast as they could go.
That black blob at the top left corner of the tree/picture are the three little raccoons.
We also have an influx of other babies around here:
Turkeys
(taken through the kitchen window screen)
Deer
(the little ones are just now losing their spots)
There’s about five bucks that hang out together.
Photo: KJ Angwin
Photo: KJ Angwin
And the elk are back with their little ones.
They make their way down to the lower 160 pasture every evening now around 7:30pm. We aren’t too excited to see them there. They eat about 60% of what a cow does. It’s one of our best grass hay pastures.
These four babies: raccoons, turkeys, deer and the elk have been fun to watch.
