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A Montana Schoolhouse Revisited

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The Bear Creek School House is a warm place to go on a cold spring Saturday night. Photography: Thomas Lee
The Bear Creek School House is a warm place to go on a cold spring Saturday night. Photography: Thomas Lee

One room, no running water, no students in 70 years. But as photographer Thomas Lee shows, this schoolhouse in rural Montana still serves as the heart of a community.

The Bear Creek Schoolhouse hasn’t been the scene of a traditional class since 1942, but you’d never know to look at it. The paint is new, the roof is solid, the walls clean, the floor gleaming. It’s virtually unchanged since it was built in 1909, but it’s not a museum.

Six miles from Cameron, 17 miles south of Ennis, at the foot of the Madison Range, the Bear Creek School House has electricity and heat, but no running water. Members of the Cameron Community Club have been its caretakers since 1945. Every Saturday night in March, they bring water, coffee, and treats to the old building for Cabin Fever Pinochle Parties. Once in a while, they’ll have a dance or a cowboy poetry event.

A sign near the door says enrollment during the 1910s and 1920s grew to 40 students, then began to decline in the 1930s. Mona Durham, who organizes events for the club, says she’s the only former student still around. She walked three miles each way to Bear Creek School for the first and second grades in the mid-1930s, then moved into Ennis with her mother and older sisters when her sisters entered high school.

Perhaps 30 people show up for one of the Cabin Fever Pinochle Parties at the Bear Creek School House. Players change partners and tables throughout the evening.
Perhaps 30 people show up for one of the Cabin Fever Pinochle Parties at the Bear Creek School House. Players change partners and tables throughout the evening. Photography: Thomas Lee
Scores are kept carefully.
Scores are kept carefully. Photography: Thomas Lee
Friendships are kindled. Photography: Thomas Lee
Friendships are kindled. Photography: Thomas Lee
Treats are served. Photography: Thomas Lee
Treats are served. Photography: Thomas Lee
Mona Durham, 84, lives nearby and organizes the events. She says she’s the only former student still around. Photography: Thomas Lee
Mona Durham, 84, lives nearby and organizes the events. She says she’s the only former student still around. Photography: Thomas Lee

Photographer Thomas Lee documents true life in the West on his blog, Thomas Lee True West. For more outstanding Western photography, see the February/March 2016 issue.

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Keith Valley Saddle Co. Keeps Traditional Craftsmanship Alive

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  • Photography: Christina Clusiau/Courtesy Deluxe Corporation's Small Business Revolution

In an era when business is dominated by factory production, Keith Valley is keeping traditional craftsmanship alive, one custom leather saddle at a time.

Keith Valley’s hand-tooled leather saddles take into consideration how the horse and rider move individually, creating a comfortable ride for the pair. He spent three years as an apprentice in Montana before moving to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where his business, Keith Valley Saddle Co., attracts tourists who stop by to admire his work.

Now, Valley is also getting national attention from the Deluxe Corporation's Small Business Revolution documentary project — a yearlong campaign that celebrates the vibrancy, variety, and community impact of small businesses across the country. The Deluxe Corp. developed the Small Business Revolution to focus on the importance of personal touch and local involvement in an era when business is becoming increasingly impersonal. The campaign is capturing the stories of small businesses and their customers, families and friends — all of whom are a crucial part of what makes our communities whole.

“The hands-on customer service, the entrepreneurial spirit and the deep community involvement people find in the small businesses they frequent make all the difference,” said Amanda Brinkman, chief brand and communications officer for Deluxe Corp. “Telling these moving, inspirational stories and putting a spotlight on these owners is our way of celebrating the best parts of American business.”

Due to the time-consuming nature of leather working and his attention to detail, Valley estimates he produces approximately 13 saddles each year. He credits his wife as his motivation, and his horse for keeping him sane after long hours at the workbench. Hoping to keep the trade alive, Valley is open to hiring an apprentice – and that’s the type of community impact that the Small Business Revolution is all about.


Read a profile of Skyhorse Saddles in the January 2016 issue. View a longer-form documentary about similar small businesses in America on the Small Business Revolution website.

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The Fort Worth Stock Show Syndicate Sale

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Photography: Courtesy Fort Worth Stock Show Syndicate
Photography: Courtesy Fort Worth Stock Show Syndicate

The Junior Sale of Champions makes for compelling competition and is a great help to pursuing higher education.

The day begins to wane as the crowd grows nervous, anxiously sitting in their stadium seats. The chatter sinks to a silence as a steer is led to the pin so the bidding can begin. It takes only a heart-stopping second for the steer to be sold, the transaction to be made, and the next steer to be shuffled out. As the bids on the steers rise and fall throughout the day, the excitement and anticipation build as the judges slowly narrow down their decision on the Grand Champion Steer. The next day, they begin to prepare for the next season. It’s that time of year again, so get your wallets ready: The Fort Worth Syndicate sale at the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo is starting its bidding on February 5.

With more than 35 years of experience and dedication to the advancement of college education in young men and women, it’s no wonder that The Fort Worth Stock Show Syndicate sale has become so enormously successful. Although there is tough rivalry among young students who are raising their steers and want to continue to pursue degrees in agricultural or life sciences, they each receive some scholarship awarded toward studying at a Texas university.

Photography: Courtesy Fort Worth Stock Show Syndicate
Photography: Courtesy Fort Worth Stock Show Syndicate

“Since 1980, they’ve raised more than $46 million for the youth exhibitors, provided over $1 million in scholarships for 4-H and FFA members, and helped more than 8,000 kids pursue their agricultural goals,” according to the Syndicate’s website. These numbers are impressive, and they continue to multiply. Over the past several years, the winning bid has increased dramatically. In 2013, Stock Martin and his Grand Champion Steer, Lunchbox, earned a ground breaking $205,000. Though this record breaking bid price is already held to exceptionally high standards, the winning offer continues to garner suspense, with last year’s winner, Madilyn Priesmeyer, earning $240,000 for her steer, Bob Marley.

With The Fort Worth Stock Show Syndicate sale being the largest financial supporter of junior exhibitors, and the knowledge that the grand prize increases each year, this year’s competition will certainly be compelling.


To donate toward scholarships for this year’s contestants, visit www.igivehere.org/fwsss.

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Profiles in Rodeo: Cole Elshere

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Photography: James Phifer/Rodeobum.com
Photography: James Phifer/Rodeobum.com

The young bronc rider is setting the stage for a successful career in the arena.

The rodeo at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo in Fort Worth, Texas, is as full of history and legend as it is fast horses and 8-second thrills. Touted as the first indoor rodeo, the event began in the Stockyards in 1918 and moved to the site of the Will Rogers Coliseum in 1944.

To this day, a traditional grand entry still kicks off each performance of the PRCA event, which is held twice daily for 16 days. There’s a live house band that sets the tone and takes you back in time.

It’s a rodeo where you feel at once caught up in the present-day action and transported back, as if you might actually see rodeo legends like Tad Lucas, Jim Shoulders, and Casey Tibbs.

This year, while you won’t see Casey Tibbs, you will see legends in the making. And if you were at the rodeo this past Sunday, you’d have seen Cole Elshere, the young-yet-accomplished saddle bronc rider who portrays Tibbs in an upcoming documentary film on the cowboy’s life.

At 26 years old, Elshere is already well-known for his bronc riding successes, which include three qualifications to the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo from 2012 – 14. Knee surgery in early 2015 sidelined him for much of the season and cost him his fourth trip to the NFR.

But this season, things are a little different for the bronc rider. He’s not only riding horses for 8 seconds, he’s making a run for the gold in the bull riding, too. “I grew up on a ranch in South Dakota, and as a young kid starting out in rodeo you can first [get] on sheep, then move up to steers and eventually bulls,” Elshere explains, adding that you can’t get on bucking broncs until high school. “So most of the rough stock kids grow up riding bulls, and then they end up riding broncs or barebacks as well,” he says.

That’s why it’s not exactly a new thing for Elshere to get on the back of a bucking bovine, but last season was his first calculated attempt at competing in both events professionally.

This season, he’s amping it up even more. Sunday in Fort Worth, Elshere rode at the two rodeo performances and got on bulls and horses each time.

It’s perhaps safe to say that saddle bronc riding is Elshere’s first love.

“Bronc riding is a learning process, and it was so much fun just trying to figure out the finesse of it, so I just really put a lot of effort into that,” Elshere says of focusing on broncs after his first year of college and into his early professional career.

Now, though, his new tactic comes with an added mental boost.

“It’s good because you get done with one, and whether it went well or poor you’ve got another shot. You just try to train your focus to switch to the other event and then go prepare for that,” he says. “I have to hustle a little bit because there’s not a whole lot of time in between, but it’s good for me and keeps my mind off of things.”

That mental toughness is one of the biggest assets to success at the professional rodeo level, Elshere explains. “The mental part is what you have to focus on the most, because it can either boost you or drag you down.”

The rodeo road is certainly a marathon, not a sprint.

“We go to 100 rodeos, and some of them like this one, you could be there for three days,” Elshere says. “We get on approximately 150 bucking horses a year. If I’m going to do both events I could be getting on 300 head easily. Just trying to save your body and prepare it to take the beating it will, and compete well at the same time is one of the challenges.”

If there are challenges, there are also plenty of rewards for Elshere.

“I love the feeling of competing and trying to win. That’s what drives me to do this,” Elshere says.

The bigger picture is not lost on him either. Another thing that motivates him: “Being able to [represent] South Dakota and show all the kids from home that they can go out into the world and ride well and compete at the top level.”

And Fort Worth is the perfect place to get that goal started each season, Elshere says. “Fort Worth is one of the first big rodeos we go to for the whole season, so doing well here really sets the pace and can put you on the leader board.”

Rodeo fans can get just as energized as the athletes, Elshere assures. “This rodeo is one of the oldest rodeos, and in the old Coliseum where a lot of history has been made. It’s fun to see the atmosphere and the sport at its finest.”


The Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo continues through February 6.

The post Profiles in Rodeo: Cole Elshere appeared first on Cowboys and Indians Magazine.

The Steady Rise of Conrad Anker

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The man from Montana has amassed a mountain of climbing fame — and accolades for the new IMAX national parks tribute featuring him.

Great mountain climbers tend to share two common traits: an irrepressible attraction to places most of us can’t fathom without an armchair or a movie pass and a matter-of-fact attitude about it all.

“It’s what I love to do — just having that connection to gravity, experiencing that camaraderie, and living in the moment,” says elite rock, ice, and mountain climber Conrad Anker without a hint of anything beyond grounded, contented acceptance. “I don’t think any climber can ever plan to be one of the enviable few who are actually paid to climb for a living,” he adds. “I still have to pinch myself.”

At age 53, Anker has garnered more headlines over decades of spectacular climbs around the globe than the low-key Montana-based family man would ever let on. They include dizzying first ascents from Alaska and Baffin Island to Patagonia and Antarctica, to multiple expeditions in the Himalayas — where in May 1999 he would famously discover the body of legendary 1920s mountaineer George Mallory on the upper slopes of Mount Everest during Anker’s first of three summitings there.

Few mountaineers would run into as much media attention that year as Anker, who found himself not only at the helm of a recent Everest triumph but also part of a subsequent tragedy on Tibet’s 26,291-foot Shishapangma five months later. While on an expedition for an NBC documentary, Anker narrowly survived an avalanche that claimed the lives of two members of the team — cameraman David Bridges and Anker’s close friend and climbing partner Alex Lowe, one of the world’s most renowned alpinists. “I had more stuff go on in that single year than in all of my previous ones,” Anker would note.

And he’s had a lot of stuff going on recently — the sort of stuff that involves not just big mountains but big screens. His latest climbing credits on film include the Sundance award-winning documentary Meru, chronicling his efforts to summit the notorious Himalayan peak Mount Meru (via the Shark’s Fin route), and the newly released IMAX 3D documentary National Parks Adventure, which coincides with the National Park Service’s 100th anniversary.

“I’m a complete advocate of the National Park Service,” Anker says. “My family is from the vicinity of Yosemite National Park, going back five generations, and I was introduced to many of those great parks by my parents. The opportunity to be part of this film is a huge honor.”

Growing up in California’s Sierra country, Anker earned early climbing stripes on Yosemite’s signature 3,569-foot granite wall, El Capitán, and throughout several parks of the West. Now based in Bozeman with wife Jennifer Lowe-Anker and his three sons, Anker is currently a captain of The North Face Global Athlete Team, serves on several climbing and outdoor leadership boards, and works with the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation, which supports the Khumbu Climbing Center in Phortse, Nepal.

C&I caught up with Anker a couple of days after his return from his latest Himalayan climbing expedition to talk about favorite high places, national parks in 3-D, and what makes this mountaineer’s knees wobble.

Cowboys & Indians: You just returned from familiar stomping grounds and a “second home” of sorts, the Himalayas. Brief us on your latest expedition.
Conrad Anker: I was in the Khumbu region of Nepal with my good friend [Austrian elite climber] David Lama. We were trying to climb a peak there called Lunag Ri, a lesser-known 6,900-meter mountain which hadn’t yet been summited — and still hasn’t. It’s a very challenging, classic alpine climb. We got farther than other teams have, about 300 meters from the summit, but ultimately we didn’t have success.

C&I: Is the climb still a qualified success if you know you made the right decision by turning around?
Anker: Absolutely. Mountains are always going to be stronger than we are, whether you reach the summit or not. If you’re making grounded decisions and you come back alive with 10 fingers and toes and a nose, that alone is a success. We would’ve had to spend the night in the open at 23,000 feet in the middle of November in minus 25 degrees Celsius temperatures and howling wind. So we knew it just wasn’t going to happen this time.

C&I: Next time?
Anker: Yeah, I’d like to revisit and have another go at it. It’s always fun to reach the summit of a peak that hasn’t been climbed yet. The real key, though, is going into it with the right attitude and a sense of exploration — and also valuing the partnership and friendship you build with people along the way.

C&I: Your partnership with fellow die-hard climbing elites Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk seems to be the focus in the recent documentary Meru — at least as much as the infamous Himalayan peak itself.
Anker: I’d say it’s the most important part of it. Whether you make it all the way or not, having that chance to be with your friends in a very unique and demanding place like that is the greatest blessing of all.

C&I: In the film, which traces your repeat attempts to climb one of the most unclimbable-looking rocks out there, at Himalayan altitudes, Jon Krakauer calls Meru “the test of the master climber” and you refer to it as “the culmination of all I’ve done.”  Where do you go from there?
Anker: Well [laughs] ... down, I suppose. I still want to do fun and challenging climbs, but at this point in my career, I don’t need to be upping the ante any more than that. Meru was it. I’d say that was the one that really pulled everything together for me.

Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. Photography: Barbara MacGillivray ©VisitTheUSA.com/Courtesy MacGillivray Freeman
Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. Photography: Barbara MacGillivray © VisitTheUSA.com/Courtesy MacGillivray Freeman

C&I: You’re now on the giant screen with stepson Max [Lowe, adventure photographer] and fellow adventurist Rachel Pohl in the new MacGillivray Freeman IMAX 3D release National Parks Adventure. More than 30 U.S. national parks were scouted for this movie. How many did you personally visit over the course of the production?
Anker: The film covers a whole bunch of parks, including crown jewels like Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, and Everglades. I visit Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming; Arches, Canyonlands, Zion, and some [Bureau of Land Management] land around Moab in Utah; and then Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in [the] Upper [Peninsula of] Michigan.

C&I: Pictured Rocks may be the one park on that list that isn’t already familiar to many of us. How did that location come about?
Anker: Quite unexpectedly. We’d initially planned to shoot some ice-climbing sequences close to my home at Hyalite Canyon [in Montana’s Gallatin Range, near Yellowstone]. But because of the dry winter and light snowfall out here last year, we scouted and moved it to Pictured Rocks at the last minute.

I love Hyalite, which is about 40 minutes from here in Bozeman. In fact, I’ll be heading there this afternoon to do some ice climbing. But Pictured Rocks, where we ended up doing the ice climb, turned out to be this incredible find with these gorgeous ice caves and frozen waterfalls. The West has so many iconic national parks, but this was a really the big surprise. Plus it’s nice to shine a spotlight on the beauty of the Midwest as well. It’s fantastic there in the summer, too.

C&I: It’s one thing to make a leisurely visit to a beautiful, remote national park and quite another to do it on an IMAX shooting schedule. What were some of the biggest challenges making this movie?
Anker: The camera itself. I mean, it’s the size of a dishwasher and maybe about as heavy as one. Getting it in location was always a tremendous amount of work. At Devils Tower, we had to get the camera into position on the top of that giant cliff. We spent a couple of days all working together on just that — which was as much fun as anything else.

Then, of course, we had to time everything precisely to the right light. And you’re not exactly in a studio or some controlled setting where you can just expect things like that to be straightforward. They almost never are out there. It’s a complete unknown every time.

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Devils Tower National Monument. Photography: Barbara MacGillivray ©VisitTheUSA.com/Courtesy MacGillivray Freeman Films

C&I: You and the producers reportedly met with more than 20 tribal elders to discuss the production at Devils Tower, a sacred Native American site. Can you talk about that experience?
Anker: I’m really glad you asked because it was such a key part to that whole experience. Prior to shooting, we worked with several Native American communities and leaders, including [Great Sioux Nation] Chief Arvol Looking Horse, to help lay out the groundwork for the climb. Climbing is not encouraged there. It’s tolerated. And June is a sacred month during solstice for the Native American community, so there was a voluntary closure request at the time, which we followed.

Some of the Native American groups we spoke with there felt that climbing Devils Tower was a great way of communing with the space. Others felt differently. We had some of the groups come and perform ceremonies, and we filmed near the sweat lodge. There were some really neat things that happened there, and the most meaningful part I think was being able to work with the Native American groups and build some of their own story into the script. So many national parks were sacred places long before being established as parks. Honoring that was an integral part of the whole experience.

C&I: How was the actual climb of Devils Tower?
Anker: I’ve done it several times before, but it’s always a challenging climb, and even more so for an IMAX film. We didn’t have bluebird weather. It was overcast with some big, ominous clouds. We had to get in there, climb it, and kind of time it all perfectly. And with IMAX, which is so cost-intensive, you don’t want to be doing too many takes like with digital, where you just shoot, shoot, shoot. There’s a real need to be on your game the first time.

C&I: Where were some of your other favorite adrenaline rushes?
Anker: I love those Utah parks. Climbing The Three Penguins [natural sandstone tower at Arches National Park] and jumping across the summit tower with Rachel and Max was quite the experience. So was mountain biking in Moab. That part was very eye-opening for me. I’d never done anything that challenging or extreme on a mountain bike.

C&I: Wait — so even Conrad Anker’s knees wobble sometimes?
Anker: On a mountain bike, they certainly did. I mean, a bicycle to me is mainly about scooting around town and getting a jug of milk. I do some mountain biking, but what these trick riders do on slick rock out there was just a totally new world to me. Watching Eric [Porter], the pro mountain biker during the shoot, jump off a cliff over and over again, and then wipe out at one point, and get back up like nothing ... I was just watching him the whole time holding my breath.

Then, at one point, he turns to me and says, “OK, your turn. Just try this one. Go down that.” No way. I’m not doing that. I’m gonna freak out, overgrip, go over the top of my handlebars, and hit my head or cheese-grater down the sandstone. No thanks. Rachel and Max are more avid mountain bikers than I am, so they had a little more experience on that leg of the journey.

C&I: You grew up near the gates of Yosemite and have climbed and adventured your way all over the West. If you were to single out some of your favorite lofty spots — preferably accessible to the “rest of us” — where would you point us?

Anker: Yosemite certainly has always had great appeal to me. I think Half Dome is a pretty marvelous hike there — and an accessible one with that cable route. [Washington’s] Mount Rainier would definitely be another favorite. I climbed it when I was 16, and that was a huge thing for me, getting a handle on glaciers and snow terrain like that. It’s such a beautiful mountain and park with a storied history.
Then there are all of those desert parks in Utah, which are very high on my list of personal favorites. I got to know them well as a college student at the University of Utah. If I had to choose a single favorite out there, it would probably be Zion, the state’s first national park. I love that place.

C&I: The Mallory discovery on Everest was followed by the tragic loss of your close friend and climbing partner Alex Lowe that same year during another Himalayan expedition. What is it like for you to look back on that period now?
Anker: It was a pivotal time, and it took a while to balance it all out. I went from living this footloose and fancy-free existence on various expeditions to climbing Everest for the first time and making that huge discovery — and then the personal tragedy with Alex. And life changed. Jenni [artist Jennifer Lowe-Anker] and I eventually got together. And the boys. [Anker adopted Lowe’s three sons.] So, yeah, it was quite a year in my trajectory.

C&I: Does climbing get better, or richer, at all with age and life experience?
Anker:  I think it gets richer. I certainly enjoy it every day. I guess I’m more cautious than I was at that younger age. But this afternoon at Hyalite Canyon, I’ll be a kid at Christmas.

C&I: Caution is a relative term in your field, right? You still went back to Meru quite recently to finish some old business — on one of the scariest peaks imaginable. ...
Anker: Yeah. [Laughs.] But I’ve been climbing my whole life, so that’s what I do. I know some people will look at that and go, “That’s absolutely crazy.” But I knew what I was getting myself into.

C&I: As a mountaineer, is accepting an element of unfathomable danger just part of the deal?
Anker: Yeah, we know. One can’t wholly accept it, but you know it’s there. That’s probably part of why it’s such a rich experience, because it really is so daring. Maybe people who play racquetball have the same emotions, I don’t know, but an activity like this I think brings life down to a very elemental level. I mean, it’s survival. Making a cup of tea at that altitude is a huge effort. Going to the bathroom can take the wind out of you.

C&I: What do you think draws people to climb mountains, aside from the fact that they’re there?
Anker: I think climbing a mountain can really kick-start a person’s sense of adventure — something that was easy enough to find, say, 150 years ago but is much harder nowadays. It can draw people together with that great level of trust and camaraderie that’s often involved. If you and I go out on a climb, we’re a team. The potential adversaries are the environment, the weather, getting your stove working. So you really have to work together, and the wilderness teaches that message more than any other place. The more that we can share that message with the public, the more beneficial it is.

That said, I think the media does add its degree of sensationalism. The whole death-defying “life is harsh” business can be harmful. But when you go to the mountains, you’re bound to come back and really appreciate the simple things in life. After being in this self-imposed hardship, you really appreciate being with friends and family, having a cup of coffee, a conversation, rather than being caught up with all that other stuff. It helps you focus on what’s meaningful in life. Plus, it’s just so incredibly beautiful up there.

C&I: Who are some of your greatest inf luences in the climbing world?
Anker: A close friend of mine named Mugs Stump, who perished in Alaska during a climb many years ago, was one of them. He was about 13 years older than me and worked as a guide and professional climber. We lived together for a while and helped each other out. He believed in me fully and became a real mentor.

Another inf luence who I think was really remarkable and inspired generations of climbers was a [German alpinist] named Willo Welzenbach. He’s sort of one of those historical European figures that only the cognoscenti of climbing will know, but he was one of these guys in the 1930s who went to the Alps and really did his own thing. He soloed some routes that were way ahead of their time.

Most of all, when I was growing up, [Italian mountaineer] Reinhold Messner was an incredible inspiration. I remember reading his book, [The] Big Walls, when I was 15 or so and being totally amazed. In 1978 he made the first oxygenless ascent of Everest, and then in 1980 he soloed it from the Chinese side, which is still one of the hallmark climbs. I doubt anything of that caliber will ever be repeated.

C&I: You’ve since planted your own f lag as a mentor to a new generation of climbing greats. If there’s a philosophy or even just a simple message about climbing that you’d want to pass along, what would it be?
Anker: Live in the moment. Find the right people to share your adventures with, and make the most of it. Be there — and be happy as you go.


From the April 2016 issue.

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“National Parks Adventure” IMAX Film Opens in February

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Extreme climber Conrad Anker makes an IMAX film fit for a centennial.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act, creating a new federal bureau called the National Park Service. Its ambitious role: to protect the 37 national parks and monuments then in existence “in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

A century of steady service and expansion later, the National Park Service now manages more than 400 units of national treasures spread across the United States and its territories. Is there a big enough gift to properly salute this bureau’s centennial?

National Parks Adventure appears to have the proportions right.

The new IMAX 3D documentary, produced by MacGillivray Freeman Films (makers of the 1998 IMAX documentary Everest) and narrated by (none other than) Robert Redford, follows a cast of adventurers led by elite mountaineer Conrad Anker up, down, and all around some of the country’s greatest parks and natural wonders. From mountain to canyon. Frozen waterfall to gator swamp.

The real stars of the show: more than 30 national parks and historic sites shot over a nine-month period. They include old faithfuls such as Yellowstone, Redwoods, Arches, and Everglades, plus underappreciated finds such as Michigan’s Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore that every bit as much need to be seen to be believed. Preferably in person. But otherwise on the next best thing: a really big screen.


From the April 2016 issue.

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The Women of the Last Great Race

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DeeDee Jonrowe heads down the re-start chute of the 2008 Iditarod Sled Dog Race at Willow, Alaska. Photography: Jeff Schultz/www.iditarodphotos.com

For the women who mush almost 1,000 miles across frozen Alaska in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, it's all about grit.

On June 27, 2015, DeeDee Jonrowe, 61, signed up for the 2016 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, just as she has done nearly every year since 1980. This year, though, committing to the grueling race took even more fortitude than usual: Less than two weeks earlier, a forest fire had reduced her home in Willow, Alaska, to a pile of smoldering ash and an 8-foot hole.

“When I heard about the fire, I ran the roadblock the state troopers had set up,” Jonrowe says. “I’d let all my possessions burn if it means saving my dogs.” Her husband, Mike, was hundreds of miles away commercial fishing in Bristol Bay. Fortunately, a neighbor had gotten there in time with a trailer to help her take her dogs to safety.

These aren’t your average beloved dogs Jonrowe was willing to risk life and limb for. They’re her sled dogs and her partners in her passion for running what’s called The Last Great Race on Earth: the legendary Iditarod. Jonrowe has participated in 33 of them.

Traversing nearly 1,000 miles of sheer wilderness from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska, dog mushers race each other across a harsh landscape of spruce forest, tundra, mountain passes, and frozen rivers while dealing with blizzards, whiteout conditions, and gale-force winds. Wind chills have reached 100 degrees below zero.

Although dog-sledding was seen as a man’s sport when the race was inaugurated in 1973, the Iditarod saw its first female participants and its first woman finisher, Mary Shields, in 1974. Libby Riddles caught the attention of the world by becoming the first woman to win the race in 1985. The next year, Susan Butcher won it, claiming the first of her four victories.

When Jonrowe entered her first Iditarod in 1980, she was one of only six female entrants. By 2015, 25 intrepid women, including Jonrowe, were racing on the Iditarod Trail; the race’s website put the number of women competing in the 44th annual race this March at 26 out of 86 mushers as of press time. Jonrowe has been the runner-up twice and has placed in the top 10 an impressive 16 times, including in 1988, when bad weather forced her to hole up in a shelter cabin with three other racers. With very little food among them, they melted snow for drinking water to survive until the storm let up.

Jonrowe grabbed national headlines in 2003 when she entered the race only three weeks after completing chemotherapy for breast cancer. She knows how to wage a battle with her body and has paid a heavy physical price for her racing: She has had back surgery, frozen her shoulder, broken her hand, and suffered severe frostbite to her fingers, cheeks, and nose. “I’ve also had whiplash and concussions,” she says. Even training for the race presents hazards: “Now and then, a moose will charge us.”

Jonrowe was working as a state biologist in the remote Yup’ik town of Bethel when her interest in dogs was sparked. Her job was to go from village to village conducting a regular census of area wildlife. “[Guide, kennel owner, and future Father of the Iditarod] Joe Redington was trying to raise awareness on dog-sledding at the time because it was dying out in the state then,” Jonrowe says. “I decided to get a small team of five dogs and use them to go from village to village for my work.”

Dog-sledding had once been so much a part of village life that every home might have five or six dogs — that number had dwindled to nearly none. Redington wanted to revive dog sled culture, but it was the idea of Dorothy G. Page — called the Mother of the Iditarod — to commemorate the centennial of the United States purchase of Alaska from Russia as well as the 1925 serum run to Nome. Also known as the Great Race of Mercy, the historic event occurred in a crisis. Diphtheria antitoxin needed emergency transport by dog sled relay across Alaska, then still a U.S. territory, with about 150 dogs crossing nearly 700 miles of wilderness in order to save the children of Nome from an imminent plague. The mushers made it in 127 hours, with only a few hours to spare. The press hailed them — and their dogs — as heroes, and the event became as much a statement of Alaska grit as The Alamo is for Texas.

The race Redington eventually created followed the old Iditarod mail route from Anchorage to Nome. He raised a big purse to be divided among the mushers, and the Iditarod race was born.

Inspired by Redington, Jonrowe found herself falling in love with her dogs, sled racing, and the Native culture it sprang from. “The culture and their history are so interesting,” she says. “Their ability to do a lot with a little is a fascination with me.” Within nine months of obtaining her small dog team, Jonrowe was entering dog-sled races. More than 35 years later, she’s still at it.

Iditarod resembles gold fever. It infects people from all walks of life. Take 36-year-old Zoya DeNure. A Wisconsin native and former fashion model, DeNure had been a regular at Shanghai Fashion Week and on Milan’s runways. After modeling came to an end, she found herself working at a mortgage firm. Backing up a statement to coworkers that she wouldn’t be behind a desk by the time she reached 30, she answered an ad by an Alaskan musher looking for a dog handler for his kennel in Nenana.

The move changed DeNure’s life. She started a rescue kennel for injured dogs and began gravitating to dog races in the area. “I was attracted to the idea that less is more,” she says, “After having lived to the extreme of city, travel, and people nonstop, I was now interested in a different lifestyle with nature, dogs, and space.”

She really put down roots after meeting her husband, John Schandelmeier, at a dog sled race in the nearby mountains. A trapper and commercial fisherman, he had his own dog teams. The two hit it off and were soon married and raising a family in the Alaska Range.

But being a mother didn’t dissuade DeNure from pursuing mushing. She trained hard and placed 53rd out of 96 in her first Iditarod race in 2008. During it, she spent four hours in a gorge repairing her sled’s brakes. After developing a mastitis infection from weaning her daughter from breast feeding, she had to scratch from the race in 2010. The following year, she scratched again when her 8-year-old lead dog collapsed in the harness and she had to give mouth-to-muzzle resuscitation; DeNure had made it a couple of hundred miles to the Rainy Pass checkpoint but withdrew out of concern for the dog’s health. And she was compelled to pull out in 2012 at the Cripple checkpoint halfway through the race when she couldn’t boot her dogs for protection against horrific low temperatures.

In addition to those disappointments, she’s had her share of close calls. “I fell into [the Maclaren River] while racing [the Taiga 300], sled and all,” DeNure says. “My team made it across the open lead, and when I called to my leaders and team, they pulled me up onto the ice.”

It’s not the life you’d associate with a former fashion model. The dog musher’s day begins at 8 a.m.: feeding the dogs, cleaning the yard, harnessing the dogs, hooking up teams for training runs, dog walks, gear and equipment maintenance. All the while, DeNure is also taking care of her two children, 7-year-old Jona and 2-year-old Olivia.

Why does she do it? There’s the sense of surmounting great obstacles, sure. But it’s also about the beauty and the exhilaration. “[It’s amazing] being out in places you can only get to by dog team, racing under a full moon and the aurora,” DeNure says, recalling last year’s Gin Gin 200 race, which found her streaking across a white landscape lit by a full moon and a dazzling aurora borealis for two nights.

Dog-sledding also holds DeNure’s fellow Wisconsin natives Anna and Kristy Berington in its thrall. Tall and athletic with flowing blonde hair often in braids, the 30-year-old twins moved to Alaska in 2007 and have been getting attention since their first Iditarod race in 2010. They’re favorites with photographers covering the spectacle.

“Being identical twins is definitely a sideshow in the Iditarod,” says Kristy. “A lot of kids like to meet us because many of them have never met or seen twins before in some of the remote villages.” The twins’ trademark long blonde braids make them a popular subject for those elementary students to draw. Entire classes have come out to see them in villages like Unalakleet and Elim to get photos and autographs. (You can actually tell the Berington twins apart now that Anna has a 1-inch scar on her left leg from a snow hook and her toes have shortened from frostbite from a 50-below night on the trail.)
Two tough, attractive single women in Alaska are bound to get the attention of older fans as well. “We both have been proposed to on the Iditarod Trail by complete strangers,” Kristy says. “Groups of half-naked men spelled out our names across their chests in the dead of winter!”

Beauty and brawn might get the proposals during the Iditarod, but it’s brawn and true grit that win the race. The physical strength of the women of The Last Great Race on Earth was underscored last year when a 36-year-old female spectator from California challenged then-45-year-old champion musher Aliy Zirkle to an arm-wrestling contest shortly after Zirkle came in fifth in the Iditarod. Ten seconds into the match, Zirkle — mother of two and winner of the Iditarod Leonhard Seppala Humanitarian Award for exemplary care of her dogs — accidentally broke her opponent’s wrist.


The 2016 Iditarod race begins March 5. From the February/March 2016 issue.

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Hitched Horsehair Bridles Have a History Behind Bars

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Photography: Ned Martin
Photography: Ned Martin

Before they produced license plates, inmates in the West served some artistic time making hitched horsehair bridles.

The flowing mane and tail of the horse have been used for many purposes, both utilitarian and aesthetic, ever since humans paired up with equines. The strong, waterproof, dye-able strands of hair became a component in the creation of ropes, girths, and war bridles for horses. Horsehair was also used for fishing line, stuffing for mattresses and furniture, and decorative additions to clothing. It is still used on bows to draw notes from stringed instruments.

Yet the hitching of horsehair in the construction of bridles is a unique American folk art. In no other culture has horsehair been used in quite this manner. In making bridles, the long hairs of the horse’s tail were the most useful, and when dyed brilliant colors, they could be braided or hitched into beautiful pieces: belts, hatbands, watch fobs, canes, quirts, and bridles with reins.

Over the years, many people have mistakenly assumed that these beautiful antique horsehair pieces were made by Native Americans, who were known to have used horsehair to make ropes, war bridles, and some headstalls. However, among Native Americans, the more common and efficient techniques of twisting and braiding were most often employed, rather than hitching. Most Indian horsehair work was done with the natural colors of horsehair and plant-based dyes. They also used horsehair decoratively, tying strands to embellish their clothing or their hair.

We now know that many of the hitched horsehair bridles extant today were created by the inmates of the West’s territorial and state penitentiaries. Since it was believed that inmates who were busy and productive had fewer problems and caused less trouble, some wardens promoted hobby programs. The prison warden usually determined the types of activities available for inmates, depending on security levels and what raw materials and tools could be used.

Photography: Ned Martin
Photography: Ned Martin

The craft of hitching horsehair into colorful bridles flourished in the prisons of 12 western states from about 1885 through the 1920s. (One wonders if the term “doing a hitch” was related to this inmate activity.) Horses were always kept on the prison farms, so most of the required materials were inexpensive and readily available. Hitched and braided horsehair pieces were created by hand without the benefit of any special tools and could be made in the confines of a small cell. The inmates had the time to devote to this folk art, which required focus and attention to detail for long periods.

By producing pieces that would sell “on the outside” for a good price, inmates could earn money for tobacco or to save for their release. One hundred years ago, these bridles would sell for $20 to $50 each. The prisoner might get two-thirds of that, while the remainder would go to the prison for supplies. Besides the monetary return, inmates gained a sense of pride in producing useful, artistically satisfying objects valued by others.

Some speculate that Mexican prisoners brought the craft of horsehair hitching to the prisons of the far West and taught other inmates. But there are very few early horsehair bridles found in Mexico. It is possible that Spanish sailors, who were experts at knotting, first brought this skill to the New World in the 16th century. Many of them stayed in Mexico and passed on their techniques to others, some of whom might have ended up in prison, where they passed the time tying knots and using whatever fiber was handy.

In hitching, a series of horsehair pulls, or strands, is knotted over string that is wound around a wooden dowel. The dowel provides something sturdy to hitch over and provides shape for the item to be hitched — usually in geometric patterns based on a diamond shape.

Bridles took the longest time to produce. An inmate might work on a relatively simple braided headstall for about six weeks, while an elaborate, colorful hitched bridle might take four to six months to complete. Such a piece would require 40,000 half-hitch knots.

Each of the Western prisons had its own style of bridle with particular colors and patterns in the horsehair, along with different styles of tassels and rosettes. Inmates at Arizona’s Florence State Prison — completed in 1908 to replace the territorial prison in Yuma — made the most original bridles, which employed bright colors and different types of knots. At Montana’s territorial prison in Deer Lodge, inmates put text or numbers on bridles. Wyoming prisoners utilized a combination of braided calfskin and hitched horsehair. Cañon City, Colorado, inmates braided their bridles and made their own bits.

The earliest bridles, especially those made at Yuma Territorial Prison, were crafted of horsehair in its natural colors: black, white, and brown with only small color accents. Through the years, black and white alone were usually only seen on bridles crafted at Deer Lodge, Cañon City, or Laramie, Wyoming. It is interesting to note that bridles made from 1911 to the 1930s incorporated red, orange, blue, turquoise, yellow, pink, and purple, and they had more creative color combinations and patterns than the pieces made before or after that time. Bridles made since the 1970s tend to be narrower with fewer tassels, and often feature leather buckles for bridle adjustments and for connecting the headstall to the bit. The rosettes are made by the inmates out of leather and silver rather than the glass preferred by manufacturers.

Today the tradition is kept alive by the inmates of Montana State Prison, whose horsehair bridles are for sale in the prison outlet store in Deer Lodge.

Photography: Ned Martin
Photography: Ned Martin

At the Inmate Hobby Store

An inmate talks about the historical and contemporary prison pastime of horsehair hitching.

Across from the old territorial prison in downtown Deer Lodge, Montana, inmate hobby clerk William Hart is at work manning the Montana State Prison Hobby Store. Among the many items he rings up for customers who stop in on historic tours of the prison buildings are hitched horsehair bridles, which have been crafted by inmates here for almost 150 years.

“Horsehair hitching as a hobby in the prison here dates back to the 1880s. I’ve personally had my hands in the hair, so to speak, for several years,” says Hart, who learned the craft from another inmate. “There aren’t any organized classes. It’s all self-taught, refined, and passed on.”

The inmates buy their own supplies and pay their own shipping. When they sell a piece in the store — there’s currently no way to sell online — 75 percent goes to the inmate-artisan and 25 percent to the store to pay store overhead. “Before that money becomes spendable,” Hart explains, “a portion is taken out for anything the inmate might owe, like, for instance, child support. What money comes back to them, they might use it for phone time, stationery, commissary, pop and candy, sending money home, and saving up for release.”

Today, the best examples of horsehair bridles might sell at the prison outlet for $1,500 to $5,000 and more. Beyond the income potential, there’s pride of craftsmanship. For Hart, a particular piece comes to mind. “The piece I’m proudest of is a bridle that came down here to the store. It was all horsehair. It’s very meticulous work; you have to make sure that each knot and each hitch is exactly where it’s supposed to be. On the flatwork alone, there’s anywhere from 800 to 1,200 hitches. It takes about two hours an inch for flatwork, which doesn’t include needleknotwork or the assembly itself. This bridle was all diamond patterns and had hitchwork on the inside of the piece so that it hung nicely and displayed well.”

Hart is one of nearly 300 inmates who hitch horsehair and sell their artistry in the store. It’s more a hobby than a living.

“First, you have to have a job [in the prison] to have the money to buy the supplies,” Hart says. “To give you an idea, one piece that took a year to make and sold for $3,400, easily had $400 of wholesale horsehair in it. And you can’t use all of the horsehair you buy because you have to pick out the brittle and other unsuitable strands. With all that goes into it, you don’t really make all that much. Then vendors will come here and buy these pieces and resell them at big venues for lots more. They can easily double their money.”

In spite of that, Hart says, the hobby program is well-received and he feels lucky to have it. “Making these horsehair bridles requires intense concentration. It’s a good pastime for penal institutions because of the rehabilitative aspect and because it allows you to escape your situation. You get so focused that it becomes a mental escape from the incarcerated environment you find yourself in.”

— Dana Joseph


Jody and Ned Martin are the authors of  Horsehair Bridles, A Unique American Folk Art (2015, Hawk Hill Press).

From the April 2016 issue.

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Ranching Family Values

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Ranch sorting is one of the fastest-growing equine sports thanks to a family-friendly format that encourages riders from 7 to 77 to saddle up and get in the pen.

For the Day family, ranch life was fulfilling, but it was also a lot of work and not a lot of play. Even the rare times they left the ranch for a stock show were business trips. For Katie Jo and her husband, Rusty; in-laws Ricky and Cindy; and sons, Ryder, 9, and Riggin, almost 6; success in their show cattle operation meant keeping their noses to the grindstone.

That hasn’t changed, but a few years ago Katie Jo stumbled across a much-needed outlet for family recreation advertised on a flyer. When she looked up the organization online, she discovered the perfect Day family activity — competitive ranch sorting.

The sport of ranch sorting is growing exponentially, explains Ranch Sorting National Championships president Dave Wolfe. It’s thanks to working ranch families like the Days — as well as to aspiring cowboys and cowgirls who want to try their hand at true-life ranch skills.

“The big sell to me is that it’s without question a perfect Western heritage event,” Wolfe says. “Especially when I go outside of the United States, it amazes me how many people look at us as the Western frontier. Everyone wants to be an American cowboy or cowgirl, and we have an opportunity to let everyone do that.”

Photography: Courtesy JimDavisPhotos.com
Photography: Courtesy JimDavisPhotos.com

Ranch sorting is a traditional ranch rodeo event that involves moving cattle by a team on horseback. Created to preserve the traditional skills of working cow horses and ranch hands, sorting requires two riders to move a herd of 10 cattle in numerical order from one round pen into an adjoining pen in 60 seconds or less.

The very core of ranch sorting harkens back to actual ranch work — sorting herds for medication, breeding, and other purposes. “We’ve brought that cowboy task to town and made a competition out of it,” Wolfe says, “and because of that, you don’t have to own a ranch. You don’t have to own cattle. You can own a horse in the backyard and go to a competition and do what the top cowboys in the country have done for hundreds of years, and that’s a wonderful thing.”

Wolfe has spent his adult life in the equine industry, serving as a judge in the American Quarter Horse and American Paint Horse associations and running a successful team penning organization. He began hosting ranch sorting events on the side to provide an outlet for novice riders who needed a more controlled environment to compete successfully. Because ranch sorting takes place in a smaller physical space with fewer cattle, it is more about finesse than speed. And by setting up a rating system that allows time handicaps based on the experience of the competitor, Wolfe was able to open the sport up to a whole new field of participants.

“The wonderful part about ranch sorting is that a brand-new novice can come in, and if they are out of position, all they have to do is turn around to be right back in position, whereas for every other cow horse event, you have to go to the other end of the arena to get the cow back,” Wolfe says. “Grandma on a trail horse can come in and be competitive at the beginner level. There’s no other cow horse event out there where you can possibly do that.”

That’s not to say the competition isn’t stiff, he assures. “As competitors win checks, they graduate up levels,” Wolfe says. “As a result, the sport just took off.” In 2007, Wolfe formed RSNC to focus solely on ranch sorting with a grassroots model for “bring a friend” free membership incentives. The result has been a rapid growth in the number of participants. The RSNC now has more than 23,000 members and will sanction close to 400 events throughout the year.

Photography: Courtesy JimDavisPhotos.com
Photography: Courtesy JimDavisPhotos.com

Katie Jo and Rusty met in elementary school, and they grew up showing cattle together. They didn’t start dating until college, but it didn’t take long for the couple to realize they wanted the same future: to work a ranch in Texas raising show cattle and their future family.

The family’s herd has grown to several hundred head of cattle, and they now utilize the latest in breeding technologies, including some cloning. Rusty also farms cotton, peanuts, and wheat, so the work never slows down, especially in September when they have an average of 10 calves born a day.

As luck would have it, four years ago in September is precisely when Katie Jo crossed paths with that ranch sorting flyer that would change her family’s life.

“I didn’t know what it was. I’d never heard of it, and I thought, Well, that kind of sounds neat,” Katie Jo says. “This is our busiest time of year. It’s crunch time, pays-the-bills time of year for us. Anyway, I asked Ricky and Rusty if they thought they wanted to go. Well, of course I get the eye roll like, Yeah, uh-huh, like we’re going to get away this time a year.” Despite their skepticism, Katie Jo showed her father-in-law and husband video of the event on YouTube. She didn’t get much of a response at first, but as the weekend drew near, Ricky, an avid horseman, brought up the idea of going.

“Ricky said something like, ‘When is that sorting deal?’ And I said, ‘Oh, well, it’s tomorrow.’ And he said, ‘Well, if we’re not too busy, we might run up there and see what that is.’ And I was floored, because this man does not ever get off the Ponderosa,” Katie Jo says with a laugh.

The family took a break from their workload to check out the event and ended up making fast friends and falling in love with the sport. Katie Jo says that one of the best parts of their newfound sport is thepositive change she has witnessed in the family dynamic.

“This family, they’re amazing to be around, but everything was work and pretty much zero recreation. This is just completely laidback recreation time. What’s really great is we get to travel as a family, compete as a family. We’ve been successful as a family. Now it’s the thing we probably look forward to most.”

The Days have accomplished a lot in the sport, from Rusty winning back-to-back national championships to Ricky having back-to-back horses of the year and a high-point championship to Ryder winning his class at Nationals in 2014. Nevertheless, their mounts are legitimate ranch horses, and when they get home from shows, it’s back to work.

“We don’t have a fancy horse barn,” Katie Jo says. “They come home and they’ve got to go earn their keep and rope and drag calves and move cows.”

It’s back to work for the family too, but that doesn’t mean ranch sorting is far from their minds.

“Actually, this morning we had to go sort out one cow out of a group of 80 and push it through a gate. You have an awareness now about how it is like that sport you’re going to go to on Saturday,” Katie Jo says.

Photography: Courtesy JimDavisPhotos.com
Photography: Courtesy JimDavisPhotos.com

There have been many highlights over the last few years. But Katie Jo’s favorite might have to be when Ryder won his class at the RSNC Finals in 2014 with his dad, Rusty. In his first go-round, his trusty old mare’s bridle broke.

“This is just about 10 or 15 seconds into his run, and everybody started hollering at him, ‘Pull up! Go to the gate, Ryder. Stop!’ ” recalls Katie Jo. “Well, he just rode with his feet and it’s like that horse could count numbers. They went and sorted five more head and advanced to the final go, which they won. It was pretty unbelievable — one of those ‘wow’ moments you never could’ve scripted.”

Katie Jo looked over at Ricky, a tough old cowboy she says was born a few centuries too late, and he had tears in his eyes from his grandson’s feat.

It is this sort of experience, and the fun family atmosphere and friends they’ve made, that Katie Jo cites as why her family keeps coming back to ranch sorting.

And that’s just what Wolfe was hoping for.

“It’s without a question a wonderful family-oriented event because of our rating system and our different levels of competition,” he says. “Every member of a family has an opportunity to ride with somebody else of that family regardless of how skilled or unskilled they are. Because of that, it’s fun for everybody. We have entire families enjoying our sport, and I think that’s a huge benefit to the equine industry for people out there looking to do something with their horses.”

And it’s clear that ranch sorting isn’t just something to do with your horse — it’s something to do with each other as well.


The 2016 Ranch Sorting National Championships Finals will be held June 13 – 19 in Fort Worth, Texas.

From the May/June 2016 issue.

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The Miles City Bucking Horse Sale Is Like Mardi Gras for Cowboys

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In the world of rodeo, the Miles City Bucking Horse Sale is in a category all by itself.

Some folks refer to the annual bucking horse sale in Miles City, Montana, as the Mardi Gras for cowboys (this year's event will be May 19–22, 2016). They also call it "world famous," and for good reason, too. Some of the finest bucking stock in North America make their debut right here, which means that some of the top rodeo contractors can be found bidding on them throughout the weekend.

I’m told that it started out as a way to get rid of some rank range horses that didn’t have much of a value. There was a rancher who had close to 400 head, and he decided that the best way to sell them off would be to put together a bucking horse sale. The word got out as local cowboys and ranchers were invited to attend. Young bucks would climb on board, just like they do today — no doubt feeling a bit invincible. And by the time that young cowboy limped back to the gate with his dusty hat in his hand, the bidding would be well under way.

I started photographing rodeos a few years ago, and I suspect that it will be an ongoing personal project of mine. There is a nostalgia in small town rodeos, and I find it appealing — especially in the world of saddle bronc riding. More times than not, my eye will focus on the texture and detail of a particular moment. Perhaps it’s my way of capturing both the untamed spirit and adrenaline as they come flying out of the chute in tandem.


Eric Schmidt is a commercial shooter based in Bozeman, Montana. Follow his Instagram page to see how he captures authentic moments in the lives of people and the spirit of places, too.

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Create Your Own Vintage Dream Machine

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Convert a vintage truck into a dream machine with Legacy Classic Trucks.

I haven’t always understood boys and their toys. But then I saw my first Legacy Power Wagon, and I could swear my biceps flexed.

I. Want. One.

From where I idle in my sad subcompact, it’s the dream machine. It’s got power, craftsmanship, history, romance, vintage good looks, and luxury — a $250,000 testosterone-fueled work of art that also happens to be the ultimate ranch truck. But are you going to trust a woman who doesn’t know a head gasket from a crankshaft? Seemed like a better idea to talk directly with Legacy Classic Trucks founder Winslow Bent about building the extreme truck that bucket lists are made of.

Cowboys & Indians: How did you start resurrecting old trucks?
Winslow Bent: When I was growing up, my dad restored old military vehicles as a hobby. I was his helper. Everything about those trucks spoke to me. I found memories of these experiences working together quite formative for me. My own passion for automotive restoration grew from that through high school and college. As a young man in college, I’d get through the coursework, but my real passion was for trucks. After class, I used to take night school in engine rebuilding and fabrication. It wasn’t until 2008, when I lost my job in the restaurant business, that I realized I had an opportunity to turn my passion into a career. It’s funny how difficult times can be a catalyst for change.

C&I: Why did you decide to base your headquarters in Jackson, Wyoming?
Bent: I grew up in Chicago and went to college in Colorado. After graduating, I absolutely knew I wanted to stay in the West. Jackson Hole was incredibly appealing because of its unique blend of cowboy heritage and skiing. The late 1990s were an exciting time of growth in Jackson Hole, and within 30 days of moving here, I knew I was home.

C&I: And it’s truck country! What sets Legacy apart from the rest?
Bent: Refurbishing an old truck the way we do at Legacy is designed to represent a perfect pairing of heritage and modern performance. We build the truck specifically to the customer’s needs, whatever that may be. A vehicle made for towing horse trailers is set up differently than a people-mover built for an African safari park. At Legacy, we listen to the client and adapt the truck around them.

C&I: What’s the top selling point, besides 620 horsepower and custom bison leather?
Bent: The single greatest thing about a Legacy truck is the feeling people get driving down an old country road — shifting the gears, arm out the window. There’s never any need to worry about breaking down or if you will get stuck driving out in the country. Everything works seamlessly, so drivers can focus on having fun, whether that’s time with the family, hunting, fishing, or just exploring. Ferraris are made for blasting down freeways; for everything else, there is a Legacy truck.

C&I: Part of the glory is the story behind each particular truck. You’ve found some that were in duty in World War II and some that were used to help expand the American West. ...
Bent: I’ve restored trucks that were used in uranium mining, log home building, oilfield rigs, and firetrucks. If you had a big nasty job, the Dodge Power Wagon was the only choice. Based on the fact that the design was largely unchanged from World War II until 1971 speaks volumes to how well-suited these vehicles were for their intended purpose.

C&I: Care to share one particularly great story?
Bent: In 2009, Legacy began restoration of a 1942 Dodge WC-53 Carryall. It was in shambles when we started. This old truck had been painted over with a brush about 10 times. As we sanded the doors and hood down, we discovered old Army lettering that indicated it had been used in Tunisia in World War II. The most likely use for a Power Wagon back then would have been as a radio truck against Rommel. When we disassembled the truck, we found an old German harmonica stuck in the A-pillar. It was very humbling.

C&I: What’s your idea of the perfect day with a Power Wagon?
Bent: I like four-wheeling in Moab, Utah. There is no place that puts human and machine to the test quite like Moab. I love taking our Power Wagons through the hardest, nastiest trails. Popping out at the top of Pritchett Canyon in an old Power Wagon really makes the Jeep guys scratch their heads. They don’t know what to think.


From the May/June 2016 issue.

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Oklahomans, OK!

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“Okla” is Choctaw for people. As much as it’s red earth and blue skies, mountains and lakes, tornadoes and earthquakes, and oil and gas, it’s Reba and Blake and hundreds of other Oklahomans who’ve shaped not just the state but the country.

“I have deep roots in this Oklahoma soil. It makes me proud.” — Scott Momaday (Kiowa)

 

My Oklahoma was born late in the day of September 16, 1893, when the shooting took place. Men were staking out their quarter sections amid buffalo grass after running in the Cherokee Strip Land Run.

My great-grandfather Ernest Buckminster had just chased one man off his claim along a line of cottonwoods by a creek when another man began staking a claim on his newly won land. He leaped on his horse, galloped up to the stranger, and told him to leave. The land was his now. Both were armed. Suddenly shots were fired between the two and the stranger left. Some versions of the family story have the stranger wounded.

How great-grandfather Buckminster got the land was told in neither hush nor brag — just a fact. With every land rush that kicked up dust across what would become Oklahoma, sounds of gunfire popping echoed all evening as men settled their property lines. These were the early birth pangs of statehood, but that wouldn’t happen for more than a decade.

Four states are younger than Oklahoma: Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska, and Hawaii. But they existed in name and place long before Oklahoma was conceived.

Oklahoma is at once an ancient and instant land. Most of the state sprang up overnight along with townships, property lines, government, and law and order. No one part — the Unassigned Lands, my Cherokee Outlet, No Man’s Land, the Big Pasture, the Cherokee Nation, the Choctaw Nation, the Chickasaw Nation, Greer County of Texas, and so on — could have become a state on its own.

Each was tamed and settled by differing people: Yankees in the Outlet, former Rebs in the Nations (the Five Civilized Tribes), Texans in the Big Pasture, and the sons of wanted men in the Panhandle — No Man’s Land. Witnessing this instant creation were the children of the Trail of Tears and Plains warriors. They, too, became part of a crazy mosaic called Oklahoma.

In what would become the first megahit collaboration of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oscar Hammerstein characterized the brand-new state of Oklahoma as having “Plen'y of air and plen'y of room / Plen’y of room to swing a rope / Plen'y of heart and plen'y of hope.” And the people as fully aware of their relationship to the place: “We know we belong to the land / And the land we belong to is grand. ...” Pretty astute for a guy from New York City.

Closer to the actual land and the people of that red earth, historian Angie Debo, who moved by covered wagon to Oklahoma Territory in 1899 at age 9, spent a lifetime studying and writing about the state. It fell largely to this unimposing rural white woman from Marshall to remind the nation about the tragedy of Native Americans and point out the exploitation and injustices they’d endured, not least of which was their forced removal from ancestral lands in the East to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi and what would become Oklahoma. Debo, who earned a history degree in 1918 and a Ph.D. in 1933 from the University of Oklahoma, is still known for her pioneering works and for the emotion and controversy they stirred. Her 1940 classic And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes fundamentally changed the way historians thought about American Indian history.

“Oklahoma is more than just another state,” Debo once observed. “It is a lens in which the long rays of time are focused into the brightest of light. In its magnifying clarity, dim facets of the American character stand more clearly revealed. For in Oklahoma all the experiences that went into the making of the nation have been speeded up. Here all the American traits have been intensified. The one who can interpret Oklahoma can grasp the meaning of America in the modern world.”

And to interpret the place, you have to know the people.

It’s usually the land that shapes the people, but not in Oklahoma. With their strong colonial foothold in New Mexico, the Spanish, always looking for gold, were exploring parts of Oklahoma in the late 16th century. But it was the French, always looking for fur, who would leave more of a footprint. Trappers appeared in the Oklahoma wilderness after Spanish explorations, and the French would name many of the mountains and rivers in eastern Oklahoma — the Poteau, the Fourche Maline, the Verdigris — in their quest for pelts. Led by explorer Jean Baptiste Bernard de La Harpe, the first official French expedition came up the Red River in 1718–19. They would have seen lots and lots of trees. Before the French explorers arrived, half of Oklahoma was covered in virgin forests. By the 1930s, the state was down to only 200,000 acres of forest. Today, Oklahoma boasts more than 10 million tree-covered acres. A fifth of the state is covered in pine and hardwood.

Broken Bow in southeast Oklahoma was a logging town 17 years after my great-grandfather dealt with his claim jumper. If that doesn’t fit one’s image of Oklahoma, neither would the fact that here in Tornado Alley just as many Oklahomans died in mines as in twisters. Some of America’s most horrific coal mining accidents took place here.

Oklahoma’s image is one of cowboys and Indians. Legendary ranches were actually leased from the tribes. The famous ranches all began with a simple 160 acres. The Miller Brothers’ 101 Ranch near Ponca City started with 160 acres and exploded to 135,000 acres. It was named for dad George’s favorite San Antonio saloon. A good amount of leased tribal land used by the Millers was paid for with bacon — 50,000 pounds of it — rather than money.

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German immigrant Sam Daube started the Daube Ranch, which now consists of six ranches, near Ardmore in 1885. The Stuart Ranch by Caddo was started by Robert Clay Freeny in 1868. What is now a yearling grazing operation on the Lazy 71 Ranch was once the Little Brothers’ Ranch founded in the Cherokee Nation, as was the McFarlin Ingersoll Ranch. Founded in 1915 by R.M. McFarlin, it’s still in family hands. Other major ranches of note include the Chain Ranch in western Oklahoma, and the Hitch Ranch and Campbell Ranch in the Panhandle.

Ranches mean cattle. In 2015, Oklahoma had 4.6 million head of cattle serviced by about 30 feedlots. The prairie grass of the Osage Hills handles more than 135,000 head and grows herds of bison besides.

Cowboys need horses. About a decade ago, according to the American Horse Council, the horse industry in Oklahoma had a $1.2 billion impact with 326,000 horses. Due to its relatively small size, Oklahoma had 4.75 horses per square mile, the fifth highest equine density in the nation. The American Quarter Horse Association figures show Oklahoma is second only to Texas in the number of quarter horses in the state: 171,000 in 2013.

The state has produced legendary horses and riders.

Peter McCue stood at 16 hands, weighed in at 1,430 pounds, and could do a quarter mile in 21 seconds before being turned out to stud in Cheyenne until his death in 1923. Three Bars and Easy Jet also gained fame as studs. In two years (1969-70), Easy Jet won 27 races on the national quarter horse circuit, including the All American Futurity in 1969.

Famed Oklahoma riders include actor Ben Johnson and his father Ben Johnson senior. Appearing in countless John Wayne westerns, this Foraker native won the World Champion Team Roping event in 1953. His father, a foreman on the Chapman-Bernard Ranch, had been a world champion steer roper.

Tulsa’s Jim Shoulders entered the rodeo world at age 14 and ended up with 16 rodeo championships between 1949 and 1959, including five all-around titles, seven bull riding championships, and four bareback championships. Freckles Brown, who won the 1962 bull riding title at the National Finals Rodeo and had a ranch near Soper, won eternal fame by riding Tornado after the bull had thrown 220 riders. (Rodeo pilgrimage: Brown was a friend and mentor to the late bull riding champ Lane Frost; the two are buried next to each other in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Hugo.)

Cowgirl and Rodeo Hall of Famer Lucille Mulhall, who was raised on her family’s Cherokee Strip ranch in Oklahoma Territory and worked her father’s Wild West Show and Pawnee Bill’s Historic Wild West, routinely beat out men in steer roping competitions from Oklahoma to Canada. Given the title “Champion Lady Steer Roper of the World” for winning against her male counterparts at the Winnipeg Stampede in 1904, she received a saddle and an 1873 Winchester from Teddy Roosevelt after he watched her win the 1900 Oklahoma City Rodeo.

Wild West performer and future silent film star Tom Mix was breaking broncs on the Miller 101 Ranch in 1906. Will Rogers and Pottawatomie County Olympian Jim Thorpe earned a dollar breaking in horses before gaining fame. Oklahoma Panhandle State University’s rodeo team in Goodwell has won three national titles since 1997.

Oklahomans’ impact goes well beyond its cowboy image. Oklahomans invented voicemail, parking meters, the shopping cart, the yield sign, rubber cement for children, and the Dick Tracy comic strip, along with Walmart, Sonic Drive-Ins, Hobby Lobby, and Groendyke Transport. In 1918, the Soucek brothers — Apollo was 10 and Zeus was 12 — achieved liftoff with their homemade glider powered by the family mule in Medford. As Navy test pilots, the boys set aviation records in the 1930s, retiring as admirals. Former prison convict Wiley Post set an around the world speed record before dying in a crash with fellow Oklahoman Will Rogers.

Oklahoma in the 20th century was oil as much as it was innovation. Arriving in Oklahoma penniless, E.W. Marland convinced rancher Zack Miller to use his cowboys to guard his oil rig as he brought in his first well on Ponca tribal burial grounds in 1911. Marland would go on to found Marland Oil, which would become part of Conoco.

The King of the Wildcatters, Tom Slick, used his saddlebags for an office as he raised a dollar here and there for drilling. His first gusher in 1912 uncovered the mammoth Cushing Oil Field. Frank Phillips in Bartlesville founded Phillips Petroleum. Harry Ford Sinclair, a Kansas transplant who moved to Tulsa in 1913, founded his own oil company, as did William Grove Skelly. Harold Hamm of Enid has made a billion-dollar fortune in energy in the 21st century.

Lloyd Noble of Ardmore created Noble Drilling. During World War II, he volunteered to drill in the Arctic, refusing a profit from the government for his efforts. Robert Kerr was born in a log cabin near Ada. He and Dean McGee formed Kerr-McGee Oil. Erle P. Halliburton of Duncan created an oil service company that has a worldwide reach.

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Oklahoma’s Woody Guthrie, the poor man’s poet, wrote 3,000 songs, including “This Land Is Your Land.” With tunes like “Joy to the World,” “The Pusher,” and “Never Been to Spain,” Hoyt Axton’s songwriting became known throughout the world. And, of course, Oklahomans like Carrie Underwood, Toby Keith, Garth Brooks, Roy Clark, Vince Gill, and Reba McEntire and transplants Conway Twitty and Roger Miller have always dominated the country charts. For the record: Merle Haggard wasn’t really an Okie from Muskogee, but his parents were Okies from the self-proclaimed steer-wrestling capital of the world, Checotah.

Movie stars have been coming out of Oklahoma since Territory days. Before Oklahoma’s Favorite Son Will Rogers made 50 movies, Tom Mix, who once worked in a saloon in Guthrie, had been in hundreds. Before being shot dead in the streets of Cromwell, Old West lawman and gunfighter Bill Tilghman made movies with former train robber turned Oklahoma Territory attorney Al Jennings. A visitor to many a watering hole, no less than matinee idol Clark Gable worked the Oklahoma oilfields as a rigger and a wrangler before moving on. Teenage boxer Dale Robertson from Harrah broke into movies after World War II. A few more recent box office bigwigs from the Sooner State: James Garner (from Norman), Ron Howard (from Duncan), and Chuck Norris (from Ryan). Brad Pitt was born in Shawnee.

Oklahoma’s domination of sports is mythical. Sac and Fox athlete Jim Thorpe set records in the 1912 Olympics and was one of the founding fathers of the National Football League (his home in Yale, where tragic jazz trumpeting great Chet Baker was also born, displays artifacts from Thorpe and his family). In baseball, OKC-born Baseball Hall-of-Famer Johnny Bench caught for the Cincinnati Reds. Mickey Mantle, from Commerce, hit 536 home runs and was in 12 World Series. Carl Hubbell of Meeker invented the screwball. In football, there’s Barry Sanders, Billy Vessels, Steve Owens, Jason White, Joe Washington, Lee Roy Selmon, Brian Bosworth, Thurman Thomas, and Steve Largent.

They didn’t get prime-time coverage, but in the art world, Kiowa painter Tommy “T.C.” Cannon and Apache sculptor-painter Allan Houser were superstars.

The point of all these shout-outs is this: From my great-grandfather to the Soucek brothers to George Miller, from Wiley Post to Lucille Mulhall to Jim Thorpe, there’s a common theme among Oklahomans. It was illustrated when Waukomis mechanic Clyde Cessna couldn’t get his plane off the ground at Great Salt Plains until he swapped engines with fly-swatter designer William Lindsley of Waynoka and went on to start Cessna Aircraft Company.

In Oklahoma, you don’t follow rules in becoming what you want to be.


Read more about Oklahoma in our July 2016 issue on newsstands June 7.

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Paradise Found

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Photography: Courtesy Philmont Scout Ranch
Photography: Courtesy Philmont Scout Ranch

At Philmont Scout Ranch in northern New Mexico, the legend began long before the Boy Scouts showed up.

Boy Scouts come from all 50 states to test themselves on Philmont Scout Ranch’s backpacking treks, some spanning more than 100 miles. Along the trail they encounter aspens and pines, mountains and streams, deer and black bears.

They experience life as frontiersmen, gold miners, and ranchers. And at night they watch in awe as the ink-black sky explodes with a sea of stars.

This 220-square-mile patch of earth in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico has been refuge to dinosaurs, American Indians, travelers on the Santa Fe Trail, settlers, gold-seekers, ranchers, and, over the past 78 years, more than a million adventure-seeking teenagers. But the saga of Philmont Scout Ranch is a tale of history, mystery, and the incredible generosity of one man.

Tracks in Time

Philmont’s past is a confluence of the improbable. Some 65 million years ago, the Tyrannosaurus rex left behind footprints. The only confirmed T. rex tracks in the world are at Philmont, offering 33-inch-long proof that a 6-ton creature with teeth the size of steak knives once walked these lands.

The Anasazi left behind traces, too, through petroglyphs dating back to as early as A.D. 330 — some of which are still visible. Later, the Jicarilla Apache and Moache Ute Indians called this land home, hunting bison, antelope, and deer and growing corn, beans, and pumpkins.

In 1821, the Santa Fe Trail cut right past where Phil­mont’s headquarters now stand. Wheel ruts, like faded scars, can still be seen from the air. Word spread among traders making the 1,200-mile journey from Missouri along the trail about a tooth-shaped outcropping of rock along the route. They called it the Tooth of Time, because when you passed it, you knew your destination was just seven days away.

Today, the journey from the rock to Santa Fe takes less than three hours by car. And the Tooth of Time has become Phil­mont’s most recognizable symbol, emblazoned on water bottles, T-shirts, belt buckles, and bumper stickers.

Philmont Phenomena

“Every land has a story, and every story has a beginning,” says Philmont camp counselor Stephen Terry. A lantern casts angular shadows across his face; a crowd of rapt Scouts hangs on his every word.

At Philmont’s flat and expansive Urraca Mesa, the story begins with the Anasazi Indians and a battle between the Lord of the Outerworld and the Lord of the Underworld. It continues with the paranormal, or at least seemingly inexplicable. There are the lightning strikes, lots of them. And there is the fact that compasses don’t work here. The phenomena, we’re told, have a scientific explanation: something about the mesa’s mineral makeup.

But then there are the visions sworn to by Philmont visitors. Like the Navajo shaman in full dress, awash in blue light. Or the lost Scout, wandering late at night. Or Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum, an outlaw long dead, who allegedly appeared beside a terrified Scout and fired his pistol six times into the trees. The Scout awoke the next morning, trying to shake off this vivid nightmare. But then, the story goes, he rolled up his sleeping bag to reveal six shell casings underneath. They smelled like fresh gunpowder.

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Settling Down

Investors Charles Beaubien and Guadalupe Miranda didn’t want to simply travel through this rich part of the country; they wanted to settle here. In 1841, Mexico controlled the area, having won independence from Spain 20 years earlier, and the governor of Mexico was eager to spur development. Seeing an opening, Beaubien and Miranda petitioned him for a tract of land. They told of the area’s arable soil, plentiful water, and sizable mineral deposits. The only problem with this land, they argued, was nobody around knew how to use it properly.

Three days later, the 1.7-million-acre plot was theirs. Beaubien began settling the land, soon joined and then surpassed in the effort by his son-in-law, Lucien Maxwell.

With the help of his friend Kit Carson, Maxwell began building. Maxwell and Carson, both in their 30s, had spent the first part of their lives on the go. Now, with life halfway over, they craved something simpler. “We had been leading a roving life long enough, and now is the time, if ever, to make a home for ourselves and children,” Carson wrote in his autobiography.

Development wasn’t without conflict. The Moache and Jicarilla, their way of life uprooted, suffered from bureaucratic mismanagement — at times denied food or clothing when the government couldn’t afford to provide these basic essentials.

Maxwell, meanwhile, kept building. In 1857, he found a spot for a ranch near the Cimarron River. There he built a two-story adobe house with an expansive floorplan but sparse furnishings. One visitor was given a room that was spacious but “had not even a chair.” He slept on a pile of wool mattresses instead of a proper bed.

But soon Maxwell would be able to afford all the beds he wanted. He was about to become rich.

Good as Gold

While roaming the slopes of Baldy Moun­tain, Jicarilla Apache and Moache Ute Indians found “pretty rock” that, it turned out, contained gold. Then in 1866, the smell of gold wafted from northern New Mexico. Maxwell opened a pair of mines he called Aztec and Montezuma, and soon he was pulling in $50,000 a year, making him one of the richest men in New Mexico.

Peculiarly, he didn’t store his wealth in a safe; he kept the gold and silver and greenbacks in the bottom drawer of an old bureau. “God help the man who attempted to rob me,” Maxwell explained.

Sure enough, when a thief took $200 in goods and a horse from Maxwell’s store, he wrapped a chain around the robber’s neck and stashed him in the cellar — without food or water — for almost two days. He had the man lashed 25 times before freeing him.

In 1870, sensing a gathering storm between the white men and the Moache and Jicarilla — whose discovery had sparked the gold rush to begin with — Maxwell sold his land to a company in England. But that company nearly went bankrupt, and the property was purchased by a Dutch-based company that divided it into tracts and sold those pieces to farmers and ranchers.

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A Mountainous Gift

And that’s how Waite Phillips, the man to whom Philmont Scout Ranch owes almost everything, came onto the scene. Born in Iowa in 1883, twin brothers Waite and Wiate Phillips had a love of nature that blossomed in the wooded creeks near their home.

Wiate died of peritonitis at age 19; Waite joined his older brothers in the oil business and struck it rich almost instantly — a millionaire in only a matter of years. But, in contrast to Lucien Maxwell, for whom a wealth of gold exposed a nasty side, Phillips was, well, a real Boy Scout.

He donated Philbrook, his family’s mansion in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to the city, which turned it into an art museum. But his most significant gifts were to the Boy Scouts of America.

Phillips began acquiring land for Philmont in 1922, envisioning a place for his son and daughter to fish and hunt and ride horses. He called his new property Philmont — a portmanteau of his surname and monte, a Spanish word for mountain. Phillips’ famous friends soon stopped by: Charles Dawes, Calvin Coolidge’s vice-president; Wiley Post, the first person to fly solo around the world; and acclaimed actor and writer Will Rogers.

Around this time, Phillips built a 23-story office building in downtown Tulsa called Philtower. With Philbrook, Philmont, and now Philtower all bearing his name, one pictures a Donald Trump-like figure, quick to put his name on everything he owns. But Phillips was a different kind of rich man. He gave away nearly everything, saying that “real philanthropy consists of helping others, outside our own family circle, from whom no thanks is expected or required.”

It was in this spirit that, in 1938, Phillips offered 35,857 acres of his property to the Boy Scouts of America. Phillips told the Tulsa Daily World that the “ranch represents an ideal of my youth ... and has meant a lot to my son and his pals. Now I want to make it available to other boys. ... I’d be selfish to hold it for my individual use.”

The early success of his gift pleased Phillips so much that in 1941 he made a second donation, this time offering 91,358 more acres that included his stunning summer home, a Spanish Mediterranean house called Villa Philmonte. But he still wasn’t done.

Phillips anticipated the immense cost of operating a massive camp — and doing so without gouging the Scouts who visited. So he made one more gift: Philtower. Phillips figured proceeds from the Tulsa high-rise would pay for Philmont’s upkeep. (BSA sold the tower in 1977.)

Scouting Paradise

These days, 22,000 Scouts and leaders arrive each summer to attempt one of Phil­mont’s legendary backpacking treks. The easiest are rated “challenging.” The toughest are “super strenuous.” On any given day during the summer, up to 3,500 Scouts are out hiking Philmont’s trails, though the ranch’s vastness means it never feels crowded.

At Philmont base camp, it’s easy to tell which crews have recently returned from a trek. First, you smell them, because bear restrictions limit the use of smellables like deodorant and soap on the trail and instead call for concentrated, unscented soaps. Then you see them. These are changed men and women — tired but smiling. They exude exhausted euphoria, like an athlete who just won the big game in overtime.

They’ll be talking about Philmont as they travel home by car, train, or plane. About singing songs on the trail, summiting mountains, and eating trail food that actually didn’t taste so bad after hiking all day. About panning for gold or shooting black-powder rifles or seeing American Indian petroglyphs. About overcoming rain and blistered feet and sore shoulders. About experiencing heaven on earth.


Learn more about the Philmont Scout Ranch properties online or by calling 575.376.1136.

From the July 2016 issue.

The post Paradise Found appeared first on Cowboys and Indians Magazine.

Where Have All The Monarchs Gone?

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The good news about the precipitous decline in the population of everyone’s favorite migrating butterflies? It’s not too late to reverse it.

Sometime between mid- and late March each year, they’d magically appear in North Texas from Mexico, their dramatic bright orange wings thickly outlined in black. They’d stay for a few weeks, usually no more than four, before flying off to their summer homes as far north as Canada. Every spring it was like this, and again in the fall. Their annual comings and goings were something I looked forward to every year.

What an impression the monarch makes. Most people love them simply for their beauty. But they are also amazing in the annual feat they perform. With a wingspan of 4 inches, the monarch is an insect superhero, covering as much as 80 miles per day. Their highly evolved fall migration involves traveling thousands of miles from as far north as Canada to overwinter in Mexico. Monarchs west of the Rockies are a different population and migrate southwesterly to California to wait out the cold months in more than 200 coastal locations. East of the Rockies, the route spans 3,000 miles from Canada to central Mexico, via a large swath of the central part of the United States that cuts through Texas and Oklahoma. If you live along the flight path, you know the joy of seeing those orange and black wings delicately alighting or fluttering through as the butterflies head north in the spring and then south in the fall when their grandchildren head to Mexico — a place that they’ve never been but that they miraculously find, down to the same trees in the same forests where earlier generations have overwintered.

As iconic as monarch butterflies are, few of us noticed when they began disappearing in alarming numbers. Ten years ago, there were more than 1 billion monarchs in migration. By 2013, the population had dropped by 95 percent, to just 35 million. Today conservation groups across the country are scrambling to stop their decline and rebuild the monarch population before it’s too late.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was petitioned to list the monarch as an endangered species. It seems almost unfathomable that the population has slipped that much,” says Carter Smith, executive director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, one of dozens of organizations participating in the push to turn the monarch crisis around.

It’s such a big deal that it got the attention of the leaders of all the nations on the monarch’s migratory route. In February 2014, at the annual North American Leaders Summit held in Toluca, Mexico, Mexican president Felipe Calderón spoke to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Barack Obama about the monarch butterfly dilemma. He proposed a tri-national strategy to help repopulate the monarchs.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was alerted immediately via a phone call from Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell. “She called me up to her office and said, ‘Can you do something about this?’ ” says Fish and Wildlife director Dan Ashe. He already knew about the monarch problem, but now with multinational muscle behind it, he had hope that a solution might actually be possible. If he could get enough people on board, reestablishing habitat along the monarchs’ American flyway could help fix the problem.

Although extreme weather conditions — the abnormal recent patterns of drought and rainfall in the United States — have played a role, the major cause of death of America’s favorite butterfly is loss of habitat. Illegal logging in the Oyamel forests in Mexico has destroyed large areas of its winter home. And herbicides have mostly destroyed its supply of milkweed — which monarchs need to lay eggs and feed their caterpillars — and other nectar-producing plants in their breeding grounds in the United States and Canada. “Roundup and other herbicidal applications have been applied to corn and other crops on a large scale in the Midwest and have affected the supply of milkweed,” Smith says.

Photography: Courtesy SK Films
Photography: Courtesy SK Films

But the destruction of milkweed is only part of a complex conservation problem, says George Cates, chief seed wrangler and resident milkweed expert at Native American Seed Farm in Junction, Texas. “The conservation community, the professionals, have boiled the monarch issue down to ‘no milkweeds equals no butterflies.’ While true, this is just part of the story. It implies that if we just had more milkweed plants, everything would be OK. The loss of milkweed habitat, open and contiguous native grasslands in the U.S., is the much bigger story. It’s the same story for the horny toad or any number of other species: Human activities aggregated compound on each other and result in significant habitat loss for many species, plant and animal. The impacts are easily observed if you know what to look for. We are beyond the tipping point, and the monarchs are the canary in the coal mine. Monarch habitat has been decimated due to everything from poverty in Mexico [which gives rise to illegal logging in the monarch forests] to more interstate commerce [which means more and more] butterflies winding up on the grill guards of trucks to subsidizing corn for ethanol [which gives over marginal lands once covered with milkweed to GMO crops laced with herbicides], and plain ol’ urban sprawl [which turns pasture land into manicured lawns, pavement, and asphalt].

“The exceptional drought since 2007 and general climate change haven’t helped matters either — butterflies need moisture. While monarchs showed a little uptick in population this year because we got some rain, they’re basically starving,” Cates says. “Which is why when you do see the occasional orange-and-black marvel flitting through, chances are that it weighs about half as much as a healthy one would.”

Author Barbara Kingsolver was hot on the problem with her 2012 novel Flight Behavior. Reviewing the well-received book for The Washington Post, Ron Charles commented, “Kingsolver has written one of the more thoughtful novels about the scientific, financial and psychological intricacies of climate change. And her ability to put these silent, breathtakingly beautiful butterflies at the center of this calamitous and noisy debate is nothing short of brilliant.”

Dr. Lincoln Brower, who has long recognized the monarch’s decline as a disheartening piece of a bigger puzzle, has been on the case much longer. A research biologist, zoology professor, and self-described student and admirer of the monarch, he has studied the butterflies for five decades and been beating the drum on their behalf for years. Over the past four decades, he’s made more than 40 trips to Mexico to study the monarchs in their overwintering forests and has been at the forefront of efforts to halt illegal logging in the butterfly sanctuaries there. His was one of the high-profile names on the petition to list the monarch butterfly as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act, raising awareness of the problem facing monarchs and other pollinators and underscoring the sense of urgency.

Unlike Brower, we can’t do the critical science in Mexico’s biosphere reserves, huddle with important policy makers in Washington, D.C., and head to the Texas Hill Country to monitor monarchs’ lipid levels as they feed off nectar-producing flowers to boost their fat reserves. Besides the old but effective let-your-congressmen-know-you-care, what can a monarch-loving individual do?

“You don’t need Yellowstone Park to make a difference,” Fish and Wildlife director Ashe says. “You can plant [nontropical] milkweed and nectar-producing plants in your backyard, and that scale matters — you will see butterflies. Every backyard, every schoolyard, city, or state park — if you plant, they’ll come.”

Fortunately, there’s some movement on the policy front. Dozens of federal agencies have jumped on board, including the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management among them, plus nongovernmental groups like the National Wildlife Federation and the World Wildlife Fund. State agencies have joined hands and formed their own planting initiatives. In Texas, a key landing point along the monarch’s route, U.S. Fish and Wildlife has partnered with Texas Parks and Wildlife and Texan by Nature, the conservation nonprofit founded by former first lady Laura Bush, who has become a spokesperson for the monarch program. Ashe has also reached out to state governments, transportation agencies, city governments, and schools. Even Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, has pledged millions to the cause; besides throwing much-needed money at the problem ($3.6 million, according to the National Wildlife Fund Foundation), the corporation is part of a newly formed coalition, convened by The Keystone Policy Center, that’s bringing together a diverse group of conservationists, farmers, scientists, and landscape professionals from across the country to find solutions.

The goal: 225 million butterflies by 2020. “It’s not success, but it’s a good short-term goal,” Ashe says. “I’m optimistic.”

Part of the reason for his optimism: the rallying of support to help the monarchs. Ashe says he’s never seen such an overwhelming response to any conservation campaign he’s been involved in. “People recognize [the monarch] and empathize with it. The migration is magical. The transformation is remarkable. There are lots of reasons people connect with it. The world’s a better place when we have beautiful things like the monarch butterfly.”


The images used for this web exclusive are used courtesy SK Films, which released the 3D IMAX documentary Flight of the Butterflies. Read more about the film.

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The Exhilarating Indian Relay

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Photography: Hannah Potes/Billings Gazette
Photography: Hannah Potes/Billings Gazette

Colorful uniforms, high-speed horse races, and energized crowds are the perfect equation for the West’s most exciting ride.

Promoters call it America’s first extreme sport. Native tribes disagree on its origins. But everyone involved in Indian relay agrees it’s the most exciting horseback ride on the reservation.

Each relay typically begins with a half-dozen dismounted riders decked out in face paint and flashy uniforms standing alongside their horses, though some hosts have the races start with riders already in position. A few riders struggle to keep the horses under control as they kick and buck in anticipation of the competition. Race officials release the mounting tension signaling the start of the heat with a shout through a loudspeaker, a blank fired from a .357 magnum, or the drop of a flag.

Riders leap onto the bare backs of their equine teammates. Before the riders gain full position, the sprint toward the first turn is underway. After completing a lap around the racetrack, usually a half mile, riders slow the horses down enough for a teammate to secure the reins and facilitate a jump onto a fresh horse for the next go-round.

Races usually last three laps with a different horse for each lap. In addition to the mounts, teams consist of a rider, a mugger (who catches the spent horse), and one or two holders to keep the fresh horse in place until the rider can mount it.

“[The holder] is very important. Most people don’t know how long to hold a horse, and that’s the kind of thing that gets you disqualified,” says relay rider Clyde “The Glide” Jefferson.

If the holder lets go of the horse too soon, it can get away from the rider, and a rider-less lap means automatic elimination.

Jefferson proved himself to be a top rider in relay after finding a home with team Rides a Pretty Horse from the Crow Reservation — a team that in 2015 notched several wins and made the finals in almost every event they attended.

Jefferson grew up in the small Montana town of Lodge Grass. His older brother, Victor Nomee Jr., set him on his first horse at just 3 years old, and a decade of bareback riding later, he started hopping from horse to horse in local relay races.

When Jefferson, now 21, lost his brother in a motorcycle accident midway through the 2015 season, he considered leaving the sport in the aftermath but instead refocused and dedicated the remaining races to Nomee. The team found themselves winning more heats and several events. Rides a Pretty Horse made the finals nearly every weekend down the homestretch and qualified for the biggest event of the year at the All Nations Indian Relay Championships.

Jefferson attributes much of the success to explosive starts provided by the team’s horses, particularly a gelding known as the Grey Ghost that gained notoriety on the relay circuit. But despite having a quick mount, Jefferson recognizes challenges faced at the starting line. Congested standing starts make horse relay a contact sport with some riders even re­sorting to dirty tactics.

“Most of the time I’ve had a good start, and thankfully I was always in the front,” Jefferson says. “But people try to whip your horse in the face, take your horse into the rail, or take your horse wide.”

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At the 2015 All Nations Indian Relay Cham­pion­ships, Rides a Pretty Horse lost the final race after one such incident. The rider from eventual winner Omak Express — a team from the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Omak, Washington — lost control of his lead horse at the start of the race, veered into the right flank of Grey Ghost, and knocked Jefferson from the gelding. Omak Express was cleared of a foul and confirmed the race’s winner. It was their second championship title in two years.

Jefferson took the loss to heart, leaving the track immediately after the last lap. He trained hard throughout the off-season, cycling and running long distances to build leg strength. (A strong lower body is key for smooth transitions as riders trade out horses between laps.) Jefferson will be ready for the 2016 All Nations finals, but he’ll also need the right horses.

Although most relay teams hail from small towns on reservations in the western United States and Canada, the horses are increasingly sourced from big-city racetracks and mainstream horse racing.

Rides a Pretty Horse owner and trainer Jordan Whiteman uses his background in the Phoenix horse racing scene to strengthen his stable. Horses too slow to compete at premier tracks like Santa Anita Park often find their way to Phoenix and present a bargain for the relay team.

“There is some class and talent out there. It’s just a matter of where you gotta look for it,” Whiteman says. “Everybody has their secret spot, I guess.”

Whiteman looks closely at how the horses behave in the paddocks. He values a calm temperament, which is an indicator of how the horses will react to a standing start in relay. He also watches handlers saddle the horses to get an idea of how they’ll respond to riders mounting bareback.

“They’re just like people. They have their own personalities. They have their own weaknesses and strengths you have to work on,” Whiteman says.

Fielding as many solid horses as possible is crucial throughout the relay season because unlike flat-track racing, the horses can run three days in a row, and events take place every weekend.

Teams race six to 12 horses on average, but more is better. Whiteman says the additional stress of traveling several hours to the racetrack takes a toll on the animals, and the horses need to be kept fresh to avoid injuries. Showing up to the tracks a few days early helps keep the horses rested and relaxed, but travel can get expensive.

In addition to team members’ food and lodging expenses, each horse burns about $50 a day in food, vitamins, exercise expenses, and horseshoeing. Fortunately, relay purses are climbing.

For decades, racetracks and reservations organized independent “championships.” But since 2013, many of the events have been sanctioned by the Professional Indian Horse Racing Association, a body dedicated to promoting Indian relay and economic growth on reservations through horse racing.

Prior to PIHRA sanctioning, rules varied by venue, but now sponsored events adopt a more unified set of guidelines. The increased sponsorships swell cash payouts, and after earning points as the season progresses, 30 teams qualify for the All Nations Indian Relay Championships held in Billings, Montana.

Last year the All Nations winner walked away with $10,000 just for winning the championship race. In all, $85,000 in cash and prizes was awarded at the event. The large purses allow people like Jefferson to focus on relay full time during the season as a professional rider.

More than 15,000 tickets were sold for the three days of the 2015 All Nations championships, which was held in front of the Billings MetraPark Grandstands for the first time since moving from Sheridan, Wyoming. The Championships were so successful that PIHRA organizers distributed an extra $10,000 in cash to participating teams.


The 2016 All Nations Indian Relay Championships are September 22 – 25 in Billings, Montana.

From the August/September 2016 issue.

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Bear in Mind

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It’s important to proceed with caution when heading into grizzly territory.

You’ve got to know the rules.

That’s true with most things in life, but especially if you’re interested in observing grizzly bears in the wild.

And why shouldn’t you be? Grizzlies are the ultimate charismatic megafauna, true symbols of the remaining American wilderness. A sighting can be a near-religious experience and is guaranteed to raise your heart rate. The mere possibility of an encounter focuses the mind, demanding close attention to your surroundings.

Grizzlies aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. After all, the brown bear, the species that includes the grizzly, can grow to huge proportions, and they are generally more aggressive and dangerous than their smaller cousins, black bears. Alaskan brown bears, such as the Kodiak, can weigh as much as 1,600 pounds, and inland grizzlies can top 800. Brown bears in the lower 48 are typically smaller, but there’s a record of a 2,200-pound grizzly killed in California back in 1866.

Prior to the influx of Western settlers and prospectors, North America’s apex predator roamed freely from the Mississippi to the Pacific, widely feared and respected by its few human neighbors. The Corps of Discovery at first doubted Indian tales of grizzly ferocity, but after many harrowing encounters, Meriwether Lewis noted in an understated May 1805 journal entry: “I find that the curiossity of our party is pretty well satisfied with rispect to this anamal ... .”

Today, the grizzly’s habitat has been diminished to a corridor tracing the Rocky Mountains northward from Wyoming to Alaska. California, which claims the grizzly as the state animal and pictures one on its flag, saw its last silvertip bear in 1926. Arizona’s last sighting was in 1939; Colorado’s in 1979.

Within its realm, the grizzly has been doing relatively well in recent decades. Being a protected species has helped, but even now there are threats. Warmer winters, which have encouraged the spread of pine bark beetles, have meant fewer white bark pines — an important source of grizzly food. The introduction of lake trout into the Yellowstone ecosystem is another threat: Cutthroat trout, a shallow water food source for grizzlies, are being supplanted by the deep water lake trout. Though grizzlies are omnivorous and adaptable, it’s yet to be seen how the loss of these food sources will affect their behavior.

My closest encounter with a brown bear was in Alaska’s Katmai National Park & Preserve. I had kayaked with a group of friends up a narrow river to fish for salmon under a waterfall and hadn’t been there long before we saw, about 25 yards away, a 400-pound sow with two cubs heading down the path right toward us. The beach was only about 6 feet wide, and any potential retreat was cut off by the cliff at our backs and the waterfall in front. We raised our arms to increase our profile, but on she came, followed by her chubby cubs.

Ten yards away and there was no sign that we even registered on her radar. I was getting nervous. We were trapped, with only a can of bear spray for protection. She might pass without incident, but the thought of getting between the bear and the cubs was alarming.

Mom was now just 15 feet away. She started wading through the last pool between us.

I picked up a stone and tossed it gently at the rock wall next to her, saying forcefully but matter-of-factly, “Go back.”

She gave a startled look, huffed, and — just like that — turned around and walked away.

Not too far, though. She headed back just across the stream. One cub followed, but the other balked, forcing Mom to fetch it. The cubs played as the sow caught a flounder and then all strolled back toward the bay.

When our group returned to the kayak, we found that mother and her pair of cubs had roughed it up a bit. They had also snacked on most of a life preserver —
perhaps as payback for hogging a favorite fishing hole?

Katmai bears are, fortunately, more tolerant than their cousins in the lower 48. We would ultimately see dozens in the area, some approaching 1,000 pounds, and quickly became almost nonchalant — some might say foolhardy — about their presence, at times letting them get within 10 or 15 feet before moving away.

Charismatic as grizzlies are, it is important to resist the urge to see them as cuddly, anthropomorphized critters. Smart, resourceful, individualistic, and beautiful, they are also potentially dangerous. Seeing one from a safe distance is an amazing privilege — getting mauled by one can be fatal.

Photography: Phyllis Burchett
Photography: Phyllis Burchett

If you want to see grizzlies in the lower 48, you’re pretty much lim­ited to three national parks: Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier. You might stumble upon one in other parts of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, or Washington, as they are protected everywhere, but your chances are much better in the parks. Don’t expect to see one every day, or even every visit. You’re actually more likely to see black bears — but any bear sighting is a gift.

Yellowstone

The Greater Yellowstone Area, which encompasses both Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and surrounding areas in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, is the epicenter for grizzly activity. In 2011 it was estimated the area was home to 600 bears.

Personally, I’ve had relatively little luck in Yellowstone itself. My only confirmed sightings have been near the road at the east entrance and in Hayden Valley (the Hayden grizzly was heading away from the park road, pursued by a crowd of foolish gawkers). While that incident passed without injury, not all park visitors have been so lucky. In 2013, four individuals had their own encounters during two separate grizzly attacks. Keep that in mind when visiting Lamar Valley, reputedly a good place to see grizzlies, as well as wolves.

Grand Teton

Some years ago, on Grand Teton’s Cascade Canyon trail, I had my first-ever bear-induced adrenaline spike and I was hooked. We rounded a turn and saw, perhaps 50 yards ahead, a brown-colored bear in a clearing, apparently feeding. The bear lurched to its feet and circled nervously, obviously aware of us and not happy about it. Retreating, we let it finish lunch and only then saw a freshly killed mule deer fawn just off the trail.

It was probably a grizzly, but I couldn’t say for sure. Not that it really matters. Coming between any bear and its food breaks the rules.

As recently as 10 or 15 years ago your chances of a grizzly sighting in Grand Teton would have been slim. Now, however, with an expanding Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem population, grizzlies have pushed southward, providing you with a good chance of seeing one from the road in this compact and easily accessible national park.

I’ve never actually seen one from the main park highway, but I have had several great sightings from U.S. Highway 89, which runs along the east side of the park. Last summer I witnessed Bear 610 and her three 2-year-old cubs gingerly dancing their way through a bison herd not far south of Moran Junction, Wyoming. It was hard to tell which group was more nervous.

Two years earlier I was able to watch a boar (male) grizzly feeding on an elk carcass about 50 yards off the highway not far from the Cunningham Cabin. He chowed down for several days while rangers kept viewers away. In the spring of that same year, in a large meadow just east of Oxbow Bend, I got to watch two grizzlies courting a quarter of a mile from the road. I think the boar struck out.

These were all safe encounters, but closer sightings can be dangerous and call for adherence to the usual rules (see below). Grand Teton National Park authorities have identified six bear maulings since 1994, when a jogger was injured on the Emma Matilda Lake Trail. Most recently, in November 2012, a grizzly protecting a kill attacked a group of elk hunters and was shot. None of these cases resulted in human fatalities.

Glacier

It’s a slightly different story up north in Glacier National Park. Hardly a summer season passes without bear-human interactions, and since the first bear fatalities in the park in 1967 there have been 10 bear-related deaths. It’s more difficult to see bears from park roads, in part because there aren’t many. Which means that if you see a bear in Glacier, it’s likely to be at closer quarters on a trail.

More than 750 grizzlies are estimated to roam the greater Glacier area. That doesn’t mean they are easy to see. Though I’ve been to the park many times, I’ve actually seen very few (no doubt a lot more saw me). Black bears on the other hand? One September day I observed 10 black bears grazing on a slope near the Many Glacier Hotel. But the grizzlies, who manage to maul a visitor once every couple of years or so on average at Glacier (out of 2 million park visitors), keep a lower profile.

All told, I’ve had only two actual Glacier grizzly sightings: sows with two cubs each at Fishercap Lake and just off the road outside Many Glacier Hotel.

Although there’s an unmistakable thrill in spotting a bear, it’s often the ones you don’t see that can raise your blood pressure the most. Bears can be found on any Western trail, even well-hiked trails close to hotels, so there’s always a chance you’ll run into one. You always have to be observant; so, if you’re like me, your adrenaline starts pumping the moment you hit the trail.

On one hike in particular I remember seeing grizzly signs — dug-up earth and fresh scat peppered with undigested orange berries — on a mid-day walk with a friend. Occasionally we could hear a rustling in the bushes. “Grizzly around the next bend,” warned a passing couple. Mindful of the rules, we turned back. Within 20 yards we happened on a pile of steaming bear scat. “That wasn’t there just a minute ago, was it?” I asked my companion. “Nope.” We were clearly not alone.

I wish I could count the times other hikers told me I had just missed a bear, but the mere chance of a grizzly encounter turns any hike into an adventure. Without the bears, it’s just a walk in the park.

Photography: Phyllis Burchett
Photography: Phyllis Burchett

Bear Necessities

Black bears are usually smaller and less aggressive than grizzlies, but they should be respected as well. Numbering perhaps 300,000 in the United States, black bears account for more human deaths and injuries than grizzlies. Here are some essential rules to follow in any bear encounter.

Rule 1: Bears tend to be more active at dawn and dusk, so plan your hike accordingly.

Rule 2: Keep an eye out for tracks, scat, digs, and trees that have been rubbed — they are a good sign that a bear may be nearby and you should return the way you came.

Rule 3: Learn to tell the difference between black bears and grizzlies.

Rule 4: Don’t surprise a bear. Stay on marked trails and make lots of noise when you hike (bear bells are ineffective). Bears will generally move away if they hear you.

Rule 5: Don’t hike alone in bear country; the larger the group the less likely an attack.

Rule 6: Leave your dog at home!

Rule 7: If you encounter a bear, don’t get too close, especially to a sow with cubs. Park rules generally mandate a 50- to 100-yard buffer, and getting closer is ill-advised.

Rule 8: Never follow a bear.

Rule 9: Never feed a bear.

Rule 10: If you encounter a bear, do not run away and do not make direct eye contact. Speak in a normal tone of voice (to let it know you are human), wave your arms, and slowly back away.

Rule 11: Carry bear spray and know how to use it.

Rule 12: In general, if attacked by a grizzly, play dead and cover your head and neck with your hands; stay stationary until you are sure the bear has moved on (the bear may watch you from a distance and come back if it sees movement). If you are attacked by a black bear or by any predatory bear, fight like heck.

Rule 13: Remember that a standing bear is not always an aggressive bear; it may be trying to get a better view.

Rule 14: Don’t climb a tree. Bears can climb, and they may be provoked to chase you if they see you moving like an animal.


From the January 2014 issue.

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Cowboying on the Sagebrush Sea

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Tending to livestock in Nevada’s Great Basin was and is a lonely job. But the life and the landscape aren’t as sparse as they might seem.

Tending to livestock in Nevada’s Great Basin has always been a lonely job. Early Basque settlers in the northern part of the state even coined the term txamisuek jota, or “struck by sagebrush,” for the social anxiety one experiences from being out on the range too long.

It’s a lonesome-looking landscape. Nevada’s high desert stands expansive, vacant — inspiring or abysmal depending upon the moody forces that govern the region. Valley floors rise up from roughly 5,000 feet, doubling in elevation to become rocky alpine ranges largely unseen by Interstate 80 passersby. Driving through, the uninitiated only see how barren it seems. But ask anyone who’s spent time atop a horse in the high desert, and they’ll tell you it’s not ugly. It’s the sagebrush sea.

sagebrush

Ghost towns and modern diggings dot the hillsides, reminders of the fickle temperament of the land and stubborn will of mankind. Through more than 150 years of mining booms and busts, the cattle industry has remained a constant here. And so have the cowboys. Known for their gypsy streak, they lead a vagrant lifestyle, tending to stay on only a few months at each outfit. The seasonal nature of the job allows for constant movement, providing a little change of scenery and relief from the rural isolation.

The Basque first came to the region for the gold rush, but many gravitated to the herding that was part of their native culture and ended up ranching. Founded by Basque immigrants in 1874, the YP — ostensibly named after the YP Desert in Elko County — has traditionally made room for the roving cowboy. The behemoth ranch, whose grazing permits extend beyond the Idaho state line, runs 5,500 cows and employs a minimum of eight cowboys year-round. In warmer months, buckaroos camp or sleep in line shacks, primitive shelters on the outer fringes of the ranch, where they monitor the cattle and water supplies.

But however large the outfit or starkly beautiful the land might be, after a few months of cowboying on the sagebrush sea, txamisuek jota is likely to set in. Unless you’re lucky enough to find chemistry with a coworker or the cowboss’ daughter, opportunities for romance are limited. A trip to town could be an hour or more — often on dirt roads — and once there, church and the local bar are about the only places to fraternize with the opposite sex. Shawn McWilliams, originally from Wyoming and now a hand at the YP, adheres to the BYO-lady philosophy. He and his wife met in college and moved to the isolated ranch together, circumventing the hurdle of long-distance dating.

Family is a built-in hedge against loneliness, and ranching tends to run in families. Buckaroos often come from ranching families, though it’s not a prerequisite. A thick skin and willingness to learn can carry inexperienced cowboys through their first jobs. Veteran ranch hand Norbert Gibson recalls arriving at the YP, fresh out of high school, wearing corduroy pants and tennis shoes. Upon inspection of his attire, the office manager observed, “He don’t look like no cowboy.”

Gibson’s parents had driven him from their home in Owyhee, Nevada, a small town on the nearby Duck Valley Indian Reservation, to the YP, where he first learned the trade that would see him through the next 30 years. A bit of good-natured hazing and decades of on-the-job training have shaped Gibson into a well-known fixture on the cowboying circuit. An attempt at listing all the ranches he’s worked at stalls at 12 and includes some of the biggest names of the modern era: the Winecup, Gamble, PX, and so on. Since August 2015, Gibson and his 10-year-old son, Hoss, have called the JD Ranch home. Hoss travels an hour south to Eureka, Nevada, for school each day, catching a ride with neighbors because there aren’t enough children in the valley to warrant a bus.

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Darci De Boer wasn’t raised on a cattle ranch but began picking up summer ranch gigs while studying at the University of Idaho. She credits her degree in agricultural production for landing a position at the PX Ranch, where she’s involved in managing the feedlot business in addition to day-to-day cowboying. During her tenure at the PX, De Boer has befriended women from neighboring ranches and dated a co-worker, but she keeps to herself most evenings, reading and braiding horse tack. Slow and labor-intensive, braiding is a popular pastime in a region where cellphone reception and social lives are intermittent at best.

Like many rural Nevada teens, Justin Sorensen was homeschooled and itching to strike out on his own. After completing high school early, he got wind of an opening and left his family’s ranch in Ruby Valley in March 2015 to join his uncle on the YP. The lanky blond cowboy comes from a community nearly as remote as the YP, so transitioning to the lifestyle wasn’t much of a stretch. He works on college correspondence classes from a sparse room in the bunkhouse and trains his horses, four of which accompanied him in the move. The eldest of eight children, he doesn’t yet know what his future will hold, but he notes that his younger brother, Kaysen, eagerly awaits the day when he, too, can sign on.

When he does, Kaysen will join not just his brother but the ranks of generations of cowboys who have chosen a life on the sagebrush sea, undeterred by the long days and low pay on a big outfit. Kaysen will ride for the opportunity to avoid sitting behind a desk. He’ll ride in the pursuit of independence and adventure. And he’ll ride with respect for the cowboys who came before and an unabashed love for that lonesome land.


From the November/December 2016 issue.

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Video: Luke Branquinho is The Bulldogger

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A short film lets us into the life of driven steer wrestler Luke Branquinho.

“We always knew that he was going to be there from an early age. That guy had the drive and the desire.” That's what just one of many friends and family members has to say about steer wrestler Luke Branquinho in a voiceover during YETI Presents: The Bulldogger. The film charts Branquinho’s story from childhood pig hunting in the Southern California hills to his quest for a sixth rodeo championship at the 2015 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, where he took first place in steer wrestling with 3.5 seconds during round 8 in Las Vegas.

As seen in the arena and in film, the physical aspect of steer wrestling is quite intense. But Branquinho, despite the litany of injuries he rattles off in The Bulldogger, doesn’t let trouble get in his way. After all, he's a five-time world champion. There’s just a dogged approach to work and life, which for the 35-year-old Branquinho is currently two-thirds rodeoing to one-third ranching.

Photography: Courtesy Backbone Media

“He’s a cowboy’s cowboy,” says another voiceover in the film. “When you imagine a cowboy, he's it in spades.” Although some rodeo cowboys might go back to city life after the autograph signing, the fan meet-and-greets, and—hopefully—walking away with a buckle, Branquinho won’t stop being a cowboy. When he's not on the road for a rodeo, he’ll return to his ranch on land his family has called home for eight or nine generations. That full life is vividly depicted in the short film. “My grandfather started a big ranching family. One day, I’ll hopefully take over and follow in the footsteps that they put down for me.”

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Have Horse, Will Travel

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To be the Working Ranch Cowboys Association world champion, you’ve got to live the cowboy life inside and outside of the arena. Travis Duncan does just that.

The trio of rider, horse, and calf swerve across the southeast Kansas pasture in a blur of hair and leather, topped by a swinging lasso. Travis Duncan sends the rope sailing through the air, swiveling it around the calf’s neck. The horse strains against the weight of the calf as Duncan steps off and ties the calf’s feet. As a man pulls his trailer around to load his runaway calf, the first job of the day is done.

Duncan wears many hats, but they are all cowboy hats. He is a “day worker,” a man people call when they need a hand. He wrangles dogies. He shoes horses. And he wears belt buckles that show off his success on his ranch rodeo team. His way of life is an uncommon one in these times. A forgotten one.

The old ways of the cowboy are dying out. The Bureau of Labor Statistics listed farmers and ranchers among the fastest-declining jobs in 2012, and the profession is projected to fall nearly 20 percent by 2022. The takeover by tycoons in the ranching industry is a big part of this decline. Today, most ranches are large-scale operations owned by big businesses, or family operations with full-time hired help. But Duncan isn’t a rancher; he’s a cowboy.

He doesn’t own the land he works on, and he isn’t a full-time hand. He does what people need him to do in a “have horse, will travel” business model. Some days he has a lot to do, and others he only scrapes by. But for Duncan, 38, this way of life has always been a given. He was raised around cattle and horses and has been hiring out for work since he was in high school. He’s done everything from vaccinating young calves to breaking horses to ride.

“It chose me, I guess,” Duncan says. “I didn’t want to go to town and get a real job, so I found a way to make it pay the bills.”

Duncan_9442

At 6:30 that morning, before chasing down the wayward calf, Duncan had walked out of the dimly lit doorway of his home and fired up his dusty white Dodge pickup after waking up his two boys, then 18-year-old Jarad and 9-year-old Gus (now ages 20 and 11), for school. He’d loaded his horse and headed to his first job of the day.

“Me and this college boy are about to go rope a wild steer,” Duncan joked to his girlfriend over the phone as he pulled into Dale Rickerson’s driveway.

Rickerson owns a construction company, but he also owns cattle to make extra money. Rickerson doesn’t employ full-time ranch hands — but he also doesn’t have the skills with a rope or a horse that Duncan has. This is when the cowboy comes in. If folks need his roping skills or an extra man to round up a herd, they call Duncan.

Duncan slowly rode out into the pasture and gave the herd a wide berth so he could get into position behind the calf. The calm of the morning was a stark contrast to the excitement and speed that would erupt only minutes later.

“Being an old, broke cowboy with no insurance kind of makes you wonder what we’re doing out here sometimes,” Duncan says later. “Anything can happen. My horse could fall down and break a leg.”

The true American cowboy doesn’t have health and retirement benefits. The pay can be spotty. And the job can be dangerous. The land in southeast Kansas is rocky, and Duncan races across it on horseback at top speed. When shoeing horses, he could be kicked and seriously injured. So why does he do it?

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Duncan says. “It keeps me outdoors, seeing new places and new people, and it keeps me out of a stuffy old office.”

travis-duncan

After Duncan ropes the calf, he heads back to Rickerson’s home to collect his payment. While he was chasing the stray, all of his worries seemed nonexistent. It’s his job. He does it well and without a second thought. “Well, I made a hundred instead of having to go to the hospital,” he says as he climbs back into his pickup.

He fires it up and points his wheels toward his next job of the day, this time shoeing horses. While 90 percent of farriers are self-employed, the real money comes from working at full-service stables. Duncan says he’s not a farrier, though.

He’s a “cowboy horseshoer.” He has never had any formal training — he just knew it was something he could do and saw it as a way to make some extra cash. It also keeps him moving. “If I was at one place every day, I’d just get so damn bored,” he says.

Duncan holds the horse’s leg between his thighs and removes the first horseshoe. He wipes some sweat from his brow. This is one instance where even the iconic cowboy hat can’t always do his job justice. “I ought to be shoeing with my cowboy hat on, but that just wouldn’t be authentic — it gets too hot,” Duncan says, again wiping the sweat from his brow.

He will do two more jobs today: shoeing another horse and checking over a herd of cow-calf pairs. And he will go home tired but content. Tomorrow, he’ll pack a bag and head off to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, for a ranch rodeo. He’ll compete, maybe shoe a couple of horses in his downtime, and be back Monday, waiting for his phone to ring.

Soon after he gets home, Duncan’s phone lights up. But it isn’t for work. It’s a text message from Chris Potter.

“2015 World Champs,” it reads.

Potter is a ranch rodeo bronc rider and a member of the Lonesome Pine Ranch team from Cedar Point, Kansas. He’s been riding with Lonesome Pine since 2013.

“I’ve competed against them for years, and Chris has hit me up to ride with them before,” Duncan says. “I said, ‘All right, let’s give it a try.’ ”

Potter had been trying to get Duncan to ride with the Lonesome Pine Ranch rodeo team for years. They wanted him for the same reasons that ranchers hire him for day work.

“He rides a nice horse, he was experienced at rodeoing, and he ropes good,” Potter says. “We really liked the way he handled cattle in certain situations, and I just thought he’d be a really good asset to our team.”

Potter was right. The new Lonesome Pine lineup (Bud Higgs and his son, Troy; Potter; and Duncan) won two Kansas rodeos last year at Medicine Lodge and Council Grove, qualifying them for the Working Ranch Cowboys Association World Finals. A team has to win a sanctioned rodeo during the year to ride at the finals in Amarillo, Texas. They also took second in three others and third at one.

The WRCA World Championship Ranch Rodeo takes place over four days. Teams compete in five events over the first two days, and then a second round of the events over the next two. Teams are scored out of 10 points. First place in each event receives 10, second place nine, third place eight, and on down. A “no time” gets a team zero points.

“We had a couple no times, and the team in second had a time in every event,” Duncan says. “But winning as many events as possible is where it pays.”

Duncan_9284

The wild cow cut to her right and took off down the arena wall. A rope came down, and she was caught. A flash of green shirts descended upon her, and, in 18.74 seconds, she was milked. Their second-round wild cow milking time was an Amarillo arena record, which serves as the WRCA world record for the event. But for Duncan, then as it does now, throwing the rope comes natural. He’s been doing it for years.

In addition to breaking the milking record, Lonesome Pine Ranch won the average in the ranch bronc riding. Placing first in both events — and gaining extra points for winning the average over the four days — secured the championship for the team. They won money as well as all kinds of bonuses, from a stock trailer to boots to YETI coolers.

“There at the end, we knew we probably had the milking average won,” Duncan says. “We didn’t have a clue we won the whole rodeo until Kellie, my girlfriend, and Chris Potter’s wife tallied up all the points and called me and said we won the whole deal.”

Duncan recently returned from an invitational rodeo in Denver riding against the same teams he and Lonesome Pine faced in Amarillo. He says they didn’t fare too well there, but that hasn’t dampened his spirit when it comes to riding with Lonesome Pine Ranch again in 2016.

“We go to a bunch of rodeos,” Duncan says. “So hopefully we’ll make it and win that son of a bitch again!”

Until then, Duncan will go back to switching hats on a daily basis. Some days he’ll be on the road to a rodeo, some days he’ll be a dad taking his son to ball practice, and some days he’ll be a day worker helping out ranchers. But he’ll always, undeniably, be a cowboy.


From the July 2016 issue.

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The post Have Horse, Will Travel appeared first on Cowboys and Indians Magazine.

But Now I Ride

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Photography: Richard Field Levine
Photography: Richard Field Levine

After being asked to contribute an essay to C&I’s cowgirl issue, I carried the idea with me for weeks. But it was winter, the cows were situated, and I was in my office much of the time. Nothing very interesting presented itself. In late March we started our spring works here on the Spider Ranch near Prescott, Arizona, and my mind turned once again to the topic. It only took one evening of burgers around the fire, a night of sleeping in canvas and wool, a morning of wood smoke and coffee, and suddenly I could “see” this piece. I wrote it down in my notebook when I got back to camp after the first day of gathering cows, literally unable to write it until I had dirt under my fingernails and horse sweat as my perfume.

At Cottonwood Spring, there is a tree that sings. Sometimes it is a squeaky gate, sometimes a flute, sometimes a soprano warming up her voice. I am sitting on my horse here in the creek bed, waiting, holding a few cows against the fence until the boss, my husband, comes along with more. I may be here for a while.When a woman hires on to cowboy, these are not the moments she anticipates, not the moments anyone talks about. There are no witnesses, no cameras, no glitter, no wild rides with her hair blowing in the wind.

There is no printed job description for “cowgirl.”

A few months ago, I passed out a survey to a handful of women who have cowboyed for a paycheck. I was not surprised to discover that most of them didn’t have a strong affinity for the word cowgirl. Many of them cited semantics or wryly wrote something about rodeo queens. These women more often think of themselves as cowboys or ranch hands, or simply ranch women.

But no matter what we call ourselves, we are out here.

We are riding. And digging postholes. Tying in stays. Calving heifers, haying, windmilling ... often with a toddler in tow.We are cooking over a campfire or in a slow cooker, even after having brought in our share of the cows that day. We’re training young horses. Doctoring sick animals. We’re riding point or bringing up the drag. We may even be complaining about how Western jeans aren’t made of heavy enough denim anymore, and we won’t buy a pair with bling on the back pockets when we have to ride on them for nine hours a day.

Our gear and tack look much like the men’s except for the rubies on the buckle of our chaps. We own several pairs of work gloves, and we can pull a knife out of our pocket or off our belt if we need to, even when we are all dressed up, attending some event in town. We can kill a rattlesnake. Fix a water leak and plant a garden. Maybe shoe a horse.

Some women were born into this way of life. Some, as poet and ranch wife Patricia Frolander points out, married into it. Some stepped out onto the path, not following husband or father, but with a strong sense of purpose and choice. Many have had to walk away from the lifestyle through circumstance. But they long for it, identify with being a cowgirl, and will miss it for the rest of their lives.

I came to this job late. I’ve been a ranch wife since shortly before my 20th birthday, cooking for cowboys, cleaning up after cowboys, even home-schooling a small cowboy. I’ve listened to cowboy stories since the day I was born. But now I ride. Now I spend my share of days in the saddle, mainly learning to see. I am learning to see the angles and vectors and biology of working cattle. I am learning to see when a mama cow has come to the feed ground and left her baby stashed under a tree. I am learning to throw my loop at the same angle as a calf’s shoulder and not look at my saddle horn when I dally. I am learning when to make noise and ride hard, and when to back off and be quiet and give that little heifer some space. I am learning to work with my partner in the sorting pen, slow and easy, with more finesse than before. I am learning to trust my horse over the rocks and hold my eyes open during meteor showers no matter how tired I am when I lie down.

Yesterday I rode 20 miles. I rode one horse and led two more into a remote camp, dropped the extras in the horse pasture to wait until we’d return in a few days, and then turned toward Cottonwood Camp. As I rode, I realized that I was looking forward to cooking over the fire even though my hands would turn black and it would take two washings to get the scent of wood smoke out of my hair when we got home. I was looking forward to eight days without a shower, to two meals a day rather than three, to getting smarter about looking at the ground and knowing what I was seeing as we trailed up these cows. I was looking forward to getting stronger as the days went by and being able to get on my horse with ease by the end of spring works.

Perhaps I will even decide to like the word cowgirl.

This morning the tree sings soprano in the breeze. I use the first few minutes of my wait to air my horse’s back, stretch my legs, take off my coat, and tie it on behind my saddle. When I climb back aboard, everything around me stills, and I begin to hear. The creek water gurgles over the rocks. A lizard, wakened early by an unseasonably warm spring, scratches his way through the leaves and along the bark of a tree. A zone-tailed hawk screams from up the canyon, a different scream than the one she’ll use when her nest is full of chicks. In a few weeks, the lupine and clover will be stirrup-high, and I might find some morels in the clearings along the creek banks. I know to watch for a king snake making his way through the rocks, and I’ll find a bear track beside the water in the sand.

I can’t actually see the cows I am holding through the brush and trees, but I know they are there, bedded down in the shade. I must stay here, in position, blocking the trail out the other side in case my husband brings more cattle from up the creek where he went to check the water gap and the bed ground up on the ridge. But my girls are here. I saw the red cow lie down through that gap in the leaves, and over there I can see the black calf’s tail switch from time to time. And just now, one of the cows started licking herself. I can hear each swipe of her rough tongue.

Soon we’ll take them along the creek to the corrals and holding trap, picking up any volunteers along the way. It is time to move down the country, down to the desert where the green is carpeting the ground beneath the cedars and mesquites. Where I might see a Gila monster on the trail. This is what I do.

And this is why I know that at Cottonwood Spring, there is a tree that sings.


From the January 2014 issue.

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The post But Now I Ride appeared first on Cowboys and Indians Magazine.

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