Wyoming Cattle Drive

Years ago I was given the unbelievable opportunity to take a trip to Wyoming in June to participate in a cattle drive. My travel experience at that time was limited so much of the trip was new to me. (Let’s just say I was really “raw”.)

I flew from Atlanta to Denver with no problem, I’d missed lunch so I was starving. Silly me, I ate a hamburger in the local airport restaurant – it was greasy and filling and I had no idea of what was to come. The only flight to my destination in Ten Sleep, Wyoming was a puddle jumper but I was too inexperienced to realize what that meant. Two hours and a half filled “little white bag” later, I knew. It was a prop plane that only seated 14 of us and because they stopped at every little town possible, they never got above the turbulence. I had been sick as a dog – so much for putting a “grease burger” in my poor stomach. I vowed right then and there that I’d walk if there was no other way to get back to Tennessee.

The airport terminal was a small bare room (think “customs” for experienced travelers) with nothing to indicate the beauty and roughness of what was to come. We boarded a bus that took us to our campsite and I do mean “camp” as in tents. I immediately fell in love with the land and the residents and was joined by 17 others who would be along for the ride. We were from all over the country and spent the first night teasing each other about our accents. We'd had buffalo burgers for the first time (they're wonderful, by the way) and came to enjoy the meat. We debated buffalo, bison and beefalo meat and generally got the "lay of the land". The first few days we got to know our mounts, learned our jobs and spent the rest of the time packing for the trip, we were to be gone for just over two weeks. Food would be “dropped” -whatever that meant - and we would meet up with the cooks and ranch bosses every 5 days. The real surprise was that while we would have one cattle boss and one ranch hand per team of six, each team had to chose a leader and a navigator from their ranks . Each team would have to find their way from the ranch house to the final destination so the navigator was given a map and a compass. I was so green that I never realized that there was obviously some type of communication and since our trail boss knew the land like the back of his hand we were never really lost at all.

Finally we were off, the packhorses were full, the cattle were rounded up and with nothing but mountains and tall trees on the horizon we headed out. Each day brought it’s own adventures – the first day was learning about the climate – it felt like it was about 80 degrees but was actually 98 that day – so much for hating humidity. Hats are important to protect a rider from this type of climate thus “the cowboy hat”, great protective brim and easily dries out at night from all the sweat. Yep, they really do wear them and so did we.

The days stretched out in front of us – we cooked our morning and evening meals; prepared sandwiches and fruit for lunch; we rode and got lost; we learned how to make ice cream by digging a hole in the ground and pouring the milk mixture down in the hole after lining it with straw; we learned that even though it was 100 degrees outside, caves still had snow in them; we learned that even though the vista showed a carpet of trees in the valleys, when you actually got down to them, the undergrowth was low and the branches didn’t even start for the first 15 feet so it was like riding through your own private park. We also got tired of dehydrated food. The fresh rations were used up in the first few days so our breakfasts and dinners the last few days of each week consisted of dehydrated packets that we re-hydrated by boiling water over the fire. (I’m convinced that one of my companions is behind all the wonderful packaged shelf foods today! FYI dyhydrated blueberry cobbler is AWFUL!) We spent evenings reading our mail that was literally “dropped from an airplane” every two days and we talked together around the campfires. Sometimes we actually talked about foods we missed and foods that were local to our areas. I learned that some people didn’t know what “okra” was and struggled to explain it to them. I learned that most westerners thought butter beans were only brown and I learned to hate not having refrigeration.

I had written my parents about the flight in and one mail drop included a package from an address I didn’t recognize. God bless my mother, she had called her pharmacist and he had shipped me a package of Dramamine and inserted a note to take one pill 2 hours prior to the trip and one as I got on the plane. Our trail boss instructed me to dig a deep hole and bury the large box that the Dramamine had come in – leaving the area pristine for humans and safe for animals.

At the time our family owned a small 20 acre weekend farm up in North Carolina that was very primitive with no running water or phone and only basic electric.  One night I received a letter during the mail drop that my dad had sent, he’d written it at the “the farm”. Crazy man that he liked to be, he had written it all in an uneducated hand on lined children's paper. It included a story all about how they were “tryin to git in the crops afore the rains came”, and using words like “Gawd” and “a fixin to”. He talked about his lack of “edacation” and “tryin to writ this leeter”, he talked about the other “chillen” and “ahow they was a struggin with greads”. He beseeched me to read it to my fellow travelers and not tell them the truth until the last day. But they felt so sorry for me and my poor father, I just had to let them in on the joke – my father actually carried two BS degrees (psychology and accounting) and had been an officer in the military. Two undergraduate degrees was a big deal back in his day. Then, of course, all of my team wanted to read the letter for themselves and voted him highly intelligent and extremely creative. Others shared tales and stories of home life and fun that they had enjoyed. It was a time to bond and we made the most of it. Trail riding and watching over a herd of 100 cattle didn’t really give us much time for talk during the day.

The riding was incredible, chasing after straying cows was amusing and getting lost – frustrating. But we finally did make it to our destination – and not a day late. We’d made up the time by cutting trails that allowed us a straighter course than the planned route, we had gone down old trails that were literally almost 90 degree angles and almost obliterated. (We just got off our horses and led them down – most of us sliding down on our behinds) and we had pretty much kept our charges together to keep the time spent chasing them to a minimum.

Fifteen days later we were finally eating meals cooked by the ranch kitchen and loving every bite. We spent a day in Ten Sleep (which consisted of a three block, hard packed, dirt road where the buildings and stores still had wooden sidewalks), going to the local rodeo and experiencing Coors beer that at the time you couldn’t get anywhere east of the Rockies. We learned to walk big, talk soft and treasure the landscapes. It was an adventure that I’d repeat anytime.

And what about the trip home? I forgot to take the first pill 2 hours prior but one of my new friends talked me into taking them both as I got on the plane in Ten Sleep. I sat down in my seat, looked out the window and don’t remember a thing until someone woke me in Denver. Obviously I got home safe and sound but even today, I am very careful about what I eat prior to any plane trip.

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