Vegetarian Ranchwife

It’s that awkward time of year, that transition between winter and summer. Spring sounds like flowers and bunnies, but it’s actually alternating days of sunshine and snow. And mud. Lots of mud. I wear a sundress and sandals one day, a sweater and muckboots the next.    

Wardrobe complications are slightly annoying; work complications are more serious. We plan our ranch brandings for the end of April, beginning of May, Kem gives us a set of dates, that he’s coordinated with other ranches so we can share help. All that coordination comes undone if it snows on our branding date.

These past few weeks, as the weather forecast has swung daily between predictions of sunshine on our branding dates to rain or snow, I’ve lost sleep trying to decide if I have enough freezer space for the food, if we have to push the date back, and what on my calendar is moveable, should we do a branding mid-week.

My essay, “All That We Don’t Control,” just came out in Eastern Iowa Review’s Nature issue, an essay all about getting that other essential ranch job, shearing, done in similarly unpredictable circumstances. The narrator of that essay sounds like she’s learned how to live between a world where you schedule things on a calendar and a world where nature makes the rules.

I don’t know that person. The version of me this branding season has no Zen; just lost sleep and heartburn.

When Kem texted the day before one branding that we’d go ahead as scheduled, I was skeptical. I’d just dropped the kids off at school with my windshield wipers had been working overtime. But the skies soon cleared, stayed clear and the weather the next day was just about perfect: cloudy with sun breaking through, not too hot, not too cold.

Standing around talking after lunch, Kem said, “I would have felt like an idiot if I’d cancelled then woke up to this.”

We then started reminiscing about brandings past. There was the year we had a solid week of snow and rain, and still Kem wouldn’t call it. Finally, early the morning of branding, as the rain still fell, and he picked his way over slick, muddy roads and saw for himself that the corrals were, indeed, a swamp, he conceded defeat.

Then there was the year rain forced us to push our first branding to the same weekend of our second branding. We finished one branding, and, instead of heading home after lunch for a well-earned nap, the guys headed out to gather for the branding the next day.

When Kem had announced the plan, an older ranch hand had said, “I don’t think our bodies can hold out for back-to-back brandings.”

It was tough, but they did it.

As Wordsworth famously said that poetry “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” It holds true for essays and for standing around telling stories after a branding. When you’re on the other side of it, when everything has worked itself out, all injuries have been tended to, it’s easy to forget the anxiety.

When we’re in the middle of the chaos, it’s good to hear those calm voices from the other side, telling us how everything will work itself out, but the calm voices can be dismissive, eliding the difficulty of the moment. Sometimes, I think those calm voices need a taste of anxiety in order to find some empathy.

The day before our final branding, we had snow. Not a few flakes blowing around, like I’d expected from the forecast, but a steady, shrink-your-world-to-a-quarter mile-radius snow. As the guys headed out to gather, I wondered how they could see any cows at all. Afterwards, they all said they felt like they were alone in the world. They’d come up over a hill, find a few cows and send them down towards the corrals, hoping everyone was where they were supposed to be, pushing the cows along.

A friend who helps us gather said, “I’ve been coming out here for twenty-five years, and that’s the worst I’ve ever seen it.” But they got it done.

The forecast called for sunny, sixty-degree weather for the day of branding. Still, when I woke up, I couldn’t shake the doom and dread from the previous day’s snow. I didn’t feel like pulling on my boots and getting to work.

“A snow like that really takes the wind out of your sails,” Kem said.

But once in the corrals, with sun drying the mud, a crew ready to pitch in and get the job done, and enough cookies to choke a horse, I could almost find a bit of Zen.

Here I am now, in the week following branding, bringing my blood pressure down with some yoga, catching up on sleep. As I tell the stories from this calm space, I want to remember the anxiety, the struggle, so when I pass them along to someone else, in the midst of their chaos, I can say both, Everything is going to work itself out, and, The struggle is real.