Social distancing on the high plains

IT’S LAMBING season on the Lode Ranch, in Montana, where you might say social distancing comes with the territory. Putting six feet between you and the next person is not a problem. Six square miles is more like it.

My friend Robyn Lode sent me these pics the other day. They can be my wide-open-spaces fix for 2020, since I’m sure I won’t be getting out there on the motorcycle this year.

The Lode Ranch is in Wheatland County, where the high plains end and the Rockies begin. You can see six different mountain ranges from there: the Little Belts, Castles, Little Snowies, Beartooth, Absarokas, and the Crazies.

There’s Byrdee the border collie.

She’s herding on three legs this spring, nursing a broken toe.

I met Robyn some years ago on a ride through Wheatland County. She’s young, about Daughter #1’s age. She was working at the local museum in Harlowton, where I had stopped in to learn about the town.

As always, whether it’s the public library, the town museum, the gas station, I have a hard time suppressing the reporter’s occupational hazard: a tendency to chat people up at random, find out what they know, see how it fits into the puzzle of the human condition, Isaiah Berlin’s Crooked Timber of Humanity, whatever you want to call it.

Gotta back up. This story actually starts in 2008, in Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and on the Piedmont, but mostly in Key West. I was out goofing around on the iron piggy that winter and ended up writing a movie script while camped here and there, scribbling by firelight in the unsaddled hours.

It’s a road movie that starts in Montana, for no particular reason. Every story’s got to start somewhere.

I opened my road atlas and put my finger on a random spot on the map: Wheatland County. And I got so into the story I made a point of stopping there the next time I rode out to the Pacific. It was a fun opportunity to talk with people, listen to the way they speak, learn a bit about the local culture. It would help build authenticity into my next rewrite. And the one after that, and the one after that… The sweet spot in all writing is rewriting.

I’ve probably been out there seven or eight times now. Whenever I’m riding through, I set up camp by the rodeo arena, spend a few days, maybe a week. Besides the Lode Ranch, I’ve spent a little time on The American Fork, a cattle ranch run by the Evjenes, Jed and Annie. Nice people. So generous with their time, despite all the work they have to do. It never ends.

Last time I was in Wheatland County was a spur-of-the-moment thing, in 2018. Iron Man Nestor was up from Colombia, fresh from piloting his motorcycle to Tierra del Fuego. He popped in unannounced at his uncle’s place in Houston, ol’ CCjon. Summer was running out but they decided to ride to Alaska. They asked me to join in and make it The Three Amigos.

They were riding up and ferrying south on the Alaska Marine Highway. I said well no, no Alaska for me this year, I like to be there for the solstice, August is awfully late. But I will ride out and meet you somewhere in the west, we’ll ride together for a few days.

And that’s what happened. We met up in Wyoming and rode north from there. I peeled off in Montana, said I’d meet the guys a few weeks later at our friend Keith Hackett’s place in Woodland, Washington, on the Columbia River. Then we’d ride down to New Mexico before CCjon and Nestor would need to turn south in earnest, for Texas. I’d be riding east across Oklahoma at that point. And that all happened, too.

On that 2018 stop in Montana, I camped on the Lode Ranch (pronounced LO-dee). I was faintly aware of the guard dogs at work in the wee hours. Big shepherd dogs of the Akbash, Komondor and Pyrenean variety. They raise quite a mighty woof woof woof while running off coyotes under the stars.

There are more formidable predators on the ranch: wolves, black bears, the occasional mountain lion and grizzly. The guard dogs have their work cut out for them.

Robyn will be working on the ranch full time until the end of May, then back at her job as assistant director of the Charles Bair Family Museum, in Martinsdale, Montana.

Here’s how the day goes in lambing season, in Robyn’s words:

“First thing in the morning, after morning coffee, I go around and fork hay so the sheep can get to it.”

“We release the drop bunch, sheep that have not lambed. They stay out for the day, unless the weather is bad, then we allow them to go in and out of the barn.”

“Next, we go into the day shed and feed. The day shed is where we keep our ewe-and-lamb pairs to make sure they will do well in the outside pens.”

“We go out and check the drop bunch for sheep that have lambed. In this case, this sheep had triplets.”

“We put the ewe and lambs in small 4’x4′ pens called jugs, to ensure that the lambs have had their colostrum.”

“When they are ready to go out we number the ewe and the lambs with sheep paint, so if there is a problem with the pair we know who belongs to who. Then they get moved into the day shed.”

“When we get the pairs out of the day shed and to the outside pens we load the lambs on the wagon, which the ewes will follow to the pens.”

“When we’re done moving sheep out of the jugs, we clean them all out with pitchfork, put down lime and then straw. We put the sheep back in the barn about 8 at night.

“Then at 10 I go back out and do my part of the night shift. Mom does 2 a.m. and Dad has the 6 a.m.

“Coffee at 7, and at 8 the day starts over again.”



That’s one of the many places I’ve been privileged to learn about in the 14 years since I closed out my journalism career. I was riding the motorcycle back to the mill after lunch one day, the sky parted and it occurred to me: we own the house, we own all our stuff, we’re not in credit-card hock… As of this minute, I have officially done enough time as a cubicle-dwelling cog in the machine.

On that sudden inspiration, I chose not to return to the newsroom. Best headline I ever wrote: Invisible Man Disappears.

I had spent way too many years banging out copy with the handset of a desk phone cradled on my shoulder. Better to get out there on the road, see the world close up.

Enjoy a happy, socially-distanced Easter, all.

Tony DePaul, April 12, 2020, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA