The Branding Party

We drove the truck over the old wood bridge with swift moving creek below. Cottonwood and aspen trees created a thick forest on both sides of the road. The lost River Range with their snowcapped covered shale peaks towered behind us and beautiful sparsely populated rugged land spread out before us. The ranch was huge with large pastureland, jack fencing, and a large log home. Mimi the matriarch of the clan, was well known for taking in injured wildlife and nursing them back to health and releasing them back into the wild. At any time, you might see an eagle, deer, or fox at her home brought by Fish and Game. Wild horse herds, elk, moose, and packs of wolves ran in the hills beyond the ranch in the wilderness. 

The wood corral was made of lodge pole pine and four pole high. Cowboys stood leaning on the fencing wearing wrangler jeans with a Skoal Bandit ring in the back pocket, western shirts or t-shirts, cowboy boots and summer cowboy hats. Other cowboys sat on horses practicing with a rope swinging and roping things backing up and then releasing their ropes. my sons and I got out of the truck and walked over to the corral and climbed up on the rail and sat balancing on the pine poles. A small wood fire was tended to and burning close by, with burning coals and logs. A cast iron pan and iron brands were being readied.  One cowboy on horseback would drive a young calve into the corral and a cowboy would wrestle the calve and flip it onto its back in the blink of an eye it was that fast. Another cowboy would vaccinate the calf, one would brand it, and another would snip its' gonads off and throw them into a cast iron skillet full of sputtering grease and cook them for lunch. The young steer was released afterward.  It happened so fast, just a blink of an eye. They brought in and branded over a hundred calves. We stayed for the afternoon until the sun set over the White Knob Mountains and the fire glowed into embers. A glorious piece of Americana.