The Idaho Cowboy

Chapter 2

For the entire next year I kept remembering Linda’s words when I had finished riding Spot in Idaho: “Well, if you really like it that much, why don’t you come back in a year.” So I flew back to Idaho and that night met Linda and Okie at a Mexican restaurant. About halfway through dinner Okie said: “Tim, how’d you like to come with us and ride at Jay Black’s Cattle Ranch?”

Okie had been born in Moscow Idaho. He had graduated college, served in the Marines, been married, divorced and was loved and deeply admired by his daughter Misty. The last ten years Okie had split most of his time doing what he loved; Shoeing horses, Team Roping and what he called “Cowboyin” for brothers Jay and Chris Black at The Joseph Black & Son Beef Cattle Ranch - 160,000 acres of private and public land in Bruneau, Idaho.

The next morning we started driving to what Okie called Cowboy Camp. Camp, he said, was situated in Cow Country and that in turn was somewhere in the 160,000 acres of the Black Ranch in a section referred to as The Desert. I kept looking out the window for cows but all I could see was endless vistas of dried cracked soil, Cheat Grass and Sagebrush stretching out to the horizon line of what I learned was the high-low desert of the Idaho/Nevada border.

If you’ve spent your entire life on the streets of New York City, it’s hard to put into words what it’s like to drive non-stop for an hour and a half on raw dirt in the middle of thousands of acres of nothing but flat Idaho desert. As the sun started to set we finally arrived at Cowboy Camp which turned out to be an old dilapidated RV Camper with no plumbing, no electricity and a small wooded outhouse about fifty feet from the Camper door. At 5am the next day Okie started cooking our breakfast. After we ate Okie looked at me, pointed out to the corral and said: “Tim, Ya see those 2 horses off to the left of the others, go down and bring ’em up here.”

 I have never forgotten how I felt walking up that little dirt path, leading two magnificent 1200 lb animals, one in each hand and thinking: “How can these two strange creatures who don’t know me, not only let me catch them but quietly walk with me and not go charging away?” I looked at one of them and thought: “I wish I knew about horses. Really knew. There’s something about being with these horses that feels amazing yet indescribable.” It was a feeling I remembered reading about in a book about Human Intuition. The book called the feeling “a sense of rightness.”

One year Okie asked me to work with another cowboy named Joel, who had been cowboying for the Blacks for the past five years. He wanted to have the two of us move one of the Black’s many cattle herds to one of their watering holes. We saddled our horses, rode out of camp and kept riding for what seemed about 3 hours. We stopped and Joel said: “There’s probably about 1000 head in this herd but they’re split in two. I’ll ride west toward Blue Butte and round up 500. Why don’t you go east toward Grasmere for the other 500 and we’ll meet at the watering hole.”

As far as my eyes could see we were in an endless middle of nowhere. I was speechless. Joel could probably tell I needed a little reassurance. He pointed his finger and said: “Just ride that way a bit, when you get over that ridge you’ll probably start to see them.” Then he pointed the other way and said: “Just push them in that direction and that’ll get you to the waterhole in about 2 or 3 hours…the cows know where it is; they’ve been there before.” Then Joel turned away, rode off and literally disappeared into the desert.

Every time I was asked to do something new at the ranch I would give myself a reality check. I would silently recite in my mind what I was about to do, e.g. “I’m in Idaho alone on a horse. I’m somewhere in the middle of 160,000 acres, looking for 500 cows. I’m going to ride my horse and move them for about 3 hours until I find a waterhole so they can drink the water.”

It sounded wicked cool. In reality it all seemed a little unnerving and preposterous. My only source of confidence was Joel and believing he would not have told me to do it, if he didn’t know for sure that I could. That was not what I was used to when I needed reassurance. Coming from New York City I had always been taught to get everything in writing.

But everything Joel told me was true. When I got over the ridge, there were the cows. What Joel hadn’t said was they would not just be standing around in one nicely organized group of 500. They were everywhere! I thought: “That’s what they mean when they say: “we’re going to ‘gather’ the herd.” And so that is what I did. It was what we did… me and my horse. We gathered up the herd and drove them to water. And I loved it.