Ranch Life in Montana

Several years ago, I received an invitation to spend a month in the pristine wilderness of Wyoming and Montana. With eager anticipation, I embarked upon my journey to the small ranching community of Big Horn, Wyoming, which is located at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains. Although born and raised in an urban environment, I had always harbored the desire to experience life in a rustic locale. Big Horn was in Northern Wyoming, close to the border with Montana, and it really imbued the sense of "Big Sky Country" for a young man from the East. I recall something that a gentleman, Eugene Caiola, told me one morning.

"When you look out at these mountains, at all of this beauty, you know that God did something right."

I worked for a small construction company, and the majority of our work focused on painting houses and small ranches, erecting fences, along with some concrete projects. The air was very clean, the views of the mountains were tremendous, and the pace of life marched to its own drummer. Once, when I was introduced to one of the customers, the foreman said, "Steve is from back East. We want to show him how the other half lives." The response from the woman was rapid. "I´m not sure if things are better back East, but he surely will see that life is different here." I found the people to be very hospitable, along with a deep pride for the types of lives they led.

Double Circle Ranch in Birney, Montana

One of our jobs was to paint a three-story bunkhouse on a large working ranch in Montana. This is a building on a ranch that houses the cowboys or hands, and it happened to be the main focus of my week at this ranch. We used 150 gallons of redwood stain to spray paint the structure, which was over 100 years old and made entirely of logs. The ranch was called the Double Circle, and was located in the very small community of Birney, Montana. The size of the ranch was approximately 30,000 square acres, which is almost the size of the city of Washington, D. C. It was large enough that a detailed map of the Double Circle was posted inside the bunkhouse. Not far away from the bunkhouse, where I saw my first and last rattlesnake, was the flowing Tongue River. The crew, which numbered three of us, stayed on the ranch for the entire job. I discovered that everyday life at a working ranch was arduous and fatiguing; however, the great variety of activities made the time pass by quickly. Days began at dawn with the resonant chime of a cow bell, which summoned the ranch hands out of a blissful sleep from their bunkhouse.

After the preliminary chores of the day had been completed, a generous breakfast array of steak and eggs, cereals, orange juice, milk, along with freshly brewed coffee was served. I soon learned that nobody starved on a ranch. Lunches and suppers were equally abundant. I have never eaten so much in my life. Which may have been attributed to the hard work, along with the 3,000 foot altitude of Birney that could have stimulated my appetite.

The Toils of Daily Life

Tasks, such as feeding the livestock, cleaning the corral, or mending broken fences, were made somewhat more tolerable by the azure sky and lush verdant valleys. The cowboys, who chose to be called ranch hands, were a stoical breed. The majority of ranch hands had spent their entire lives in a ranching community, and were acclimated to the rigorous lifestyle. The hands, who were young men and women, had a tremendous work ethic and rarely complained, even during stressful episodes. One morning, a ranch hand was injured during a cattle round-up. Although he had received a deep gash in his thigh, the young man merely wrapped his bandana around the wound, mounted his horse, and continued with his work.

Brief Yet Compelling Experience

My ranch experience, although very brief, provided me with a perspective that few city dwellers ever receive. Instead of reading about life in the West, or watching it on a movie screen, I witnessed it firsthand. I learned that the people of these communities were the same in some aspects to urbanites, but markedly different in other ways. Life revolved more around the forces of nature in the West. The people, while rugged and at times stoic, seemed to be more flexible than those of us from urban areas.

By making a journey to Wyoming and Montana, I fulfilled a dream that I had nurtured since childhood. Many years have passed since that summer experience, but I am certain that it will always remain a very special remembrance. The mountains, clean air, food, horses, ranches, chiming bells, but most of all, the gracious people that I encountered.