Friday, October 15, 2004

Five days ago we finished the 23 miles of fence--well, essentially. And five days ago we ate a sandwich with one hand while we tamped posts with the other. We were watching a monster cloud build up in the northwest, and we had a lot of equipment way back on the other side of the Cheyenne River--not the best of situations. So as soon as we finished with a piece of equipment, we loaded it up and got ready to move it out. People and hand tools were the last out. The fence was done, but the river was rising from rain somewhere upstream. It had not quite gotten to us yet, except for a few really promising sprinkles, something less than a shower. But we don't fool around with the water in the river; it runs mercilessly downhill and takes stuff like equipment and people with it, or tries.

About the time I got up one morning a little while ago, the phone rang. It was Chad Hammerstrom. He was calling on his cell phone from the middle of the river and was wondering if I could bring the tractor and all the chain I could find to pull his truck with him and his brother, Tel, out. And that is the problem with having an abundance of water.

Water in the river, however, is one thing. It does not equate with water in the stock tanks and dugouts or on the pastures and hay ground. This summer the lack of water, other than in the river, is our major problem. Right now wells and a few springs are our primary source of water for keeping the buffalo alive and inside our fences. W.lllle have put in some pipelines and watering tanks, trying to have sufficient quantity for the buffalo in whatever pasture they happen to be at any given time.

With no water (read rain) there is minimal grass, which makes for a multitude of problems and possible solutions. Grass is the foundation of meat; water is the foundation of grass.

Water in a confined space and under pressure (a cylinder, perhaps, with no outlet) acts like a solid. That same water in that same space under that same pressure with an outlet acts like water gun or a fire hose and is used for thousands of purposes, often as an eroding agent. Water within an open confinement (a lake or a bathtub) acts for the most part like a toy, soft, pliable, splashy and playful. Water as a solid (ice) or a semi-solid (snow) or even liquid water beneath the surface is sometimes a little less than friendly, but ice and snow melt to replenish the dry stock dams, and to re-hydrate the prairie to produce grass; and we all know where that leads. So, when you someday step into a doorway out of the rain, or sleet, or hail, or snow, just remember that as a result of your momentary discomfort grass will be there to provide the grazing for our buffalo and that meat is the next stage in the cycle.

I love to look across the Cheyenne River valley, into Indian Creek Draw and into both Little and Big Corral draws, and see a beautiful mist hanging low and cool on a sunlit morning after a good rain or a snowfall. Then I know I can relax and feel relatively secure in the knowledge that a high quality of life will come to us with an appropriate abundance of water.