Pat & Sharon O'Toole

Pat, Dad and I have arrived in Elko for the showcase of the Western Folklife Center, the annual Gathering.

We are looking forward to hanging out with old friends, making new ones, and mingling with the many talented folks who do "gather" here. Pat and my Dad participated in a cooking workshop put on by old friends. I am experiencing a poetry-writing workshop with the UniBlogger, Paul Zarzyski. We will help present programs (on sheepherder poetry--a very small genre, creative marketing of food products, and on the book, "Homeland") and get to attend others. I will have to remember that one isn't learning when one is talking! It is wonderful food for the mind.

I m especially looking forward to the presentation we "bloggers" will make, and the chance to get to know or reacquaint myself with our fellow travelers in the blogosphere. And I want to thank our daughter, Meghan, for holding down the fort in our absence! We are getting a few early lambs (virgin births, I think), so she has her hands full. Sadly, the photo posting part of the blog seems to be "down" so photos will follow.

Posted by Sharon O'Toole at 6:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Winter sheep
photo by Pat O'Toole

We have had extreme cold. Temperatures were mostly below zero for a couple of weeks, with several days of minus twenty-five. A few days ago, we had a lot of wind which “blew out” our sheep on the Red Desert. In a blizzard with high winds, the sheep just set out and walk before the wind. The Red Desert has very few fences, which is fortunate. In a storm like this one, livestock walk out away from the storm, seeking shelter and relief. Over the years, many animals have been lost when they piled up against a fence and suffocated. In the Red Desert area, usually they can safely travel until the storm passes. When the storm blew over, it took us two days to find one band and a couple of days to trail them back to our allotment. When we found the last band, they had miixed with a neighbor's sheep, which meant that we had to set up portable corrals and sort them. This particular neighbor, from Kansas (where they had storm-related troubles of their own) had sub-leased BLM AUM's (Animal Unit Months--a way of measuring grazing) and had never been to the Red Desert before.

The bitter cold came in on the heels of the storm. Pat went out to the sheep camps to make sure that men and animals were faring well. (We had been in contact by cell phone.) On his way back home (some 125 miles), but still way north of Wamsutter, his pickup developed an oil leak. He stopped on a high point and called me for a rescue mission.

At home, I loaded up my pickup with a sleeping bag, food, water, matches, a candle and asked Nerio, one of our Peruvian employees, to accompany me. The trip takes over two hours, so it was well after dark when we reached Continental Divide Rim, a high vantage point. By this time, Pat, who was well bundled up, but couldn't run his pickup, was getting pretty cold.

I often curse cell phones, but on this night, they were a life-saver. Pat keep flashing his headlights and was able to guide us in to his location. This is in the heart of the oil field, so there are literally hundreds of roads criss-crossing the desert. We found our way to him, and he was very glad to see us, and especially my pickup’s heater! The next day, we sorted the sheep, and located the broken-down pickup in the labyrinth of roads.

The next day
Red Desert, Sweetwater County
photo by Sharon O'Toole

We were rewarded with the sight of these sage grouse, tumbling through the snow.

Red Desert Grouse
photo by Pat O'Toole

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Gas flare at Badwater
Sweetwater County, Wyoming
photo by Pat O'Toole

This month, the book, "Home Land: Ranching and a West That Works" was released by Johnson Books. It is a collection of essays and poems on the "New West," edited by by Laura Pritchett, Richard Knight, and Jeff Lee. Proudly, both Pat and I are represented in this book. Pat is quoted by writer Joan Chevalier ("Wasted on a White Collar Job") and my poem "The Seekers' Trail: The Atlantic Rim," is included.

It is hard to describe the impact that the now and future energy development is having on our landscape, and that of the Rocky Mountain West. It is shocking to me how little awareness there is of the massive scale of this development outside the affected areas.

Flaring a well
photo by Sharon O'Toole

The Seekers' Trail: Atlantic Rim

Earth's creatures tread the ancient trails,
Dusty paths from grass to grass.
From summer's green to winter's sage
On elk-trod road pass deer and cow,
Hooves of sheep, all those who graze,
No gas-fired trucks to speed their way.

But wells which belch this gas have changed
This time-worn path, this trodden trail,
For those who walk and those who graze
Through winter grass, though browse, through dust.
Oil-field roads now cut this land
Of sage and sand. For those who watch,

Who watch from desert heart and sky,
Raptors feed on road-kill feasts,
Grouse crouch low benath the sage,
Coyote sniffs for scent of prey,
Rattler shimmies through the dust. All
Feel the rumble, hear the thrum as

Machinery parts these waves of sage.
Primordial seas laid lodes of gas
That heat our homes. We build these roads
Through hoof prints laid on age-old trails,
Through bones and seeds and trodden dust
Raised by those who move and graze.

They graze along with season's change
Through sky and grass and scent of sage,
Through cold-bit snow and and shining dust
Back-lit by flaring gas-fueled flames.
Trucks now cross a hundred trails
And roar on roads of new construct.

Land first scarred by two-track road,
West-bound wagons whose oxen grazed,
Drew seekers on the homestead trail,
Cross sage and stream, cross nation's heart.
Now gas-field trucks toll on, roll on,
Dusty contrails riding high.

Sky filled with dusty tails that track
Where trucks and roads and people go.
Gas wells squat with painted tanks.
Behind them ranks of antelope graze
Witnessed by the timeless sage,
And those who tread the ancient trails,

Stock and game on hoof-worn path,
Winter's bounty led them here
Joined now by trucks and roads and dust.
We moil for gas, for coal, for oil,
This path laid down by those who search
This sagebrush trail where seekers go.

Posted by Sharon O'Toole at 4:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Haze over the Red Desert
Sweetwater County, Wyoming
photo by Pat O'Toole

Today we went to the Red Desert to sort sheep which had gotten blown out and mixed during the storm. For the first time I can remember, we saw a haze from emissions, visible, I'm sure, due to a temperature inversion from the extreme cold (-15 degrees at the time of this photo).

In today's Casper (Wyoming) Star-Tribune, we saw the following letter:

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Editor:

I have read the Casper Star-Tribune article of Jan. 1 on eminent domain. Here we have another sad, sad story from a bleeding-heart rancher who has discovered that he does not own the minerals under his grazing rights. It still angers me that this paper has taken the stance that energy development is bad and ranchers are good and being harmed by all the coal-bed methane development.

The Star-Tribune took such pride in publishing an article on the front page when the EPA announced that they were seeking $55,000 in fines from my oil company. When EPA dropped the charges, the news story rated back-page space.

The article about the poor ranchers is typical of this newspaper's attitude of how the ranchers are being harmed whenever they do not own the mineral rights.

I have been to District Court hearings four times on right-of-way issues when the rancher did not own the mineral rights. In all four cases the judge ruled in our favor (oil company) because of the wording in the bill of sale when the surface rights were sold.

Basically the deed states that the mineral owner has absolute rights to re-enter the land to develop minerals, and the developer may use as much surface as necessary to produce the minerals. No compensation will be given to the surface owner for disturbance of natural grasses.

The Star-Tribune just does not print any of my letters to the editor anymore, for some reason. Probably because the editor is a bleeding-heart liberal who thinks energy development in Wyoming is bad for ranchers.

Ranchers benefit the most from energy development because they essentially pay no property taxes on their land and no taxes on the cattle. They are exempt from taxes on land where energy development is taking place. They are truly the freeloaders of our day.

The last paragraph of the eminent domain story contains the quotation from Barlow: "Right now it's like they already own your property, and you just deal with what's left."

This is a true statement. The rancher does not own the ground where grasses grow because the dirt is minerals. My advice is, "Get used to it, for that is the deal when the estate was severed."

BOBBY DAVIS, Upton

This letter originally appeared in the Dustin Bleizeffer's Star-Tribune blog, the Pipeline

Posted by Sharon O'Toole at 4:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

2007 has brought contrasts to us already. The first week of the year found us in Florida where Pat's Mom had surgery. On a beautiful 80 degree day, we took a boat tour up the Loxahatchee River in Jonathan Dickenson State Park. Turns out Jonathan Dickinson was an Quaker trader who shipwrecked in the area in 1696. He and his party were taken in by the native Ais tribe, then eventually made their way up the unsettled coast, 230 miles, to St. Augustine. Things were considerably less arduous for us, as we got to view the sights from a safe vantage point. We saw lots of alligators. We arrived home to several inches of new snow. We now have at least plenty. We stopped by the National Western Stock Show in Denver, where the atmosphere is muted by the worry over the thousands of lost and presumed dead cattle and other livestock in southeast Colorado. All of us in the livestock business know that we are always vulnerable to the whims of Mother Nature.

Today, we have a new storm. I watched my dog Suzie making her way through the snow, and was reminded of a swimming alligator we had seen.

Alligator in the Loxahatchee
Jupiter, Florida
photo by Pat O'Toole

Stealth Suzie in the snow
Home Ranch
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Today we drove through the blizzard to take another pickup to Powder Flat, where we have livestock and men.
Click on "Continue Reading" for some photos of the day.

Hereford along the road
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Hampshires and Rambouillets looking for feed
Powder Flat, Moffat County, Colorado
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Horses, herder and hay at Powder Flat
Moffat County, Colorado
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Cows in the Ames Field
Home Ranch
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Horses in the Wyoming Field
Home Ranch
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Scarier than a coyote
Loxahatchee River
photo by Pat O'Toole

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George at working corrals, winter
Home Ranch, Carbon County, Wyoming
photo by Sharon O'Toole

SO COLD

Frost mists rise from man and beast
Our crystal breath, ice and steam
Puffs ephemeral, path of least
Resistance, a ghosting stream.

We push forward, crunch and huddle
Through crackling snow, we shove and hunch
Through paneled gauntlet, icy muddle
Of baaing, milling sheepy bunch.

They know warmth in woolen garb,
We too are wooled but feel bare skin
Freeze and burn with winter’s barb.
I wrap and tie and wrap again.

Windy fingers creep and shove,
They poke and pry, “Let me inside”
They grasp my hands, invade my glove
Probe balled fists I try to hide.

Ewe by ewe, through sorting pen
We stomp and wave, but mostly huff.
Border collies nip and bend
While guard dogs curl in tail-wrapped ruff.

Horse statues stand, with frosted glow,
Hair sparkling up like diamond dust,
Backs to the wind, heads held low,
Hooves paw the crunchy snowy crust.

Beneath our feet roll icy balls
Manure bits now marble hard
That tease and threaten slippery falls
And make this earth a moving yard.

The pistol shot of sorting gate
And tally cry as sheep make way
Straight on to where the pasture waits
To nurture them for one more day

And nurture us, for weeks and years.
This sage and snow marks our fates
While winter’s breath, and ours and theirs
Rises timeless. Evaporates.

Posted by Sharon O'Toole at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)