Heart Earth - Ivan Doig [39]
Received our band of sheep last Mon. Nice bunch of lambs, 1230 of them. Sure hope they weigh good this fall and we can keep the loss down...
We have a herder for now, but when the sheep go on the Forest Reserve the 1st of July or about, Charlie, Ivan & I may herd them. We aren't sure yet. Charlie is going up to look at the Reserve range & see how tough it is....
Don't know just yet when we will shear. I shouldn't have a lot of work to do after shearing, and that should only last one day unless a rainstorm catches us....
Ivan is busy drawing pictures. Does pretty good. He'll soon have a birthday, doesn't seem possible he'll be six....
***
When my father shouldered open the door of that cabin of then, packhorses and wife and child and twenty-two hundred sheep at his back, a mouse nest fell down onto the brim of his Stetson. Ceiling paper drooped in shreds. The greenblinds on the windows were speckled with mashed flies, the floor was soiled with mouse droppings and pack rat leavings.
The place was a sty, but not for long. The floor of a housing project cubicle on the factory outskirts of Phoenix, maybe Berneta would wash with tears. But this cabin on the summer mountain she launched into with soapy water. Led by the hurricane broom of my father, who cocked a look out every window he swept past to check on the behavior of the sheep.
To dream us this last time, into the twists of June, I harbor there at the very first hours of the swabbed cabin.
And watch Berneta as she gives her mop a conclusive wring. On the go, beds and plenty else to be seen to, she brushes by the foot of the scant cot beneath the south-most window and sings out, "Ivan, look how you'll just fit." I inspect, solemnly bob my head, and claim the bunk with my tarp-wrapped bedroll. A corner of my own, all I ask. My parents will share the plank-sided bed in the opposite corner, snug for two but they do not seem to mind the prospect. No pillows to this sheepcamp existence, so Berneta mounds our three mackinaw jackets at the head of her side of the bed to prop herself against asthma in the night.
Bleary windowpanes to be washed next. Berneta debates to herself whether to do away with the nasty green-blinds—nobody for five miles around to see in on us—but ends up scouring the fly matter off them. Blank windows have never seemed right to her.
Even though the morning outside is wearing its summer best—hasn't rained the last 2 or 3 days, really seems good to see some sunshine—I tag after Berneta there in the cabin. Follow her eyes while she inventories this domestic side of the sheep deal, the three-month one-room future. The cookstove is frankly puny, a midget two-lid job not much more than kneehigh even on her, but it will fire up fast and then not hold hot through these summer days. The elderly table, scarred and stained from extra duty as a butcher block, at least presides at the proper window, the west one which lets in a good view of the willow course of the creek. Across the room, the canned-goods cupboard for once is huge enough, homemade logic of someone who, like her, has needed to store away most of a season of groceries at a time. And she is glad of the smaller cool cupboard, the outside cabinet of shelves handy beside the door and tinned against rodents; leftovers will keep for a day or so in there, and for longer term, butter and cheese and any grouse my father manages to hunt can be sealed in jars and coldstored in the creek.
Could be worse, her kitchen veteran's appraisal and our recent history of the drab White Sulphur Springs house and drabber Alzona Park both say. At the other end of the cabin's single room hunkers a heating stove big as a blast furnace, so close to the main bed that it seems to be trying to sneak under the covers. Winter here halfway up a Montana alp must be icily