Of course you want to read a blog post with a title like that.
I have a story coming out with Tough Crime on Monday that started with me reading a whole ton of Cormac McCarthy, and then thinking about the concept of write what you know.
And accountancy is really fucking boring.
If you’ve met me or have seen pictures, it’s probably not obvious that I love westerns. I’m dying to own my own horse again and if I didn’t have to consider anyone else in my decisions, I’d have a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, miles from everyone, with a menagerie of animals and huge garden. Yes, I would miss Netflix, but my library would be vast and I’d take in every sunset.
Also, I’m a descendant of homesteaders and cattle ranchers. I have relatives that were, in fact, born in a barn, and many family members that still make their living running cattle over thousands of acres. I myself was born in Gillette, Wyoming, and we moved to Cali when I was six.
I consider California my home state. It’s in my blood and I will forever be grateful I grew up here. Though not the most diverse end of the state, the exposure to other ideas, other ways of life, helped me to form my own opinions away from the narrow-mindedness I sometimes find back in Montana.
That said, I love my roots. Or, better, I love the country they’re sunk in. My childhood is filled with memories of spending the summer at my grandparent’s house, of moving cattle and riding through the hills, of the horse I owned the front half of and my grandpa telling me to drink like a lady (yeah that one never stuck.)
We usually went back once or twice year, depending on what was going on with the family. It’s about 1500 miles from Northern California to Ekalaka, Montana, the town my mom grew up outside of. It has a tiny little main street, a great dinosaur museum, a population under 400 and is the county seat. She grew up in a smaller place called Mill Iron, which is mostly where two gravel roads happen to meet. They had a one-room school house and I believe the teacher lived on-site.
One of my favorite memories of driving back, I swear to god, is getting yelled at for laughing with my siblings, but that’s a different story all together.
Having family that runs cattle in an isolated part of Montana can be complicated. I love my family but like I said, the privilege of growing up in California allowed me to form a worldview that includes people who aren’t carbon copies of myself in skin color, beliefs, and/or sexuality. It makes for interesting visits at times, but if you just nod and go mmmph enough times, you get through it.
Part of what I love in that area is the land itself. It’s wild and beautiful and spacious enough to get lost in. So long as you close the gates behind you, you can roam as far as you like, across hills and through forests and up amongst the sandstone.
Probably not what you picture when you think of Montana forests and prairies, but one of the best features of the area is the sandstone. As seen and modeled here by the wonderful Trex. Those pictures are specifically of Medicine Rocks State Park and worth wandering through if you’re ever in the area. Or, more realistically, making them a destination because there’s not many reasons you’d be passing through.
One place in particular is called the Ludwick pasture. I’m sure at one point I knew who Ludwick was, but hell if I can remember now. Still, it’s been a source of great memories for me and most of my cousins.
Did I mention my grandparents had 9 kids? There’s a lot of cousins.
But throughout the years we’ve spent a ton of time out there. Once we camped for days. Other times we’ve had picnics and barbecues. Very few trips are made to that part of Montana without visiting the Ludwick pasture at least once.
Picture hills and the scraggly pines of southeastern Montana. A steep climb levels out into a plane of prairie grass, almost in a private, forest-hidden valley. On one side towers great columns of sandstone, eaten away by rain, wind, snow and time. There’s arches, holes, caves, and pathways the water flows off the stones. If you can find the right one or climb up, the tops are vast and flat, usually close enough to hop from one pillar to another. One one side you can walk right up onto the rocks while there’s a good 20-30 foot drop on the opposite end, leading into the small valley.
With the wind whistling through the trees, there’s a misleading sound of water at all times, though the country is dusty and dry most of the summer. Sage and pine scent the air while sand and pile needles wheedle their way in between your soles and socks. There is not a thing to do out there except whatever you like, and it’s a perfect place.
That, essentially, is where I set the story that’ll come out in a couple of days. That dust, the dirt, the pines, the sandstone and the baking summer sun-that’s what I wanted.
“Okay but this has nothing to do with the promised bull dick!” you complain, because that’s what I know you’re all about.
I’m getting there. I just got caught up writing love letters to some of my best childhood memories.
If we circle back to my family being more conservative, we’ll get to the bull dick.
The reason such a tiny town has a great dinosaur museum is because it’s part of something called the Hellcreek Formation. If you’ve heard about Badlands dinosaur digs, and Sue, that’s in the same area. There’s so many dinosaur fossils popping up out of the ground that sometimes it takes a couple years after reporting one for a crew to come dig it up.
One of my uncles, we’ll call him “Jim,” owns land that includes what people call the Chalk Buttes. The chalk buttes, when wet, get gummy and slick, easily eroded by the water and snow. The buttes are full of various fossils, though usually in tiny pieces due to the instability of the buttes themselves. They shatter and roll down through the mud but sometimes, things like talons and femurs pop out of the hillside.
When visiting with fossil buffs and younger family members, the buttes are a wonderful place to explore. If everybody takes a sandwich bag, you can spend hours picking little bits of fossils and stones from the dirt, all over the hillsides.
That’s how I found myself riding in a side-by-side with Trex (my son) and Uncle Jim. We’d already ridden horses and picked wildflower bouquets and were now heading out to the Chalk Buttes, leading a procession of pickups full of cousins, aunts, uncles and Grandma.
There had been a lot of talk from Uncle Jim and his wife about a vet visit the next day. They were checking how successful the IVF breeding had been versus the bull breeding and were going to have an early morning of it. I could tell he was a little careful picking his words when he answered my questions about what all was involved, and how the vet would be able to tell the difference between the two, but didn’t think much more of it.
We picked fossils and minded a couple rambunctious young boys on the edge of the buttes, caking our shoes with mud and trying to find cooler items than everyone else. When we went back for dinner, we traded my sister for Trex, who hopped in the truck with his grandma.
Conversation drifted back to the next day’s events, the farm, and some of the wildlife we saw along the way.
Turning back towards the house we spotted one bull alone in a smaller field and inquired about it. The answer, very simply, was “Oh he got injured so we’re giving him some time to see if he gets better.”
Which leads naturally to, “How’d he get hurt?”
“Oh, it happened when he was out with the herd.”
Weird answer, Uncle Jim, but maybe I’m bad at taking hints. Also, like I said, I grew up in California and generally fail to be the tender, virgin-eared wilting flower some people expect woman to be.
“Did he get in a fight with another bull?”
“Kinda. Not really.”
Me, continuing to be as dense as possible: “So what’d he hurt? His leg or something?”
Uncle Jim, shifting uncomfortably, says, “Well, no.”
Clearly, I can not take a hint at all. “What happened to him?” I quite innocently ask.
“Well, it happened when he was mounting a cow.”
“Okay. Did he fail the dismount?”
“Sorta.”
“But he didn’t hurt his leg?”
“No.”
“What did he hurt?”
Then Uncle Jim caved, but only sort of. “Well, we think another bull hit him and and knocked him off the cow, that’s how he got hurt.”
“Ohhhhh,” I say, and we move on.
At least until I get alone with my sister, at which point I fall apart in laughter and inform her, who had no idea what my uncle meant, that the bull was mounted on a cow, doing what he’s supposed to be doing, when another bull rammed him off.
His dick. The bull twisted his dick when he fell off the cow and in no way could my uncle find the polite, appropriate words to tell us that.
To this day it remains one of my favorite memories of that uncle, and a great reminder of the divide in what we find socially acceptable.
What bearing does that have on the story I wrote? None, really, though calving is involved. It’s just something I remember and laugh about every time I think of that visit in particular.
I hope you check out the story on Monday and support Tough. Have a great weekend, friends.