Sorry for not posting a picture today – I was up and gone before dawn wearing fourteen items of clothing (many layers), catching horses, trailering halfway up the mountain and then riding the rest of the way up to gather a mountain pasture in morning’s light and trail the cows home.  Ten hours a’horseback. Very tiring and very, very beautiful.

Whenever I trail cows, I am filled with a renewed understanding for why, in old Westerns, when the cowboys arrive in a town, they will gladly spend their last coin on a shot of whiskey and a bath. I rarely drink but every time I trail cows (up the mountain in early summer and down in early winter), the same scene replays. After brushing the horses and turning them out, I beeline for a steaming hot bath and one shot of whiskey to drink in the tub.