Sheepherding on Boulder Mountain with my Dad

That's about what it comes down to.

I grew up herding sheep with my family. During the winter we kept the herd in town, and through the summer we moved them around Boulder Mountain.

With this life style, I learned to ride a horse earlier than I can remember. My siblings and I, along with the hired help, spent most of our summers herding sheep on the mountain. We spent a lot of time trailing the heard and exploring every nook and cranny on the entire mountain.

There was always someone hired to live in the sheep camp during the summer full time, and we would go out every other day to take them supplies and help wherever needed. This made it so that my dad, my siblings, and I could help with other projects on the farm. These included feeding the dairy cows, moving sprinkler pipe, working in the fields, and repairing farm machinery.

When whoever was hired needed to leave for a time or decided to quit, we would stay in the camp with the sheep until we could find someone else to fill the position.  

This is Lacy and I heading sheep on Boulder Mountain. I'm not sure exactly how old I was when this picture was taken.

When I was nine years-old, I spent a little over a week on top of Boulder with my dad. I remember being so excited not only to spend the time with my dad, but also to spend that much time riding horse in my favorite place in the world.

Within just a few days, I was tired, sore, and sick of only having cold watering holes and a bucket to use for a shower. Most days consisted of a breakfast of eggs and beans, bologna sandwiches and apples from our saddlebags for lunch, and usually stew or mutton for dinner. While I have yet to experience the struggle of really being “burned out” with a food, and my dad is a good cook, I was ready for my mom’s cooking.

One of my favorite things to do in the evenings when we got back to camp was drinking hot chocolate with my dad while he pointed out constellations in the stars above us. To this day, I have never had a clearer view of the stars in anywhere I have ventured to than can be found on the top of Boulder Mountain.

About three days into our trip, we rode out to Donkey Meadows, and took our horses to a small, shallow watering pond to let them take a drink.

I was riding my sister’s horse, Lacey. While she was drinking Lacey liked to walk around the ponds that were not too deep, and this one was maybe eight inches at its deepest point. I had become accustomed to this and did not worry, but about the time she got to the middle of the pond she decided that she wanted to roll around, ignoring the fact that she had a saddle and  a nine year-old human on her back. Knowing that in reality, Lacey had much more control of me than I did of her, even though I had the reins, my dad told me to just hurry and get off the horse.

I still don’t know why I didn't try to dismount like you always do, I thought it best to stand on the saddle and jump off that way. When I stood up on her back, this startled Lacy, and she jumped up launching me into the air.

I landed face down into the muddy water. Luckily, my head missed all of the larger, possibly deadly, rocks around me and I was really unharmed. My dad was instantly at my side to make sure that I was alright. When I got up, I was cold, startled, angry, and determined that I was done with this adventure.

I think that my dad recognized this almost instantly and he handled it perfectly. As soon as he was sure that I was alright, before I could say anything about going home or tearing into the horse, he taught me a lesson that has helped me for the rest of my life.

He said, “You can get mad, cry, or go back to camp, but we still have a sheep herd to take care of. So what do you think you should do?”

Even though the last thing in the world I wanted to do was get back on the horse, he showed me that I really was alright and we still had an important job to do.

He gave me time to think.

After a few seconds I walked over to Lacy, gathered up her reins, found a big rock to stand on that would help me to get on her back, and was back alongside my dad in pretty short order.

Within an hour or so, I was dried off, and my watering hole bath that evening suddenly didn’t seem so bad, and the rest of our trip provided me a whole new outlook on our life as sheepherders.

From this trip and its events and adventures, my connection with my dad, my horse, my mountain, and myself were all strengthened.

Since that time, I have had my fair share of turns being thrown from my horse, both literally and figuratively. It has never been as hard though to gather up the reins and get back on the horse. I think that if my dad had not jumped on that opportunity to teach me, then I might not have had the drive to jump right back in the saddle at different times in my life.

Often in our lives, we find ourselves metaphorically face down in a muddy watering hole. We can find ourselves wondering what we did so wrong that resulted in us in this situation. By this point we are usually close to our wit’s end, and we may be considering the prospect of just giving up.

Whether we give up or not does not take away our responsibilities. Giving up just means that those responsibilities are not taken care of. In our case, the herd could have wandered out of our grazing range and mixed in with another herd or, even more likely, scattered into smaller groups which take a lot longer to gather back into a central herd again.

Dare to Venture does not only apply to daring to start something. In the greater scheme of things, that is the relatively easy part. Often, continuing to venture when it gets hard and we feel like we are flat on our face in a muddy pond, are the times when we have to grit out teeth, wipe the mud off our face, and get back on the horse. Even though we may want to give up at the time, more often than not, if we will make ourselves continue on, we will be glad that we did, and we will be better from the experience.

I have had to remind myself of this lesson so many times in my life that I can’t even count all of them. I even have to admit that there have been times when I have quit. Every time though, I regretted quitting when it got hard. When I have thought back on that lesson that my dad and my sister’s horse taught me fourteen years ago now, I have been able to keep on going, confident that I would be better from the experience.

My hope from this is that you when you find yourself “face down in a muddy watering hole,” and you are wondering why everything went so wrong so quickly, that you will think further ahead than where you currently are, that you will get up, wipe the mud off your face, and get back on the horse.

Dare to Continue the Venture!

-Velden

This is my sister, Sarah and I at the sheep camp where my dad and I were camped at throughout this story. This horse's name was Missy.