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Peanut Babb (l), with his father Len Babb, in the lead of the Murphy herd.
Last week, while most of Big America was flailing about in a toxic stew of mind-numbing polemics, Murphy Ranch buckaroo Tyler Mecham was following wolf tracks up Dairy Creek. Tyler is 19 years old, 6’3, with Modoc blood in his veins, and as solid a hand as one might hope to find in this rare hidey-hole of genuine Americana. He was up there helping the O’Leary Ranch sort their cattle out of a small bunch of holdouts when he found the tracks — while the rest of us were pushing nearly 700 head through Corral Creek and onward to the home ranch.
This was the annual drive of Murphy cattle out of the mountains, through the tiny town of Paisley, Oregon, (pop. 200) to the home ranch. We rolled in — cinematographers Sam Pyke, Cody Rheault, and myself — to film this annual event for the Len Babb Movie Project.
Wolf Track
It takes weeks to bring this drive together, and begins by gathering cattle out of the allotments on the Fremont-Winema forest where Murphy cattle spend the summer, herding them out of that wild country and closer to the home ranch in stages. Weeks of riding brings the herd to the Murphy cow camp at South Flat where the calves are weaned off their mothers, the bulls sorted out, any dry cows or culls peeled off, and shipped by truck down to the home ranch for processing. With fires, drouth, and grasshoppers, it has been a hard year on the grass up there and so after the calves are shipped from South Flat the Murphys keep a hard eye on the available feed before starting the big push toward home.
For filming we were able to coordinate — in a last second thrill-ride of weather, competing schedules, and availability — to shoot the best parts of the drive home: one last day of gathering cattle together and pushing them into a holding pasture, and then the 12 mile drive down the Chewaucan River through Paisley town, and finally through the green gate at the Murphy home ranch.
The final day started early. Up at 4, breakfast at 4:30, catching horses at 5 am and on the road shortly after. We hit trouble immediately and once again enjoyed the verities of the ancient military adage: no plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Brady Murphy counting them through one last gate before the final drive out of the mountains.
At 5:15 Tyler called Brady Murphy to tell him there was a bull standing on the lawn in front of the Paisley Library. This time of year, the older cattle know what is going on, and the smart ones start drifting out of the mountains toward home all by themselves. So, at 5:17 we were — four cowboys crammed into a Dodge truck hauling a gooseneck trailer full of horses — ramming that bull with the front bumper up Mill Street back toward the mountains. Absolutely nobody wanted to jump out and chase him or worse, try to rope and stretch him out in the middle of highway 31. If you had been there you would have seen a truck and trailer criss-crossing over the road, headlights flashing off the front windows of sleeping households, ramming a bull on the fight until he finally turned. You might have heard the laughter coming from the truck and caught a flash of a short-dog of Fireball being passed around. It had a decidedly western flare and was mostly just amusing as that bull tried to give a decent fight but ended up — by way of a few backyards — trotting over the bridge, past the closed-down lumber mill, and out of town.
I’d have given anything to have that sequence on film but both cameramen were in my truck, already heading up the Chewaucan River and oblivious to what was going on behind them in the morning dark.
About the time Tyler was finding that wolf track, the cattle we had collected and started pushing downhill were traveling well through a burn scar from the 50,000 acre Brattain Fire. Earlier this fall flames jumped the Chewaucan River and roared up the opposite bank, exploding junipers and blackening ponderosas into naked skeletons, chewing up grass and manzanita, and leaping inexorably up the mountainside on its endless attack through a drought-stricken wilderness.
It is no exaggeration to say that the town of Paisley was saved by the ranchers and townsfolk who live there, including the Murphys, who fought that fire with their own equipment until crews could be brought in to help.
Back up on the mountain, the cattle churned fresh snowfall into a series of long, slick trails of ashen-black gumbo through the skeleton trees.
Bear track at Corral Creek
I was riding in the drag with Brady Murphy, Mark Lally, and Brady’s seven year old son Everett. Everett is fun to ride with because he can sit a horse better than most adults — is utterly fearless at a dead run over broken country — and also because his attention span is delightfully short. He will leave the herd, which he gives marginal shits about, and pursue whatever catches his eye — a tail of blue flagging hung on a tree branch, a badger hole, a strange bird in the willows along the river. That kind of energy and curiosity remains a delight, and maybe even grows in my admiration as I continue to find myself backed into a corner by America’s millions of moral busybodies and righteous political missionaries. They haven’t figured it out yet: there is no political savior for what ails our national soul.
We were pushing the cows along Corral Creek when Brady found the bear track. We let the cattle glide on ahead for a bit — they were lined out fine and we still had a dozen miles of trail ahead of us — and surveyed the tracks. It was a good-sized bear and had somehow escaped the fire’s devastation. It was a fresh track, probably put down earlier that morning while the sun was poking up and we were gathering loose cattle into a trail herd. There is always something elevating about finding a fresh predator track in wild country.
Len Babb crossing the Chewaucan
Although I am nominally known as the “Director” of this film, one thing I’ve learned after six months of filming is that nobody directs anything in documentary filmmaking. At least not this kind of documentary. On its very best days cowboying in the outback is dynamic and unpredictable. It can be likened to that famous phrase about flying, which goes something like: “long periods of boredom punctuated by shots of pure adrenaline.”
Cattle who spend most of their lives on the desert or in the timber aren’t your grandfather’s sluggish pasture cows. They are honery, high-minded, and can often be on the wild side. To get around them requires good dogs, great horses, and simply can’t be done without cowboys who know what they are doing. Four-wheelers just won’t cut it for moving cattle in the outback.
We got the cattle up out of the timber and river bottom and lined out on the highway, strung out for a mile between the lead and the drag, and then that bottle of Fireball came out again, and we spent a few more hours pushing them on towards town with ferocious gusts of wind knocking the horses sideways. Oh, and occasionally some simple bitch would try to outguess the herd and wander this way or that, but we’d haze them back into the flow and push and continue inexorably down the mountain.
When you can’t even see the lead.
The old lead cows usually know where they are going, and when the first of them began poking their way down Mill Street in Paisley they kinked their tails and lifted their heads and the trot was on. Sure, we had cattle in some yards and one or three who wouldn’t program, but the herd is its own kind of river and flows down the path of least resistance. One front-yard fence got wrecked. A crazy woman ran into that bull we’d seen in the morning and went rioting around demanding satisfaction and claiming it had thrown her in the air and broken her ribs. She threatened to sue everyone in sight demanding to know why nobody had warned her there was a “dangerous bull on public lands.”
A woman like that is more Karen than any Karen, and its almost hilarious to see her move into a town like Paisley and run amok with her own brand of urban and utterly clueless crazy. In the end she served as the perfect illustration of the urban-rural divide, an ever widening gap whose resentments and prejudices run deep.
In the end, one cow got stuck in a grassy lot in the middle of town, across from the Pioneer Saloon, and young Everett bombed in there to get her out. She was the last holdout and when he choused her out on we went, past Paisley School, down the road and finally through the Murphy gate into the home ranch.
People driving by in their RV’s leaned out the windows taking pictures.
We were lucky in a lot of ways. Out in the hard wind we beat a driving rain back to the home ranch, put the horses up and went inside where we were met with an incredible meal. We sat proudly at the Murphy dinner table violating the governor’s illegal diktats about gatherings. We filled our bellies and swapped stories, laughing to beat hell about the crazy woman, and downing shots of life-giving whisky between bites.
End of the Trail. l to r: Mark Lally, Katie Murphy, Brady Murphy, Craig Rullman, Peanut Babb, Len Babb, Martin Murphy, Everett Murphy.
And those are the moments we live and long for, aren’t they? Tired in all of the best ways, in from the trail while the rain beats against the windows and the fire saws lazily in the stove, the cattle home for the winter and surrounded by great friends? Isn’t that the payoff? To get lost in the perfect-now instead of living in the rearview mirror — not pining for how things were, once, in the mythical west, but falling in love all over again with how the traditions are upheld, the legacies are still passed on, the friendships are still made in common bond — and with the American Cowboy, that greatest of all mythologies, with his horses and his saddles and his silver bits, his mecates and outsized rowels — still the beating heart at the center of it all.
FRANK JENSEN says
Nothing like a good story to improve a rainy day. Thank you Craig.
Thank you, sir. I hope you and yours have a terrific Thanksgiving.
Matthew says
When I was young and visiting my grandfather as a child, he took me into the Alabama to teach me to read tracks. I really wish nowadays I remember how. (I had tendency to drift of in my thoughts when I was younger.)
Tracking is a fascinating pursuit, fun and challenging, whether it is animals or that greatest of all big game: humans.
Matthew says
I bet it is. I need to learn more about it.
My granddad had been an avid hunter but only animals. I don’t think he ever hunted humans.
As a law enforcement officer I had to hunt humans, particularly the predatory variety. They leave different tracks, but it’s tracking indeed. “The ground is all memoranda and signatures; and every object covered with hints. In nature, this self-registration is incessant, and the narrative is the print of the seal.” Emerson
Matthew says
Yeah, I knew you were talking about your LEO experience. I don’t think my grandfather ever did that, but I know that he blew up stills during Prohibition. My great-grandfather (his future father-in-law) worked for what would latter become the ATF and he would take him along. I’m not sure if they ever arrested anyone.
Jim says
I was just saying you had fallen off the world. I thought perhaps you’d finally cracked and rode off to Portland to exact some justice. Glad you found better memories.
Great story. Of all the best parts it has to be that those two Murphy kids are experiencing something that will benefit them, their children and their children’s children. True training in independence and freedom!!!
Thanks Jim. The kids are amazing. Confident, kind, curious, fun to be around. They will grow into incredible adults, exactly the kind we need more of.
Reese Crawford says
“ There is always something elevating about finding a fresh predator track in wild country.”
Indeed there is. I will never forget the first time I stumbled on to a mountain lion’s track line in the Ozarks. I stayed there much longer than I should have, decoding the tale of her travel along the river bottom.
Terrific. It’s a wonderful kind of meditation.
David Gonzales says
Craig, it is always a pleasure reading your reports. Thank you brother. Stay safe, and Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Thanks Dave, and back at you.
Valarie J Anderson says
Thanks for another great read. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Thanks Valarie, and Happy Thanksgiving to you as well 🙂
deuce says
Great post, Craig! Sounds like quite a ride.
When I was a teen, my dad and grandad held around 700 head between ’em for about a year and a half. That said, we only had two cattle drives during my teens. Nothing spectacular. One was about 4mi and the other about 10. I’ll never forget either one, though.
My grandad’s line were horsemen and cattlemen going back before the War of 1812. He had to give up the cattle business at the age of 93. He died less than two years later. Working cattle helped keep ‘im alive after my grandma died in 2007. When that was taken away… His eldest brother lived to be 103. That brother built almost a quarter mile of fence (with some help) on his 100th birthday.
When my grandad could no longer ride — he used to bring his horse up to the porch at the Queen Valley Ranch where he had a pulley to help him get the saddle on — his days were numbered. We are working hard on this film to have something people will be proud of — and maybe see a different side of things than they often get. I enjoy the show Yellowstone as a cowboy soap opera, but in some ways it does a disservice to the family outfits that are fighting like hell to survive and keep bringing a great product to the market. You won’t ever forget it, and I can’t get cowboying out of my blood. Once you get the bug, you have it forever.
Reese Crawford says
Amen to that Craig
Gary Tewalt says
You’ve described the perfect mission. Thanks for the great enlightenments. Only the film will final the little things that would take a giant book to relate it to the nimrods and scissorbills or as you put it (Karen’s). Just great. T
Thanks Gary. What I enjoy in Paisley and working alongside the Murphys and Babbs and others isn’t just a great time and incredible stories I’m privileged to tell. It’s character and soul, legacy, and lived values. I’ve been around the block a little bit, and it remains true that the most open minded and generous people I’ve ever met have all been cowboys. They remain the antidote to the modern left and its perpetually gloomy outlook and phony “inclusion” and “diversity” mantras — which they utter by rote but don’t actually believe. If they weren’t so busy knocking over statues of Lincoln, predicting apocalypse at every turn, sucking up to authoritarians, holding their noses and looking down on rural folk, they might actually learn something about good living, neighborly behavior, and legacy. Instead, they move into a town for the scenery, harass a range bull for no reason at all, and then immediately appeal to the lawyers when he turns and runs them into a ditch. Go figure. 🙂
Matthew says
The whole thing about the Left chanting “inclusion” and “diversity” and not actually believing it is that people often have an image of themselves that is opposite than reality. I’ve encounter this on the Right occasionally, though not as often, too. A big one I’ve seen is unmasculine males who talk about the importance of masculinity.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure this out and it still baffles me. How does it come to be? (I’ve also been forced to see this same trait in myself.)
Not a single person in any cow camp I have ever been in — after almost 50 years of being in them — has ever brought up the word “masculinity”. What’s refreshing is the reminder that there are people in this country perfectly at peace with who they are and what they do — living happily every day, raising responsible, thoughtful, intelligent children, producing a great product for the consumer, practicing historical traditions, improving their methods where necessary, and passing on genuine legacies of success in a land of unparalleled opportunity. They do this while being regularly insulted and dismissed as simpletons by politicians and snide ivy league intellectuals from each party, and while simultaneously warding off the induced — and apparently nationwide — re-constructive identity crisis that has now infected everything from the gray lady to maple syrup. Contentment is fundamental, not circumstantial, and that is one reason I enjoy so very much the opportunity to produce and to share this forthcoming film: it is an antidote to the very bad, awful, crazy soup so many are slurping up in agonizing ladlefuls — while declaring how great it is and insisting everyone else eat a bowl of it.
Matthew says
Not a single person in any cow camp I have ever been in — after almost 50 years of being in them — has ever brought up the word “masculinity”.
Which seems to back up my thought that actually masculine men don’t talk about masculinity all that much.
They do this while being regularly insulted and dismissed as simpletons by politicians and snide ivy league intellectuals from each party, and while simultaneously warding off the induced — and apparently nationwide — re-constructive identity crisis that has now infected everything from the gray lady to maple syrup.
I’ve increasingly become disenchanted with politicians and ivy league intellectuals. The average Joe on the street seems to have more common sense in my experience.
You are, in the language of a master Japanese poet, enjoying the fruits of travel on the “Narrow Road to the Deep North.” Thanks for being here.
Gary Tewalt says
Yes and to a much larger application, welcome to Sisters. I want to mount that steed downtown clad with a bullhorn and a whip. T
I would pay good money to see that happen. 🙂
J.F. Bell says
“That’s the future,” the fireman said. “Don’t know what they’re doing. Don’t know how to do it. Don’t help clean up their own mess. Don’t offer. Don’t have any use for them that do. And judging by the stickers on the back of that damn van they vote. Country’s going to shit. One day at a time until there ain’t but retards and soccer moms left to wonder what happened.”
- — -
Afraid I can’t much other than my compliments on a first-rate piece of reading, boss. Dispatches from the far reaches are a welcome respite these days.
Thanks JF.
Ol' Neighbor Brad says
Fit for framin’, every bit of it Craig!!.….From letter — to-syllable — to sentence — to paragraph — to every eye closed envision of the long ago trail gone bye. I do ‘member those days, 4 sure!.….…Thanks, for the prompt.
Thank you, sir!
Roland West says
Greetings.
Saw an article in Range. Wanted to get more info on Paisley and Murphy Ranch. Found this article. How about the Babb Saddlery. Check out my web page for longhorn cattle, leather work, and South Africa hunting photos under “Contact Us” drop down. My wife and I visited Ireland a few years back. Turns out my Mother’s maiden name Ireland is not an Irish name.By the way our longhorn cattle are not wild. We walk among them all the time. They are smart animals. mother cows protect their calves from predators. Response would be welcome.