One more cast

“I have received your information. Thanks very much for sending this along. We are in the process of collecting resumes and will be in touch soon.

-Of course we are thrilled you are Stegner fans!”

We clasped each other and danced about the office. What had a fifty-something couple said to garner such a positive response? The country was in a double death grip with recession and high unemployment and although we were working, our resumes were sparse in many important areas. Everything hinged on the fact that we had been swept away by the books of Wallace Stegner.

As we looked for work it helped that we had been ruthless in our research process and relentless sending out applications and resumes to at least two job ads every day for six months. Some of those days the word “cavalier” describes our bravado as we gushed about our experience level to would be employers. But, it is important to have faith in your own potential. We were also willing to move anywhere in the world for the right job with people with whom we felt comfortable. We drove thousands of miles from Maryland to Georgia to Colorado and up further to Montana in our fifteen year old Ford F150 pickup truck. Some of those long hauls through the night felt as if we were voyaging across a dark and bottomless ocean in search of “the big fish.”

We did catch that fish and landed it, and Wallace Stegner was in our boat. He wrote about Bench Ranch in Montana in his 1981 book of essays “American Places” co-authored with his son Page Stegner. At the time of its writing Wallace and his wife Mary had developed a close friendship with ranchers Jack and Susan Heyneman. Stegner had a deep respect for the Heyneman’s sense of ‘place’.  Wendell Berry a student of Stegner’s described it this way, “those who settle and love the life they have made and their place in it.” Stegner’s own mother was a ‘sticker’ at heart and he loved her deeply for her desire to stick with a place and a life come what may. He viewed the Heyneman family in a similar light and theirs was a friendship that stuck.

Our new life as caretakers at Bench Ranch is comprised of paying attention to details and caring for the holistic health of the “home” portion of the ranch. There are 30 odd laying hens, 6 trail horses, various dogs, a greenhouse and flower garden. Vegetables and fruit for planting and harvesting, assorted barns, buildings and machinery to maintain, snow to remove in the winter and pasture weeds to control in the summer. We manage the vacation rental down stream from the main ranch, where the Stegners often stayed. It is the original hewn log homestead, called The Torgrimson Place, after the Norwegian who proved up the land in 1906 following the Homestead Act. The home has been carefully renovated to preserve its character and serene atmosphere and has many return visitors year after year.

The main ranch house and barns sit seductively along two miles of the West Rosebud River. Brown trout bide their time in the shade of its boulders and overhangs as cottonwood blossom blows downstream. In the fall hunters arrive with their tags to harvest white tail and mule deer as well as the elusive herds of elk.

In “American Places” Stegner’s chapter about the area is called “Crow Country” because once the Crow Nation lived free and hunted here. He describes a high place on the ridge above the Heyneman’s home where a picnic is underway. Three of the Heyneman’s five sons are scampering through the gathering of neighbors and close friends as the conversation explores the serious topic of land management and the survival of families on that land the ‘hard scrabble’ way. It is a conundrum that has haunted settlers in the American West who craved freedom and open spaces, but in turn paid mightily for it. Those stickers that Stegner so admired were the forefathers of many of today’s largest, most influential ranching empires.

It is good to feel physically tired at the end of a day doing honest, simple work. The imperious Beartooth Mountains keep their vigil and the bald eagle silently glides above the river. Thank you Mr. Stegner, we owe you one.