It’s been such a long time since I’ve posted, and I have missed the blog much in the last few months. Our sheep and guardian animals are all fine and wintering well. We’ve moved the herd to the pasture at our house, so my “checking the sheep” sometimes only involves looking out the window. When …
Author: Cat Urbigkit
Kazakh portraits
I’ve been doing some experimenting with black-and-white, and thought I’d share a few images of the Kazakh men who hunt with golden eagles that I met while I was in western Mongolia in 2008.
Pronghorn snow
A few images of pronghorn antelope in the snow yesterday – western Wyoming. Snow was falling like a light mist, with no direct sunlight, casting a gloom across the range. Beautiful in ways that only wild things are. Click on image to enlarge.
Rangeland rescue
We finally got some snow overnight, covering our rangeland in a blanket of white. Our pregnant ewes love it, with the snow unable to penetrate their dense wool, but the moisture softening the vegetation. After checking the sheep this morning, we watched a herd of pronghorn antelope running across the Mesa behind the house. Their’s …
December in the sheep pasture
The Wind River Mountains are magnificent in their snow-covered spendor, but the sagebrush rangelands still contain only a scattering of snow. The image below is our New Fork River pasture where the sheep are currently located, taken at sunrise earlier this week. It was about -8 degrees that morning, which is a typical overnight low …
Thanksgivings
It’s been a rough few weeks, with major ups and downs. Son Cass took a job at a ski hill near Laramie, so we fixed a Thanksgiving feast a week early since he was about to head off to the new job. Two miles from our house, on a slick wintery road, he drove his …
Homecoming
Husband Jim’s Uncle Walter passed away early last week, so we left home Friday to attend the memorial services in Cheyenne. We were gone for about 30 hours, and of course I was nervous about how the animals faired while we were gone. When we arriving to see the ewe herd in the river bottom, …
Flies (follow up)
My “trolling for flies” post a few weeks back has resulted in an embarrassment of riches, and my adoration for the sharing nature of this human community. We’re humbled by the response, and plan to pass on the effort in random acts of fly-sharing along various rivers in the future. Of course I wrote the …
Books
My new children’s book was released by Boyds Mills Press this month. Q readers will recognize the characters of this nonfiction photo essay: Rena the Akbash, Roo the wild burro, and six orphan lambs they raised on our ranch in western Wyoming. It was fun to watch and photograph all three species as they grew …
Fall shipping
This seemingly peaceful scene is deceptive (click photos to enlarge). That’s Vega, one of the Aziat females, lounging on the hillside in the foreground of the parked sheep wagons, trying to ignore what we were doing to her herd. Just outside of the photo are the portable sheep pens, filled to the brim with thousands …