Wolves and cattle in conflict on the Yellowstone range: book review

on January 06, 2014

BADLUCK WAY
Bryce Andrews
Atria Books, $25
256 pages
By JOHN STRAWN/Special to The Oregonian

Bryce Andrews grew up in Seattle but spent his childhood summers in Montana, cultivating a deep affection for the dry, muscular country on the near east side of the continental divide, where "cowboying" — a word one should only use as a verb, he learns — is a calling. In the summer of 2006, Andrews answered an ad for an "Assistant Grazing Coordinator/Livestock Manager" on the Sun Ranch, "25,000 acres of deeded land and grazing leases" tucked between the Gravelly Range on the west and the Madison Range to the east. (If you search for the "Raynolds Pass Historical Marker" on Google Earth, you'll find yourself at the south end of the Sun Ranch.)

The Madison River flows north along the western edge of the ranch, on its way to the confluence forming the Missouri. The animals in this corner of the "Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem" migrate with the seasons.  As the deer and elk move about the Sun Ranch, the cougars and bears and above all the wolves keep a grateful eye on them. Most of the time, the cattle munching in the meadows are an afterthought.

"Badluck Way: A Year on the Rugged Edge of the West" is Andrews' account of the time he spent mending fence, learning to move cattle with a magician's guile, and ruminating over the impact of the wolves, which had only recently been reintroduced into the Yellowstone ecosystem. His poetically rendered portrait of the wolf pack working the edges of the ranch provides a counterpoint to the humdrum reality of his daily chores. His extended meditation on the pack is also the scaffolding for the book's design. The wolves' tale is in italics, providing a visual voice.

"Badluck Way" is a beautiful book; its layout enhances the narrative.  Nothing much happens in "Badluck Way" until the wolf pack discovers the easy pickings that the cows provide. Bringing down an elk is a demanding and dangerous challenge, but a heifer might as well be gift-wrapped and stamped with a barcode. Andrews' description of a cow's wounds after a wolf attack is graphic and gruesome. Though the cows are destined for the slaughterhouse, their premature demise by wolf predation is taboo.

Once the wolves started to attack the herds, their days prowling the Sun Ranch were numbered. Although Andrews understands that the wolves are an ancient part of the Yellowstone ecosystem while he and the herds are the intruders, he also knows the pack's claim is subordinate to the rights of the landowner and the cattle herds. Andrews shoots a wolf, an act he calls "necessary, unavoidable, and unfortunate." Noting that "the wolves killed less than 1 percent of our cattle," he believes that killing some wolves, while pushing the rest of the pack further into the wilderness, achieves a defensible rapprochement.

Sitting in the saddle watching cattle graze provides Andrews with plenty of opportunity for rumination, a word whose root lies in rumen, the Latin word for throat.  It's also the name for the first stomach in the group of animals known collectively as ruminants. What better place to ruminate than from a perch above a herd of grazing cattle?

"Badluck Way" is light on story, but light can also mean illumination. Though little happens during his time on the Sun Ranch, Andrews' controlled voice and poetic diction nourish the reader's curiosity as the narrative ambles toward the quarrel with the wolves.

Reading: Andrews reads from "Badluck Way" at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 17 at Powell's City of Books, 1005 W. Burnside St.
John Strawn is a Portland writer

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