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<\/p>\nI had an almost idyllic childhood growing up on the family farm 17 miles northwest of Cut Bank, Montana.<\/p>\n
My aunt, uncle and five cousins lived on an adjoining farm and when I wasn’t in school my life was filled with fun and adventure that included my cousins, one or both of my two younger sisters and another boy about my age that lived on a nearby farm. My memories of exploring the nearby “Crystal Hills”, hunting rabbits and gophers, helping my Dad build granaries and work on farm equipment, learning to drive at an incredibly early age (I had my own old beater pickup before I was 10 years old), driving grain trucks during harvest and riding my horse Star, always bareback – we didn’t even own a saddle, all over the prairie are some of the very best memories of my life.<\/p>\n
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Cut Bank is only about an hour’s drive from Glacier National Park and vicinity and during summers we spent as much time at Lake Blaine as we could possibly squeeze into our busy schedules. Here, Dad and I are heading out on the lake to fish for Kokanee Salmon (1954 I think). As I got a little older, I’ll admit that I became much more interested in water skiing and girls in bikinis (not necessarily in that order) than I was in fishing.<\/p>\n
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At one point my parents were trying to decide if they should sell the farm, or not. At first I didn’t know that they were even considering it but one day, between my junior and senior years in high school, they sat me down at the kitchen table with very serious looks on their faces and asked me if I was interested in eventually taking over the farm.<\/p>\n
Whoa, that was a question that came from out of the blue but my answer to them was almost immediate. No, I had no interest in farming for the rest of my life. For two reasons.<\/p>\n
By that age I already knew that I hated spending 8-12 hours a day going round and round in circles on the tractor or swather or combine. To me it was mind-numbing and I had no interest in spending the next 50+ years doing it.<\/p>\n
But there was another reason for my answer to their question.<\/p>\n
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This is the weather forecast for Cut Bank tomorrow morning (I’ve marked the approximate location of the family farm with a small red X). Winters in northwest Montana on the east slope of the Rockies are long and absolutely brutal. Cut Bank and International Falls, Minnesota are often the coldest spots in the “lower 48” and even as a teenager I knew that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life enduring them.<\/p>\n
When I was very young I’d seen it as cold as -53\u00b0 F. on the farm, without windchill<\/em><\/span>. Temps like that get your attention.<\/p>\n So, in that brief moment when I’d barely turned 17 years old I told my folks “no”, which dramatically altered how my life would turn out. Just over a year later I was going to college at Utah State University in Logan and after graduating with a biology degree from the University of Utah I ended up teaching in Salt Lake City School District high schools for 33 years before retiring and taking up bird photography as a very serious hobby.<\/p>\n For me it was absolutely the right decision. But I wouldn’t trade my growing up years on the farm, or my memories of them, for anything. Cold or no cold.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Note: We didn’t own a saddle because as a kid my Dad watched as one of his friends was dragged and kicked to death when he fell from his horse and his foot got caught in one of the saddle stirrups. Dad wouldn’t even consider allowing me to use a saddle – he made that abundantly clear. Besides, I didn’t want one anyway. I thought riding bareback was some of the best fun a kid could have.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had an almost idyllic childhood growing up on the family farm 17 miles northwest of Cut Bank, Montana. (2 images)<\/p>\n