I was reliving this in my mind this morning early when I couldn’t get back to sleep. Watering the cows.

God I miss that. What I wouldn’t give to go home and do it again with my Dad and my sister Gena.

When I was a kid, Dad did not have a well in the part of the yard where the cattle ate, slept and lived. Because the yard is quite expansive it was probably logistically difficult to tap into the well we drank from, to use for the cows.

Also, my Dad was always of the scarcity mindset that our well could run dry and then what. He still is to be honest.

So in order to provide water to the cattle, we led them twice a day, morning and early evening, to the river to have a drink.

From the corals we’d first go down a steep hill end up in almost like a gulley. Right at the bottom of that hill we’d get on a well worn path that wound its way along the side of that same hill. It was about a ten minute walk to the river and it was beautiful. Our own little paradise. Old trees, new trees, lush vegetation, ferns and fiddle heads.

It’s really amazing to think that such large and un-delicate creatures like cows can create and walk along a small dirt path, no more than two feel wide. But they did.

I knew every inch of that path, where the roots from trees might trip me up, where it dropped down and where it went uphill and where it curved to the north.

The cows just knew what to do. They are actually pretty smart. They would see Dad heading that way and he probably talked to them and they responded by following along.

In spring, summer and fall they’d walk up to the water’s edge and sip on the water, taking turns. Mostly being nice about it.

In winter the cows actually had to walk out on the ice to drink from a hole Dad kept chopped open. There was a small set of rapids there that naturally kept the ice from forming for most of the winter but as the edges froze up and the opening got smaller, Dad kept a heavy chisel nearby and he would chop the hole to make it a bit bigger.

Usually there was snow on top of the ice so slipping wasn’t an issue but if it was glare ice because the river had flooded after the ice formed, he would bring straw down there and spread a bit to provide some grip for them.

They would stand and wait their turn, two or three at a time would walk up to the watering hole and have a drink. Then slowly turn around, the way cows do, and make their way home. Back down the path again.

I don’t recall that we ever had a cow go through the ice or take off down the river, as they were not enclosed once they got on the ice. They just seemed to know what to do.

Some were more leery of the ice than others but once the matriarchs of the herd came for a drink and then left, the others seemed to follow suit.

While the cows drank, Dad would look for fish.

This went on for years, nearly every single day, twice a day. In the summer months it was less of an issue once the cattle were let into the “hill pasture” (our pastures had different names), as one border of the hill pasture was the river itself. The cows grazed along the river for probably three quarters of a mile. So they had twenty four hour access to water during those months.

During those years our cows all had names. Dad’s herd at that time was pretty small, maybe ten or so cows who would be bred to have a calf each spring. My sisters and I named each and every calf as it was born.

They were the best pets.