family sheepherd.

Sometime in the early days of the 20th, one of the railroads in Utah and Wyoming was attempting to raise some funds and started selling off some of their land. That’s when some not-to-distant relatives of Allison purchased some land (lots of it) and began to run sheep there during the summer months, taking them down to the high deserts for the winter months. Up in this high country is where Allison’s father B grew up, having his own horse {Nelly, named after his beloved grandmother} by the age of three, spending months on end up in the hills in sheep camps lost among the sage, meadows, and Quaking Aspen forests.

As the price and demand for wool and mutton dwindled, so did the sheep population on the land. But even though the sheep left, the land remained.

While growing up, Allison would go up to the Sheepherd {a hop, skip, and a jump from Evanston, Wyoming} for an annual family reunion. Horses that had been out to pasture all year were rounded up for folks to ride; and if you’ve never ridden a *green* horse, you’ll never know what an experience that can be. Lunch consists of: fire cooked corn-on-the-cob, baked beans, turkey, and of course Mutton. An all-you-can-eat Shave-Ice machine run by {the tamest} but scariest looking cousin on the side of the cabin, 4-wheeler rides around the ranch, pie eating contests, games for kids to play, and a ride up to *Humpy* the tallest peak of the ranch at 10,000 feet, on top of a sheep truck dodging Aspen branches the whole way. All in all, a pretty awesome day for a kid.

Within the last few years the original patriarchs of the land passed away, but each year the family continues to host a get-together on the land. Yesterday the family hosted another family reunion up on the land and we had a chance to go say hello to folks that we typically only get to see at this get together, and the occasional funeral.