Herdin’ slowpokes
By Danielle Egan with photography by Patrice Halley
All my life I’ve dreamed of riding the open range, the wind in my hair.
A visit to British Columbia’s Big Bar Ranch is my chance.
Hi-yo Silver — er, Misty — away!
A DOZEN GINGER COWS lunching on golden pastures pause to eyeball our posse on horseback moseying
up the well-worn trail of Big Bar Mountain. Aside from the chaps and Stetsons, it’s
easy to tell the two cowboys from the three city slickers: the cowboys have straight spines
and squared shoulders; the rest of us look as if we’re perpetually slumped over computers.
When we reach the mountaintop, the deep, chiselled canyon of the Fraser River comes into
view, with the snow-sugared peaks of Black Dome and Red Mountain to the west. We stop to
take in the awesome setting, but the meditative spell is abruptly broken by a rapid-fire
round of farts.
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“Please excuse my horse,” says Jill van der Slagt, a retired nurse from Vancouver.
“We’ve been excusing your horse for the past hour and a half,” quips her
husband Hans.
The lure of the Wild West continues to attract settlers and tourists to this area, and while
British Columbia is best known for its lush green forests, this slice of arid grassland and
sagebrush hills, from Clinton to Williams Lake, remains a pioneer paradise. Ranching is still
the primary industry here, and the South Cariboo, 400 kilometres northeast of Vancouver,
has become known as the province’s guest-ranch capital. I’ve come to help bring
the cattle home during the fall roundup and live out my cowgirl dreams.
MY FAVOURITE TOY, as a suburban kid raised on TV shows such as “Bonanza” and “Little
House on the Prairie,” was a set of plastic horses with saddles, bridles and lassos.
My Barbies preferred riding the open range to driving to the mall in hot-pink sports cars.
Of course, there are no rangelands in Oakville, Ont., where I grew up. And with parents who
liked to joke that roughing it meant staying at a Holiday Inn, the closest I got to the dream
was one blissful day trotting around an indoor arena on horseback.
Now, on my second day riding a 16-year-old chestnut quarter horse named Misty, my body is
smarting, and the view of Big Bar Guest Ranch is a welcome sight. The spread, perched above
Big Bar Creek, west of Marble Range, features a stately log cabin built in 1932, a barn that
houses the ranch’s 23 horses, a modern motel-style guest building with attached dining
room, five small guest cabins and three tipis.
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