Lone shepherd on a distant promontory

From where I sit, I see a lone shepherd on a distant promontory, two trusty dogs at his side, a storm posting with all speed from the cold north as a rogue wolf works the edges of the band. The guard dogs, Great Pyrenees and Akbash, are not quite enough to beat off those wolves, which come night after night in the high country; the shepherd, crook in his hand, his legs stout and hale from a life in the mountains, his eyes sharp at impossible distances, his whole being at one with the forces of the land, is alone, hardened, tough-minded and happy. I traveled with Peruvian sheepherders working for the Soulen Livestock Company in Idaho during the summers of 2005 and 2006. I went to live out my romantic vision of the shepherd's life, to see wolves, to get a story. The sheep make a seasonal passage from the Snake River Plain in winter up into the mountains north of McCall in the spring and summer. The lambs are born on that range, the ewes live and die out there, and the men too, with their dogs, live out there with eagles and trout and coyotes, year-round. Back home on the Peruvian Altiplano, Walter was a furniture maker and a musician. He played for me the music he recorded with his group, a battered cassette tape squeaking in his old radio. He sends his $750 per month back home to his family: a wife, some children, his aging parents. After six years with the sheep, he's lonely, he tells me, but he can't make a living back home...more