And I'm not referring to that favorite fundraiser of high school teams, where you shell out a dollar for a ticket, win the drawing at halftime and get 50 percent of what was collected (might as well expose the young 'uns to the realities of gambling at an early age, I say). A 50-50 day around here means that it was 50 degrees … but the wind blew 50 miles an hour.

Up here on the east slope of the Rockies, a stone’s throw from Canada and a mile above sea level, this is what we call a Chinook wind. It evaporates feet of snow in a day, snatches up everything from kiddie pools to grain bins and dumps them in the bottom of our coulees and drives young people to flee the area as soon as they graduate from high school. Alas, some of us aren’t smart enough to stay gone – so here I am, watching the picture window in my living room vibrate with the gusts.

As is usually the case on these days, we had to work cows. Alerted to the possibility of high wind by the weather forecast and the sensation that the big bad wolf was trying to decapitate my house, I stuffed my hair under a stocking cap, then cinched it all down under the hood of my sweatshirt, resulting in yet another fabulous fashion statement. Eat your heart out, Dale Evans.

I dutifully clambered into the old brown pickup with my husband and headed for the corral. Now, anyone who's ever lived in the country knows that the passenger opens the gates. And somehow it's never me behind the wheel, so I had to hop out at the end of the lane. This particular gate is located on the top of a hill, with nothing but a few gopher mounds between it and the Continental Divide to break the wind. I yanked the door handle. The wind ripped it out of my grip. Luckily, the hinges are slightly less worn and rusty than the rest of the truck, so the door didn't fly right off. I wrestled it shut and headed for the gate.

Prior to our current Chinook, it was really cold – 20 below zero, crystallize-the-snot-in-your-nostrils cold. The ground is frozen solid except for (thanks to the aforementioned 50-degree temperatures) a thin film of mud and water on top of packed, frozen sheets of snow.

Two steps from the truck, the wind slammed into my back and sent me skidding. Thank God for that barbed-wire fence; hard to say where I would’ve finally stopped otherwise. I disentangled myself, leaving only a small scrap of my coat behind. I got a good hold on the gate and attempted to swing it open, aka, into the wind. Amazing, how much resistance is created by 1-inch pipe. Three steps forward. Then a gust skidded me back 10 feet. I hunkered down, put my shoulder into it. My feet slipped, and I landed on both knees in the freezing muck. I gritted my teeth, determined to win this tug of war – well, push of war, but whatever. A mere three or four minutes and much scrabbling in the mud later, the gate was open.

My husband drove the pick-up through.

I turned around, intending to guide the gate shut. The wind yanked us both off the ground and flung us into the barbed-wire fence. Again. The second hole in my coat was bigger, but nothing a chunk of duct tape couldn't fix. I staggered back to the pickup, narrowly avoided being body-slammed by the wind-propelled door, and dragged myself inside.

Breathless from battle, I shoved aside hanks of hair that had been sucked from under my hood. My husband scowled at me. "You need to be more careful in this wind," he said.

I examined the holes in my coat and the mud on my knees. "I'm okay."

"I know,” he said, supremely unconcerned with my well-being, “but you could’ve sprung the door."  FG

Kari Lynn Dell is a third-generation cowgirl, horse trainer and rodeo competitor. She writes from her family ranch on the Montana Blackfeet Reservation. Read more of her scribblings, novels and latest adventures on the northern frontier on her website.

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Photo by Kari Lynn Dell.