We Choose the Same Road

63,000 Miles

Since 2000 the Silver Maple Dexters’ trailer has rolled out of the Chambers farm driveway in all seasons and all weather. From those hills of southeast Nebraska it has carried cattle to all corners of this country, more than 63,000 miles.

About 42,000 miles SMD has carried Dexter cattle to shows coast to coast and border to border. Another 21,000 miles of SMD delivering and placing cattle and genetics into new herds and new hands in the U.S. and Canada. Different purposes, 3 trucks,  2 trailers, one family, one herd, and one legacy.

Some time has been spent by the Chambers family on the road with Dexters.  

 Those miles are:

• to London and back 10 times

• two and a half times around the earth

• more than a quarter of the distance to the moon

• over 1,000 hours actual behind-the-wheel

• roughly six months of life spent on the road

• nearly 6,000 gallons of diesel

In those miles and months, we’ve raised a family and built memories. Breeding cattle is a long conversation in time. Ours has unfolded with a lot of time spent behind the wheel, following white lines.  A family choosing to carry a small breed a long way.  The miles left their fingerprints.

• Wipers beating time like a metronome with the hum of the radio and the dashboard light illuminating your sleeping wife and children somewhere in Indiana.

• The smell of diesel, alfalfa, cattle, and a chili dog at an Interstate truck stop.  

• ·A nine-year-old voice from the back seat: “That’s a blowout,” before the driver knew what he’d felt

• A hopeful ask from the Mrs. “You checked the latch, right?”

  
  

The miles are mostly non-eventful. Ordinary and necessary, they begin shortly after midnight and end after it. They carry more than cattle: long talks, longer silences, laughs, and the quiet rhythm of staying with something longer than convenience requires.

On the road with cattle, a family becomes a well-oiled machine with its own customs and mores. Who pours the coffee, who checks the lights, who makes the run for water buckets.  The miles and the tasks hone us to a fine edge, and we move mostly in harmony and together across the country, mission-driven.

• Eight versions of next year’s breeding plan between mile markers 108 and 2.

• Some not-unheated discussion about going on or turning back while on West Virginia Highway 9, rolling through downtown Paw Paw at 2 a.m. because I trusted the GPS.

• Driving to that next exit, then the next, before fueling and switching drivers.

• The sway of the cattle and the debate about which cow is asserting herself back there

  
  

The joys and the challenges of living on the road with a quarter of the herd along for the ride begin to share a single horizon. After enough miles, it is hard to tell which memories were easy and which were not. The miles did not make anything special, they did allow for time to reveal what matters.

We were not chasing adventure but following the steady pleasure of doing something we love well and doing it together.  Carrying a breed we care about to places beyond our fences. The road was simply the space between the work.

• The long exhale pulling into the Chugwater Sinclair at 1:00 a.m., the fuel gauge pegging “Empty” since Cheyenne

• Road construction all the way down the windward side of the Sierras

• A Montana blizzard, the wipers losing the argument with ice and snow

• One hundred fifty miles out on I-94, realizing we were on the wrong road.

  
  

The destinations were never just points on a map. They were small fairgrounds and giant arenas; bedding smells the same in either, dirt and carpeted show rings, some new and bright, some cavernous and old. At the shows, we met old friends and made new.  Sharing grace in the common thread of the breed. Trading stories and sharing information from breeders across the country over a meal and a cold beverage. Those places and times gave us a wider family than we expected.

Other miles were quieter. Circuitous routes to another farm’s driveway, where people waited with a gate already open. They ended with handshakes and a calf stepping off into grass it had never seen, with promises to send photos in the spring. Sharing genetics is a hopeful act; it assumes the future will be worth the effort. We learned of many places and names. Renewing old friendships and making new ones along the way.

• A family’s thank you that outweighed the miles

• A handshake in the ring

• Returning to a fairground you already know by heart

• A look in the mirror holds one last look at the bull that is still a part of your breeding plans

  
  

And then the return home. At some point the miles stopped being a measure and became moments that belonged to us. Melinda and I reflect in the quiet of what has been done; the shows, the genetics, the sharing of our work. Our daughters learning the terms of the work: showing up, keeping your word, doing the next task before it was asked. We all learned that a herd does not live only in pastures; it lives in the people willing to follow it a long way from home.

Dexters are a small breed that favors steadiness over flash and a family willing to steward them past the season when enthusiasm fades. The road helped teach that lesson better than any book or meeting could. Continuity is not an idea you claim; it is an ethic you live.

So the SMD trailer will leave the driveway again. There will be more early mornings, more fuel gauges that make us uneasy, more calves stepping out on new ground. We will load up, check the lights, and point the truck toward whatever horizon is next.

We choose the same road again.