Kathryn Wilder is a writer and rancher in Dolores and Disappointment Valley, Colorado. She is the winner of a 2025 Western Heritage Award and the author of Desert Chrome: Water, a Woman, and Wild Horses in the West, coauthor of Forbidden Talent, with Redwing T. Nez, and editor of Walking the Twilight: Women Writers of the Southwest, volumes 1 and 2. Her new book The Last Cows: On Ranching, Wonder, and a Woman’s Heart (Bison Books, 2025) was published this month.

This past spring, my beloved grulla mare, Savanna, gave birth to a little grulla filly, who died at three days old. On either side of her death, I had to put down a dog. My heart cracked like the dry earth, yet like the skies I barely cried. I could hardly write. Even watching Savanna drip milk tears onto the ground, I felt all dried up inside.

A dry summer followed the dry spring—we had virtually no rain. The land thirsty, the critters thirsty, our spirits were also thirsty. In a drought that hung on under the gloomy haze of smoke and government, I shrank from the news and resisted heading to the post office to pick up the mail—the bills, the junk, the desperate pleas for money—even the mail carried thirst. Then I ordered a memoir from the University of Nebraska Press; the title, If This Were Fiction: A Love Story Told in Essays, and the first pages accessible in the online catalog sold me. Plus I expected a package from another writer, so after cowboying high in the mountains I stopped on the way back to ranch headquarters.

As I clunked into the post office I realized I had not removed my spurs—bad cowboy etiquette in my world, and a measure of tired. I’d spent hours in the saddle, and while I could leave a new horse (I retired Savanna) up in the green grass and aspen shade of cow camp, I had chores to do at headquarters; hence my drive down the mountain, which added to the tired.

I found two packages stuffed into the PO box along with all that other “mail,” one from UNP and the other from my friend Renata Golden. I took the packages home to open them—what better way to spend an hour of downtime than with new books?

Removing boots and spurs at the door, and cow-shit-splattered Wranglers at the washer, I donned sweats, made a tall glass of ice water, and settled onto the couch, opening Renata Golden’s package first. Indeed, Mountain Time: A Field Guide to Astonishment. I read the first line, paragraph, page, and turned to the second package, wanting to do the same with If This Were Fiction. But no, this was not the book I’d ordered—I recognized the colors on the cover, the sunset sky—it was mine! Thrilled, stunned, surprised by the copy of The Last Cows: On Ranching, Wonder, and a Woman’s Heart, I actually started reading. Not proofing, reading. Like, for pleasure. I sipped soothing water and read for half an hour, as if it weren’t my book. Then I remembered it was my book and put it down to restart Renata’s, captivating from the first line.

Jill Christman’s If This Were Fiction did eventually arrive (and did not disappoint), along with a whole box of The Last Cows. Opening that package reminded me of the day when a box of my last book arrived; opening it carefully, I pulled out a copy to show my grandchildren, Lacey and Lucas, then eight and six, who lived in another house at ranch headquarters. The book had a mustang stallion on the cover, with my name underneath.

“Look,” I said, holding it up for them to see. The horse drew them near. Lacey started reading the title out loud, for Lucas to hear.

“And?” I said, when she stopped. “What’s this?”

Grandma Kat is what they call me; as Lacey sounded out my other name her eyes grew big. “Is that you?” she said, and they both looked up at me.

I turned the book over so they could see my photograph—proof. “TJ took that picture, and the one on the cover.” They knew my friend TJ, and had seen many of her mustang photos. I opened the book and started reading: “I lead my grulla mare, Savanna, to water,” and their eyes got bigger still. “Savanna!” they said, glancing outside to where they might see Savanna in the corral. Then Lacey took the book into her small hands, and turned it over to see the horse cover again. Looking at me solemnly, she said, “Does this mean you are an author now?”

She gave me back the book, grabbed Lucas’s hand, and headed for the door. “We have to go tell Daddy Grandma Kat is an author.”

Four years later, my new book in my hands, I flip through the pages to look at the photographs. A mustang photo of TJ’s stops me. Chapter 12, “Ode to Rain,” from another dry year. The photo is of a mustang mare and her newborn filly. “Despite the harsh measurements of drought, we still find joys small and large in the dry, dry desert,” I wrote. It hits me that on the heels of sadness come the joys, small and large. Savanna’s filly died but this mustang filly lives, and she lives wild and free. My new book lives. I have books to read, horses to ride, and books to write. Joy, all.

That night, instead of adding The Last Cows to the pile on my bed, I slept with it under my pillow. Not as comfy as a stuffed animal, but each time I awoke I surprised myself by thinking, I really am a writer.

In October rain finally came, with more boxes of my books. Too much rain in many parts of the Southwest, we were lucky not to flood badly at the ranch. We had gathered the cows off the mountain early, in anticipation of weather changing and dirt roads turning to mud both difficult and dangerous to navigate. Plus, the cattle market had risen like the rivers overflowing their banks. We sold a few older cows and an open cow, but not the last cows.