Cattle herder at Les Costes by Miriam Font

Experience

Being a cattle herder in Les Costes is much more than a job. It is a way of life, a way of understanding the mountains and learning to live alongside them every day.

For 70 days, the mountains become my home. I live up there in a small stone cabin, without running water or electricity, surrounded by animals and a natural world that sets the rhythm of my days. During that time, everything comes down to the essentials. You learn to live with very little, yet realise you have far more than you need.

Being a cattle herder in Les Costes means getting up while it is still dark, knowing that your working day will not end just because the clock says so. It means walking for hours over demanding terrain, climbing and descending steep slopes, crossing mud, rock and water, and enduring the cold, heat, rain or wind. Because up here, nature is in charge, and the animals know nothing of easy days or difficult ones.

There is no switch to turn on the light when darkness falls, nor a tap to turn when you need water. Many of the comforts we take for granted down below simply do not exist here. But there is a cabin that gradually becomes home, the silence of the mountains, routines that become essential, and a much simpler, more intense way of life.

Herding cattle is physically demanding, but it demands even more of you mentally. There are days of exhaustion and worry, when you have to make quick decisions and keep going even though your body is telling you to stop. You have to watch over the animals, get to know them, observe them and anticipate their needs.

For those 70 days, you do more than work in the mountains: you live there. You wake up there, work there, eat there, rest there, and start all over again the next day. The mountains cease to be scenery and become your everyday life.

It is not a comfortable life. But it is the life I have chosen.

Because alongside all that effort, there are moments that make everything worthwhile: watching the sun rise as you walk among the cows, feeling the silence of the mountains, seeing an animal doing well after you have worried about it, or reaching the end of an exhausting day knowing you have done everything you could.

And there is something else that is difficult to explain: the bond you develop with that place. After so many days of living so simply, so close to the animals and to nature, you learn to appreciate things that once seemed small. You also discover a strength within yourself that you may never have known you had.

In a job like this, you soon learn that you need to trust what you take with you. Especially what you wear on your feet, because your feet carry you up and down the mountains, kilometre after kilometre, whatever the terrain or the weather.

So when Bestard gave me the opportunity to try the Kathmandú boots, I took them straight to the place where they truly needed to be tested: my everyday life.

They have been with me through long working days, steep climbs and descents, mud, rock, damp conditions and countless hours in the mountains. In such a demanding job, finding boots that make me feel comfortable, protected and sure-footed has been a real discovery. When you have been walking for hours and there is still work to be done, those details become much more than little things.

My boots end each day dirty, scuffed and covered in traces of the mountains. And, somehow, I like them that way. Every mark tells the story of a day’s work, a path travelled and a part of this job that I love so much.

Being a cattle herder in Les Costes has taught me that the things truly worth having usually take effort. That you can live with far less than you imagine. That the mountains give you nothing for free, yet give you everything.

And that even on the hardest days, when you look around and see the animals at ease, the stone cabin that is your home for 70 days, and those mountains you now know almost by heart, you remember why you do it.

And you know you would choose this path again.

Step by step. Day after day.