BACK IN THE SADDLE, AGAIN : EDUCATORS LEARN HOW TO ROUGH IT DRIVING CATTLE.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

Fifty-one weeks out of the year, they are mild-mannered school district administrators; but every summer since 1993, the four women saddle up and herd cattle across western prairies.

Go ahead and call them city slickers.

The comparison between the pals in the Billy Crystal comedy, who took a get-away-from-it-all vacation to a cattle ranch, and the four women who work for the William S. Hart Union High School District are inescapable.

Saugus High School Principal Cheryl Brown and Assistant Principal Carrol Ruffell, along with Valencia High School counselor Mary Morris and Jacque Snyder, principal at Arroyo Seco Junior High, leave Sunday for a ranch outside Soda Springs, Idaho.

The women, who range in age from 50 to 57, have guided hundreds of grazing beef cattle across vast expanses of plain, deloused the cows and helped perform bovine pregnancy tests. They have dug fence post holes, cleaned out horseshoes, crossed rivers on horseback and observed as ranchers branded and castrated the livestock, Brown and Snyder said.

The four were on a cruise one year when Brown suggested a radical departure from that sort of relaxation and pampering. ``I said: `I have this secret dream of going on a cattle roundup,' '' the Saugus principal recalled. ``It was something that I had wanted to do since I was a kid. I wanted to see what it was like, life on a cattle ranch.''

Brown convinced her friends to give it a try. They first slipped into their cowgirl alter egos on a New Mexico ranch, then a 40,000-acre spread in Wyoming, and last year at a Montana site outside Billings.

``A lot of people use the term `dude ranch' and we bristle, because there's nothing dude-y about this,'' Brown insisted. ``It's hard living and you're exhausted.''

Probably nobody would have blamed Snyder if she vowed never to go near a horse or cow again. On that inaugural trip, she was knocked to the ground when her horse trotted under a thick, low tree limb.

``We were really worried. She wasn't moving,'' Brown remembered. Snyder was scratched, bruised, and the blow knocked the wind out of her. But in true cowboy fashion, she climbed back in the saddle.

``After I was able to breathe again, I got back on,'' Snyder said.

Last year, the bad luck returned when the airline lost Snyder's luggage during the flight to Montana. Her friends had to lend her a few days' worth of clothes. Most of the time, she's ``eating a lot of dust'' on the prairie. ``I always seem to be the one who trails the cows,'' Snyder mused.

Although the annual trips are heavy on roughing it and light on taking it easy, the women say they've gotten hooked on the camaraderie and the challenge they share on the range. ``We've probably gotten to be better friends because of it,'' Snyder said.

Added Brown: ``We're all very competitive. We'd all rather be outdoors than inside an office,'' she said. ``I've always spent my vacations hunting and fishing and camping and hiking. Sitting behind a desk is too sedentary.''

But long stretches on horseback can be painful. Brown recalled the rigors of the barren, parched Laramie Plain in Wyoming. ``We were in the saddle 10 and 12 hours a day,'' she said. ``I think that gave us a very good idea of the life of a cowboy, the life of a rancher.''

After a campfire meal, the group usually sits down to a friendly competition. ``Sometimes we play cards or board games until 1 o'clock in the morning, and we're up by 5 a.m. saddling the horses,'' Brown said. ``The losers end up having to wash dishes or cart baggage or unsaddle the horses.''

They make it a point to forget their work-a-day concerns. ``We don't talk shop,'' Brown said.

And there's nothing like a fierce summer downpour to take one's mind off school district business. ``We got caught out in a lightning storm with hail that just pelted us for over 30 minutes,'' Brown recalled from last year's Montana trip.

``The horses would not move. They stuck their rear ends into the wind,'' Brown added. ``The hail was moving horizontally.''

After this month's roundup, the group will unwind with a white-water rafting trip down the Snake River, en route to some R & R at a rustic lodge. ``We'll be clean and cool, and we can sit down to a big steak dinner,'' Snyder said.

Steak? Beef? Cattle herding hasn't turned any of the women into vegetarians, Snyder said.

``Red meat is definitely on the menu,'' she insisted.

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Photo

Photo: (color in SAC only) From left, Mary Morris, Cheryl B rown, Carrol Ruffell and Jacque Snyder, administrators in the Hart High school district leave Sunday for a cattle drive outside Soda Springs, Idaho.

Shaun Dyer/Special to the Daily News