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Show THE ZEPHYR/JUNE-JULY 2004 everything ... past, present, emerging future ... is interconnected. Stories can be entered at just about any place. Let's go in at the cow end, skipping for now the widespread talk about overgrazing, the damaged land, pedestals where drought-stricken clumps of grass hold dry clusters of soil; invasions by cheatgrass and other opportunists; places where only creosote bush survives, no tracks of kangaroo rats or pocket mice because they could no longer make SKU SOLITUDE a living there; cattle-trashed banks of mountain creeks. Extremes, but there is a lot of extremity out there. We're on a different trail, paying our respects to the glory days of the open range. Don't worry, we'll get back. First thing to notice: cowboy is one of those "double words," deriving from cow boy. I'm grateful to Penelope Reedy for reminding me of this. (1) That puts a different spin on it, don't you think? Time: Late 1800s, the War Between the States a very recent memory. Place: Huge herds gathered from chaparral jungles are driven north to Abilene and Dodge and the other railroad terminals. Most of the drivers are very young men, sons of cattlemen or working stiffs from other walks of life. Those boys endure tough, gritty work, saddling horses in rain or sleet or stifling heat, eating dust, fighting bone-deep weariness, crossing rivers. Sometimes a stampede takes lives. At the end of the trail the boys whoop it up. "First down to Rosie's, BY then to the card house." Some of them write about it, later. Pulp fiction finds a bonanza there, and then Hollywood takes over, launching a fantasy ediface of colorful confusion: cowmen, shee} herders ds, nesters and cowardly townspeople, bandits and gamblers, stage drivers and lawmen, Indians and cavalry and women in bonnets and women with hearts of gold, all of them marshalled in an infinite number of hokey plots. When technicolor came in, the colors of choice became bright blue sky and red-red rock. Cow Bashing A fine summer evening at a BLM campground, the camp host making his final rounds. We got to talking, about cows; a bunch of range cattle were having their just-before-fulldark bellowing, just across the road. Rangeland out there, desert mountain country, various and wonderful in spite of drought and overgrazing. Sometimes you come across a pit in the ground, grown over, where prospectors went down deep, testing for gold. Notall that long ago, and it's easy enough to feel spooked, as if ghosts of those who moiled for gold are hanging around, remembering the work, the devotion, the heartbreak. In actual fact misty thoughts are here; I'm conjuring them up, they hover and drift in the dark of this BLM campground where huge RVs sit at designated openings in pines and aspens, sounds of music or a laugh track or low conversation from these huge closed-in shelters, and each place is supplied witha stone fireplace for outdoor cooking, complete with adjustable iron grill. Sturdy posts, one at each opening; each post bearing a number. You've probably felt vague presences like that in worked-over places in the west. It can happen. You tune your history nerves to the silent channel, and listen. Others walked this earth the way we do. Well, okay, they walked a lot, we drive. The camp host had time to spare; we moved on from cows, but only after the host pointed out that overgrazing is a fact. He's not hostile to ranching, but voices criticism. “Some ranchers don't give a damn, fail to handle their stock the right way." I'm hoping there is a right way and that somebody knows about it. The conversation drifts, we're on a new topic, wages. Task if some of the workers in the "service industry" in Jackson Hole are still commuting over Teton Pass. "Oh yes, absolutely, and don't go thinking they get paid for all that commute time and fuel.” We get more personal. I tell him I'm a retired biologist and he admits to a former life as a government field worker. I won't reveal which field. I realize I'm talking to a westerner who knows We're on a different trail, paying our respects to the glory days of the open range. Don't worry...we'll get back. the territory; our conversation turns even more interesting; it has the same caliber as a talk with anyone, retired or still in harness, who has jumped a few fences, crossed into plain English. Such conversations tend to rove, back and forth; remembrances of times past have a chance. Later in one of my frequent spells of thinking about cows I remembered a vivid scene, three kids running in willows and through a barbwire fence into the yard of the game warden's family where a huge milk cow took a few menacing steps toward us. We scrambled, climbed the fence in a clumsy rush. A wire caught Harold's arm, twisted it, broke it. He yowled. : Harry and I ran to the edge of town, found someone to call the doctor. Meanwhile, the game warden's wife had shooed the cow back, un-hooked Harold, taken him to the hospital. Itso happened that on that tried on a charge of assault. the game warden had shot Was aquitted: self defense. Where were we? Cows. very afternoon her husband was in the county courthouse being He had shot a rancher who was reaching for a shotgun because his dog because the dog was harassing elk. The game warden The rancher recovered. Doesn't really matter, I'm working in the ecological truism that wae But something happened along the way. Hired hands with a certain unique panache as mounted masters of big animals, and often owners of the tools of their trade, went through a strange sea change, turned into lone gunslingers, ranchers, deputies, sheriffs, bellicose barflies, sardonic gamblers, hired guns ... the entire cast more or less divorced from wage work. In westerns the actual business of working cattle is typically a shot or two of Herefords swimming a river or hollered up into a cloud of dust and clamor. Of other useful labor we see only snippets, a typical scene showing a gunslinger or rancher splitting wood, or wasting good blue-sky weather hacking at a big stump in the front yard ... as in Shane. ..-instead of being out in the field irrigating alfalfa. Meanwhile, back in real life on the early ranges cowboys sometimes formed unions and went on strike against the big ranchers of Texas, New Mexico and points north. This too has been by-passed by culture vultures and film makers. Here's a sample, a minor and unsuccessful labor action in Wyoming. (Notice that the story is a script, ready and waiting). BOOKS BY MARTIN See MURIE Coming in October: ES eM LOSING SOLITUDE: 4 CONTEMPORARY WESTERN. DEVELOPERS INVADE A COWTOWN. HOMESTEAD PUBLISHING (AVAILABLE ON AMAZON) \ WIND SWEPT: | siRDWATCHERS & A BIKER FROM MONTANA TANGLE WITH CORPORATION EXTREMISTS IN MEDICINE BOW, WYOMING. HOMESTEAD PUB... (AVAILABLE ON AMAZON) BURT'S WAY: ENviRONMENTALISTS LABELED TERRORISTS," KEEP A CHUGGIN’ ON THE QUEBEC/NEW YORK BORDER...PACKRAT BOOKS RED TREE MOUSE ae CHRONICLES: Forest ANIMALS ON ASSIGNMENT: WHAT 15 THE FUTURE OF THE FORESTS? THEY TURN ACTIVIST (ILLUSTRATED) PACKRAT BOOKS i FOR QUICKEST RECEIPT OF ANY OF THE FIVE BOOKS, CONTACT PACKRAT BOOKS: sagehen@westelcom.com bee PAGE8 = SERIOUSLY INSISTENT 80 pages of activist critique by MARTIN MURIE |