Firewood

There is something soul- satisfying about getting firewood when you are in the midst of a real winter...

Libby supervises Tyler Scartaccini and Tom Rupenacht's delivery of a good load of what we call "cedar". It is actually a juniper but locally the common name is reserved for alligator juniper. This is the species with red heartwood-- some, not me, say it is "too pretty to burn."

The 94 Winchester "Modern" Sporting Rifle has no connection to anything-- we just brought it out  to show Ty.

We got it just in time...

Clarissa Dixon Wright R. I. P.

John Hill, (in the middle above), better known here as "Johnny UK", sent us a note saying that Clarissa Dixon Wright (right above) had died. The surviving member of the "Two Fat Ladies" cooking duo, champions of real food and best known in this household for the multi- species, multi -organ meat loaf known as the "hedgehog", she was so ardent a defender of field sports that she was arrested for the terrible crime of chasing hares with greyhounds.

She was also variously a writer, the youngest barrister to qualify in England, a cricket umpire, one of two women to become a Guild butcher,  a reformed drunk, a millionaire heiress who descended into poverty and homelessness and came back again, a lifelong Catholic (who allegedly believed in reincarnation), and a TV personality who once discussed eating badgers on the tube. Not only does the world not produce such personalities these days, it no longer produces such names: she was christened "Clarissa Theresa Philomena Aileen Mary Josephine Agnes Elsie Trilby Louise Esmerelda Dickson Wright."

John wrote: "Just heard that Clarissa is no more.....June and I once met her and Johnny (Scott, left above) at a book signing , and I, fortunately,  met her again at a Gamefair and had a long , interesting, animated conversation.

"She was  a remarkable , individual, feisty woman, with a  huge sense of humour ( and presence !) and was passionate about all  “Country Matters”,  that are  being constantly eroded in UK by unknowing urbanites.

"Clarissa was as large in life as on  TV, no different, a real character, the like of whom we shall not see again I am afraid. June and I feel quite sad...  I am sure she ( mainly )  enjoyed every minute of her life, which is a comfort !

"I will raise a glass to her memory!"

Woodpile

Them that knows, knows--  the importance of this task, the beauty of it, and the satisfaction when you have split enough to relax...

Blizzard Whiteout

Eastern Montana writer John Moore alerted me to the great October blizzard in South Dakota a few days ago. I told him I would blog on it, but assumed something of such magnitude would soon get out. But nooo... apparently the actions of petty bureaucrats top any need to report the effects of the greatest storm disaster in "Flyover Country" in decades-- or ever. Do the coasts really want ignore, to write off the vital rural heart? Does Congress give a damn? Do suburbanites think they can prosper without some relation to the land? Food comes from someplace other than the market;  even urban locavores seem to be getting that much. Why haven't our so- called serious news organs reported this situation?

Annie D , who is not western but is awake and aware of many things, read and mailed me this heartbreaking link. A quote will start you off:

"The worst blizzard in recorded history of South Dakota just swept through the state. Tens of thousands of cattle are predicted dead and the much of the state is still without power. The Rapid City Journal reports, ”Tens of thousands of cattle lie dead across South Dakota on Monday following a blizzard that could become one of the most costly in the history of the state’s agriculture industry.”

"The only reason I know this is because my parent’s ranch, the setting for Meadowlark, lies in the storm’s epicenter. Mom texted me after the storm. “No electricity. Saving power on phone. It’s really, really bad….” She turned on her phone to call me later that day. “There are no words to describe the devastation and loss. Everywhere we look there are dead cattle. I’ve never seen so many dead cattle. Nobody can remember anything like this.” Author of several books and infinite numbers of articles, Mom said, “I can’t imagine writing about this. I’m not going to take photos. These deaths are too gruesome. Nobody wants to see this.”

"I searched the national news for more information. Nothing. Not a single report on any of major news sources that I found. Not CNN, not the NY Times, not MSNBC. I thought, Well, it is early and the state remains without power and encased in snow, perhaps tomorrow. So I checked again the next day. Nothing. It has now been four days and no national news coverage... Meanwhile, ranchers on the plains have been dealt a crippling blow the likes that has not been experienced in living memory."

Read The Whole Thing. 

Update: Big Media begins to react, in brief bland paragraphs that do not suggest that they find it necessary to send a live reporter to such a place (if they think like some of the commenters John mentions below, why would they bother?) It was a week ago, folks-- is that all you can do? Or is it more important for us to know every nuance of the latest pearls of wisdom from Harry Reid and John Boehner?

John Moore writes: "One local young rancher has started a campaign to collect heifers to send to South Dakota ranchers. So far he has pledges for over 100, yet the local paper hasn't even covered his efforts yet. I've never seen a situation like this. It just boggles my imagination. The worst part has been the web attacks by some urbanites on the whole situation, some calling it fabricated and others saying who cares? the ranchers are all rich and will get reimbursed by the government anyway. Some going so far as to say the ranchers should be punished for letting their livestock die... "


The disconnect between rural and urban may be greater than any time I can remember.
 

Quick Update re Water

Going to Albuquerque for the second time in three days, trying to get Passenger pigeons up and flying, and generally overcommitted. But the water news has been ludicrously inadequate. We should never have lost water, and should have it back in a week; the situation only has a tenuous connection with drought.

Everything I see on the news is off.  The marshall  is being diplomatic but it is ludicrous to blame the guy who has been trying to warn everybody for years, or to equate him with the mayor he has been opposing that long. The mayor and some other officials made real life mistakes and bad decisions, turning down plans to put in backup pumps and dig, losing and misfiling documents and not getting in applications on time. The guy who says they are all to blame is running against the mayor but why he is equating the  mayor and the marshall is beyond me. In fact the real drought barely has anything to do with the situation-- we should have faced it with a new pump & well, a backup, and three full auxiliary tanks.

Also we are NOT "absolutely without water", and NOT restricted to two bottles a day. Every private well including one or two in town is delivering normal amounts, as are all on ranches. I have lived through two other water- restricted droughts here as has anyone who has been here any length of time. We don't have more "seniors" than any normal town, and they tend to be more tough and philosophical than newcomers. The whole thing makes me realize just how incompetent today's reporters are. Virtually everyone in town knows all of the above!

Breaking News

Magdalena has gone national and may be on your evening news, but for an infuriating reason: our little town has just lost all its water in a well collapse, and though ranches with their own wells are all right, there is no water available for our village-- around a thousand residents-- and therefore none in a  60 mile stretch of Route 60 between Socorro and Datil. Of course ranchers still have wells (though the drought has lowered levels in many) but driving 12 miles on rough roads to take a shower is not an attractive option.

Our crisis may symbolize the emerging conditions in the New West. Everybody concerned kicked the problem down the road. The state dragged its collective feet on the necessary permits, then piled on rather than helping. State inspectors actually came in and tried to shut down all our businesses and the gas stations because they had no potable water. Bar owner Darrell Pettis and Bob Winston of Winston's garage resisted, and so far everything is open. Darrell and filmmaker Matt Middleton got a few minutes on Albuquerque TV explaining the difficulty of life here and the political indifference of the state to the fate of tiny old remote towns. Do the idiots sent to inspect us and shut down our only social links and sources for food and drink realize what stress that would add to an already angry populace?

This is just a rushed beginning for what will doubtless be continuing coverage of the crisis. Estimates of the time needed to fix the well range from a couple of days to a MONTH. And yes, there are important connections to our ongoing water hijacking crisis-- hit the search box with the words"water" or Plains of San Augustin, or go to the site for the Golden Spur for more news...

UPDATE: For now at least, a video from KOB TV here, featuring Marshall Larry Cearley, filmmaker and water activist Matt Middleton, and Spur owner Darrell Pettis, all of whom have been working on the problem.

Light Blogging...

Emerging from a ton of writing as future investment, near cripppled from time in chair. Need to do our spring outdoor chores-- garden, pigeons ...

Back soon I hope.

Tumbling Tumbleweeds

What drought and an invasive Asian exotic can do in a hard winter-- all this and zero at night, at Lee Henderson's where we chase things- photos from Lee. That is his house on the right in the third pic; in the first, that fencerow is likely higher than your head. Ranching for a living, like old age, is not for sissies.

A Young Farmer's Perspective

NC sent us a link to a fascinating Op- Ed in the Denver Post by an intelligent and analytical young farmer. She says: "People all say words like "farm fresh," "sustainability," but they don't want to actually pay for what it actually costs me to make it. Almost everyone tries to talk me into lowering my price or asks me to give my eggs away for free." Also: "... If I have customers coming over when I am gathering eggs, I put my hair in pigtails, and I use a small straw basket and make lots of trips. People like to buy eggs from little kids skipping through the pasture with a basket of eggs." !!

Among other lessons that can be drawn is the indubitable fact that many of the rich are inveterate cheapskates ("How do you think they got that way?" I can hear my old Dad mutter)-- and that the average postmodern urban dweller has no idea where anything comes from.

NC has more to say: "That's the heart of the story. Is it any wonder that the likes of Monsanto dominate food production when the deck is so stacked against small producers? Is it any wonder that local and organic food is so hard to sell when the customers are so clueless that they think it could somehow be given to them for free?

"That was the part of the story that had me in stitches; these people who go to farmer's markets and think that small-scale local farming exists in this magical bubble that makes it immune to economic reality. Of course they would think that! I bet Marie Antoinette thought that animal husbandry was all carefree giggles when she went off to play milkmaid!

"Inasmuch as any of us have a technophile streak, I think it's substantially rooted in the desire to understand the human economics of it all. I won't say I understand computers, but thanks to a high school physics teacher who worked in the semiconducter industry, I at least have some idea of the long hours engineers spend poring over circuit diagrams, of the super-sterile factories filled with unbelievably nasty chemicals for etching silicon, all so we can have magical electronic gadgets. I'm definitely not an electrical engineer, but I watch the trucks carrying wind turbine blades up and down I25, and I can do basic math so when someone says we ought to switch to wind energy, I have some notion of how many more trucks carrying how many more of those blades such a task would entail.

"The goal here isn't necessarily to understand all aspects of technology or production or economy perfectly. It's to have some idea of all the sorts of things that people around the world are doing to keep civilization going. The goal is to be able to see some pale reflection of the sweat of other people's brows in modern conveniences; not necessarily to extol or deplore them. Just to understand them.
"Because the alternative is to go through life thinking that meat just magically pops into existence on supermarket shelves, that alternating current and wall sockets just sprout from the ground, that cars just go and gas stations are sitting above natural deposits of gasoline. In short, to believe that the world is built around oneself for one's own comfort."

First (belated) Snow

Weeks overdue but welcome. Blogging resumes...

South Baldy 4 miles south, our highest (nearly 11,000 foot) peak, by John Wilson

Firewood

A good load of wood (thanks Tyler Chavez!) and a new roof (for the first time in over five years, no leaks-- thanks Simon and Della Armijo!) make for at least a sense of modest security-- and wood makes a better photo.

And Cat's Sheep!

Also just out: Cat Urbigkit's Shepherds of Coyote Rocks, her first adult book, a distillation and amplification of what you have come to love here and a leap forward for her.

This is the most nuanced and intelligent defense of the traditional pastoral life in print, by a writer who lives it and has heard all the dug- in uninformed arguments. I don't need to tell readers here about her; suffice to say she can work, and observe, and read, and think, and WRITE. I spent a few days on the ground with her and Jim last fall, and we killed a bottle at their trailer house; I heard more political complexity, diversity, and spirited debate and discussion in one night there than in a week in Jackson Hole, not to mention hearing many scientific papers on early domestication and the evolution of our commensals quoted by self- described "redneck" Jim!

I assume readers of this blog will love it; if they need a quote to pique the curiosity of others, try just this one, in defense of transhumance pastoralism: "As satellite images clearly revealed, both socialism and privatization are associated with worse long term outcomes than those observed in traditional group- based governance."

Many more like that, and stories, and characters, and Cat's photos!

Another dumb quote

From a review in the New Yorker for 27 August: "Buying a car, Grescoe writes "is the beginning of a spiral through selfishness, road rage, and anomie, one whose ultimate goal is the mall or the gated community".

Unless you, you know, live in the country.

Do our coastal elites even "get" Upstate New York? (Yes, I know Grescoe is Canadian).

What they might think of a town of less than a thousand, forty miles on one side and 26 on the other from the nearest small towns, and 100 from a city, is hard to imagine.

Our culture...

As demonstrated in our social center, the Golden Spur Saloon (I have for the moment ignored ranchers and cowboys, though the Spur's site doesn't). Click or double to enlarge either photo.

Below, my late mentor Floyd Mansell in our front yard in 1986, with son Brandon, who now has his own kids, and a morning's quarry. The big back and white hound, Blaze, is a "Cunningham", a last remnant of a lost Texas strain of wolver's hounds; the big dark dog is my old half- deerhound Riley. Betsy Huntington took the photo; within six months she was buried with the pelt of the bigger coyote, brought down by her "Baby Riley"-- it is all in Q- The- Book.

Floyd, incidentally, was a lifelong Democrat, probably to Retrieverman's left; also a Catholic convert, father of nine natural kids and one adopted one, an educator with a master's degree, a naturalist, a former Golden Gloves boxer, the baseball coach, one of our mayors, and a chickenfighter.

The guy who put up the heads, and Floyd's photo, is a Republican.

UPDATE:Our collaboration with the Spur, and Montana's continuing work on its site, continues; this two- week old pic of us there just up:

House Band

Regular readers know that Querencia's home bar is the Golden Spur Saloon, and has been for thirty some years, since Betsy Huntington was alive, first under Steve Grayson's management (see Q- the- book, which has scenes set there). Montana Pettis (who is not thirty yet!) is the son of present owner Darryl, also bartender and manager and Q fan. He heads up a good rowdy band, 86'd Again. Welcome to the Spur!

Anybody know how to make this thing center? UPDATE: Thanks, Losech!

Priorities

Reacting to Kathy's good comment below, I thought I would post some pix of Casa Q, to remind readers that while we live well we do NOT live in a palace...

Recently half of the dying cottonwood in the yard cracked and fell into it, luckily missing the hawk house. Omar, neighbor, bird hunting partner, and gardener, took down more with his young Navajo crew but what remains is still a sword of Damocles...

Here are the buttresses we put up several years ago because the rock wall was falling outward and dropping mortar on my head in bed-- still un- stucco'd:

The heating system:

Our productive but scruffy garden, built by hard labor from bare hardpan:

The whole house with '93 pickup (now sold for $500 to Montana the bartender)- we have a '97 Blazer now...

And to be fair, the interior-- like Central Asians, we keep our treasures inside...

Addresses

Two of the strangest showcases of human society I know are the zoo, any zoo (I have written more than a bit on this) and the Post Office.

I could go in a lot of directions with the PO (many of you know that Lib works in a rural PO) but I only want to look at one today: addresses.

Our town, the 8____ Zip code, covers an enormous area, from the Alamo Indian reservation 40 miles north (and a few ranches north of that) to a rural route that stretches 75 dirt- road miles to the south.

The population isn't big, but still some addresses defy deciphering. I wrote down the following, printed, business- mailed ones while having coffee with the staff this AM. Printed, mind you, not handwritten by illiterates- well, maybe the last...

But for name and Zip, these are the ENTIRE ADDRESSES; each separate line is a whole one.

Indian Reservation

Rural Area

UFO Area

Two Houses Behind Benson's [who is... dead-- SB]

MAGDULZENA

Update: someone says I should add that my address for my electric bill is and has been for over 20 years "Montoya Rock House."

Or in directions: "You know, Steve Bodio's house that was Cecilia's that used to be rock." (Still is of course but stucco'd over in '84).

Wild East

Here are a few irresistible photos from Lib's friend Jeff Foott, who we saw in Wyoming and who just returned from our old haunts in Western Mongolia.

The third is just nice and speaks for itself. What I love about the other two is the way the Wild East partakes of all technologies from the Neolithic to the 21'st century's simultaneously; a bit "cyberpunk" in style rather than Edwardian Steampunk...

The provincialism of sophisticates

I was reading an article in Slightly Foxed, an excellent English quarterly devoted to neglected writing, and I came upon this quote from Marghanita Laski's 1949 Little Boy Lost that both amused and chilled me because it is still so true:

"To him it was inconceivable that an intelligent man should be happy to live in a provincial town and talk about everything in the world with people less intelligent than himself. Automatically he found himself deciding that Monsieur Mercatel could not be as intelligent as he had supposed, that he must be a man who was good on his subject and negligible outside it."

Says something about the attitude that many at, say, the New Yorker still have toward "Flyover Country", despite such writers as Annie or Jim... condescension is something we all face.

(I should add that SF ran an essay on Q-the- book a while back, obviously having no such prejudices!)

Gallos de Floyd and Other Memories

Getting the "Gallo de Cielo" painting below from Tom Russell jogged my memory and made me dig up some photos from the early 80's of my late mentor Floyd Mansell, his proud roosters, and one of him hunting with me and his then teen- aged son Phil (whose daughter is older today than he was in the photo).

Of Floyd (who appears in many scenes in Querencia- the- book) I wrote to Tom:

"Found these 1984 photos by Betsy Huntington of my late mentor Floyd Mansell and his roosters I thought might be of interest-- historically anyway!

"Floyd was unusual. Arkansas hillbilly by origin (though half Lebanese in addition to Scots- Irish-- there is a strain of Irish gamefowl called "Mansells"), he ran off to war in the Pacific at 16. Then returned, went to college and got a master's, "turned liberal, became a Catholic, and married an Indian. My family still doesn't know what to think!"

"He moved here in the 60's to work for the BIA, taught, coached, and was at one time or another mayor, principal, baseball coach, and guidance counselor. He was a Golden Gloves champ and a serious amateur boxer and taught that too. His politics if not culture never wavered from well to the Left of mine, but he remained not only a naturalist of daunting knowledge and skill-- several academic papers cite him-- but also a hunter, gunner, bowhunter, sighthound man (my real teacher there) and as long as it was legal and before the advent of brutal "slashers", cockfighter. As a boxer I think he identified with the gallos.

"He raised ten kids-- nine of his own, one a grandson he adopted-- with his half- Navajo, half Choctaw wife Wanda who is still around and still a friend. I miss him."



Phil was shooting a Mossberg pump with the casual ease, accuracy, and arrogance of a young natural; Floyd an Italian- made version of a 19th century caplock double. I had the kind of gun I never see anymore: an LC Smith Ideal grade 12 on the light frame that neither weighed much (even with 28" barrels) or cost much. I shot it well; made a terrific long shot toward the end of that day that culminated in my wading an arroyo flood to retrieve the bird after a sudden thunderstorm. I sold it, of course...