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West<br />
GRANT INGRAM<br />
The West. To be sure there are spots around this country<br />
that take the breath away with their beauty. Thoreau on his<br />
Walden Pond wrote about the beauty that he encountered there;<br />
the rawness of the land captured something in him that aroused<br />
his inner spirit to the heights of pureness. Byron poeticized the<br />
Lake District where Ambleside sits on the edge of heaven. Bede<br />
Griffiths claims salvation in an English sunset. I wonder what<br />
these men would have said having had lived their lives in the<br />
West. This place has a penchant for toughness over beauty. The<br />
mesquite and cactus scrub lands of West Texas, the high New<br />
Mexican desert, the high country of the Rockies, the endless<br />
plains of Wyoming and Montana. To the aesthetic, there is some<br />
congruity in these landscapes—each inhospitable in its own way.<br />
Far from the gentleness of Connecticut or Virginia, the land<br />
imposes itself upon those that choose to live west, and in that<br />
resides its beauty. A pioneer spirit still walks out here—the<br />
frontier’s disappearance a fresh lament. At least in this kitchen.<br />
I find that I don’t have many compadres with respect to my<br />
views here. My grandfather raised sheep in Nolan County, Texas<br />
his whole life. I remember his grungy hat of yellow mesh and<br />
denim with a patch on the front reading “CAT diesel power.” I<br />
remember him slapping that damn hat on his thigh yelling<br />
“Hyaw!” while kicking rocks at those poor sheep.<br />
As a kid it seemed like that’s all ranching was—kicking rocks<br />
at sheep and cutting the occasional puss pocket out of a cow that<br />
had gotten too far into a prickly pear. Looking back it’s startling<br />
to me that my granddad may well be the last man I’ll know who<br />
lived a life utterly connected to the land. He was a philosopher<br />
in his own way: the way a lot of the old timers were. That’s going<br />
away now, as are the traditions they kept. But he was prescient in<br />
one respect. Sheep don’t do the business they once did.<br />
Cattle, mythical as they are to the West, were always an<br />
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