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English bred animal destined to anguish and kill profits in the
summer heat and bitter winters.
Domesticating buffalo would have been a much better idea.
Regardless of the history of it all, kicking rocks may be all that
remains for the ranchers of future generations. Still, the western
wear shops are doing good business, prices for ranch land are
going up and up, people are buying and buying, and it seems that
one of the greatest icons of Americana, the cowboy boot, has
found a home in the hipster kids scene today.
I don’t know exactly why I feel a sense of loss, though I do.
I grew up in a mid-sized city, spent some summers at the ranch
(only for fishing and shooting bottles with the .22—leisure time),
but I still feel a profound sense that something major has cracked
in our society that we, I, don’t have a strong connection with the
land.
“All cattlemen, herdsmen, drovers, men who follow grazing
animals over the land, seeking the grass that nourishes them—
such men, pantheistic by nature, resolutely reject anything that
smacks of the modern world: its politics, its art, its technology.
What they accept, at a profound level, is the cycle of nature, in
which men and animals alike are born, grow old, and die, to be
succeeded by new generations of men and animals. Recycling of
this natural sort does not bother men who live on the land; some
even resent the fact that modern burial practices retard the
process. The notion that they will soon become part of the food
chain doesn’t bother them at all.”
I read this passage tonight in a wonderful book by Larry
McMurtry called Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen:
Reflections at Sixty and Beyond. Maybe he’s got it right. Perhaps
the great schism that I feel is that I’ve become insulated from
being part of that food chain. No longer in today’s society do I
have to worry about food, shelter, basics—no, I’ve been to college,
have a job teaching school, and live in an apartment near
downtown. I’m not, in a very real sense, subject to nature’s
whims. Provided another Katrina doesn’t hit San Angelo, I’ll
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