OPINION/COMMENTARY

Cowboy Culture

I was standing on a stage, singing cowboy music at a benefit to raise money for the legal defense of Kit Laney, a rancher near the Gila Wilderness who was jailed for balking at the idea that all he had worked for, all he had built, could be taken away by the U.S. Forest Service with no scientific justification. I found it ironic that only a few years ago, I had been hired by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to perform for the 50th Anniversary of the Gila Wilderness. I've always liked the Gila area, and I've always been intrigued by Aldo Leopold, who advocated protecting it. According to his daughter, Nina Leopold, Leopold loved cowboy music, ranchers, hunting, fishing and the people of the Southwest - though he spent the majority of his career in Wisconsin. While Leopold certainly was a conservationist, he was not anti-hunting, anti-agriculture, or anti-rancher. His idea was to involve private property owners in good conservation practice - not confiscate land. He hated over-grazing, as do the vast majority of ranchers - it's their resource. As Kit Laney told me, "I have absolutely no problem with the idea of the Gila Wilderness, and meetings with the Leopold Society went well." Laney impressed me as a good man, who was being bullied for no good reason....As I sang, I looked into the faces of those present. What was going on in my mind at that moment? Why would a large group of people, not all of them in cowboy hats and boots, turn out in big numbers, to hear old cowboy songs and new ones, and pay for the experience- all in the name of a rancher who defied a court order to reduce his cattle numbers, and then refused to leave his ranch home? Were they all just a bunch of sagebrush rebel ranchers, on a tear about the government? Well, as it turned out, most of the audience present that evening were not ranchers and cowboys. But they were something bigger than that. They were members of a distinct culture- a culture that goes beyond the boundaries of the United States of America; a culture of the community of people who are involved in the life and business of grazing- or are touched by it, or find inspiration from it....