Independence Day: Cornudas Mountain Music

Framers to ordinary Americans

Cornudas Mountain Music

Independence Day

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            John Adams suggested Americans regale the celebration of this nation’s independence with great merriment. Normally a fairly high brow fellow, our second president pulled all the stuffy stops out by urging “pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illumination from one end of the continent to the other from this time forward.”

            The Father of our country, George Washington, did one better … he ordered double rum rations for his artillerymen. 

            North of the border, too

            If somebody asked me where the most spectacular Fourth of July fireworks celebration occurred in my life, without question it was the one in Stampede Stadium in Calgary, Alberta in an evening extravaganza production of the Stampede. The amount of powder expended that night would have made George’s artillerymen envious.  

            The only thing more spectacular would have been to watch the reactions of the broncs and the bulls that weathered the spectacle directly under where the aerial display was detonated. From our vantage point from the box seats, the pens were obscured behind the bucking chutes and Stampede race track. From the decibels and the immensity of the explosions, though, it had to have been a real rodeo unto itself.

            At the time, we thought it was part of the show to welcome Westerners to a celebration of our life’s common ties. What we learned was it was a continuing celebration of Canada’s own Independence Day held, officially, each July 1.

            Never, though, have I felt more part of our way of life.

            Diesel pickups, gooseneck trailers, good horses, and people who can speak articulately to the same issues that affect our existence were there in abundance. It was more western than most of our West.

Over the years, that theme has only grown more pronounced. We are outnumbered, but our existence may be the greatest indicator of the health of our Union.

            Life we live

            Farming and ranching are not professions. They are life styles of the most improvident dedication. There is something profoundly humbling to absorb debt, market volatility, the esoterics of our pursuits, production constraints, extreme barriers of entry, and the immensity of the stewardship of life, and … lives.

            Then, there are the external threats to our existence.

            Few of our number can operate with the degree of freedom that Adams, in particular, would have envisioned for future generation Americans. In today’s emails alone, there were 23 new federal agency regulation notices of intent and or NGO suits filed against our industry components.

            Tomorrow, there will be more.

            We can’t operate in equilibrium. We find ourselves spending as much time or more defending our lives and investments than we do planning for our future. That is a recipe for disaster and, yet, that is what we face.

            Cornudas Mountain music

In another corner of the American West, a gathering celebrating our way of life takes place every Fourth of July.

It is there, on New Mexico’s Otero Mesa, a group of Westerners gather. They come mostly in ranch broke four wheel drive pickups. They drink coffee, share discussions, offer grace, and break bread together. The mountain … Cornudas Mountain has called them back.

The women seek new babies, and offer counsel to young mothers and reassurance to themselves. The men have largely traded felt hats that have withstood the spring winds for more comfortable summer straws.

Bobby and Pat Jones are the hosts and the ranching stewards of the mountain and part of the mesa that spreads out beyond. Bobby will have wood split and stacked. He will tend the fire, the coffee, and cook the meat for the meal and gathering.

Following the meal, most of the group will make its way into the cave and find a place to sit and wait patiently in the coolness. On the walls are preserved reminders of times when buffalo soldiers chased Indians, travelers stopped on dusty overland stage journeys, and families endured the dangers and the promise of a new land.

Those reminders are preserved solely through the protection provided by the ranching stewards hosting the gathering.

The musicians will arrange their chairs. They will sit in a circle facing each other. They will talk and tune their instruments. Their attention will be concentrated inward within that circle. Their music will highlight the day’s celebration.  

The musicians are all familiar. They bring their fiddles, their guitars, and other stringed instruments. In addition to Bobby Jones there will be Pete Lewis or other members of the expansive Lewis clan. Pop Snow was a featured artist for years. Joe Delk is sometimes there with his fiddle. Vaughn Teel and his guitar often sit facing westward in the circle. Brian and Amy Muise have become regulars, and even the likes of Junior Dougherty and Frank DuBois have accompanied the tradition of the mesa.

There is no program agenda.

The process will start by one of the musicians. He, or now she, will pick up a tune and set off on a personal rendition. The others will join in variously until the circle is engaged.

The acoustics in the cave are wonderful.

The audience will tap their toes and sway to the tunes largely returned from another time. The mix might include the ‘Kentucky’ or ‘Westphalia Waltz’, ‘Draggin’ the Bow’, ‘Faded Love’, ‘San Antonio Rose’, ‘Marie’, ‘Milk Cow Blues’, or ‘The Old Rugged Cross’. There will be more spiritual favorites mixed with two steps and traditional ballads.

After a song, the musicians will comment on their mistakes or somebody’s good licks. They will pause, talk and laugh, and get set for the next tune. The protocol is to work from chair to chair with each successive performer expected to make the selection and be featured for a solo and then accompanied performance. They become noticeably unaware of the audience around them.  

The audience, though, is as interesting as the musicians. The matriarchs are honored features. From the families of Jones, Bennett, Bond, Cookson, Davis, Lee, Lewis, Schafer, and others, they will come. Collectively, they are always there to fill the table with food and the gathering with genuine western feminine charm.

Their men are there with them. Cowmen and cowboys they are. They are the men that former Arizona Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, referred to as ‘those mysterious men with the rough hands’. Their families started coming to the mesa as early as the mid 1860’s. Together, they are land stewards of significance. They are immensely important to the customs and the culture of the mesa.

The entire gathering is an event of major heritage importance, and … it is in jeopardy.

Secular affront to original intent

The mesa is high on the environmental wish list. Saving the ‘pristine nature’ of the most southern grama grasslands in New Mexico has long been a priority of the environmental left. Notwithstanding the presence of the entrenched socioeconomic ties with the land, the ranching heritage on the mesa is ignored in the process.

Evidence of that is clearly set forth in the recent BLM draft of the region’s resource management plan. In the plan’s ‘Impacts on Socioeconomic Conditions’, the mesa’s ranching heritage is mentioned only superficially and that reference is most troubling.

In one of the alternatives for livestock grazing is the plan to force the termination of grazing “after voluntary relinquishment of all or part of a grazing preference”, or, in other words, force those ranchers out with federal buyouts. The preferred alternative, the continuation of the social value of ranching, is conditionally set forth with the unqualified conclusion that such an alternative “may be slightly less potential for economic gains from livestock ranching”.

That conclusion is utter nonsense.

Unless changed through the process of public comments, this destructive principle will stand in this document and others like it that set the course for at least a decade of federal land management. That conclusion was reached without any input from a qualified Ag or impartial socio-economic evaluation.

Implicit throughout the plan is the secular, environmental agenda. The cleansing of rural communities from the land is in process. Otero Mesa is on a front burner.

John Adams would not comprehend many things today not the least of which would be to cleanse human bonds of stewardship from American lands. We can clearly discern his position time and again. It is revealed in his desire to promote the celebration of Independence Day. In his continuing words urging Americans to celebrate the day, he wrote, “It (Independence Day) ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty!”

The Cornudas Mountain July 4 musical gathering is exactly that. Those people and that event represent the heart and soul of the American experiment, and … their continued presence on that land is critically important to every American.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “The Cornudas Mountain Independence Day gathering has national and historical implications.”

Many a good time was had at Cornudas Mountain. Good folks, good food and good music.