Seeking Protection

 Summer Stampede

Seeking Protection

Gone to Texas

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

  

            Texas is wet.

That can be discerned not just by the green grass trying to head out and water standing in the furrows, but by the way folks act. Big smiles are abundant. Ranch pickups are covered with mud, and too many tractors are parked with similar unwashed appearances. The heavens finally opened, and, like Napoleonic legions marching in echelon into battle, the successive storm fronts have invaded the Llano.

The Summer Stampede was a fitting celebration of the gifts to be derived from those rains.

Folks came from far and near to gather. The excuse to mingle and dance was the Summer Stampede where some of the finest western artists and craftsmen in the country were assembled to display their work. Sales from the artwork and gear will benefit the Ranching Heritage Association with its absolutely befitting Ranching Heritage Center on the campus of Texas Tech University.

A who’s who of the ranching world was there. They were noted not as much by their names as they were by the hats they wore, the courtesies of their greeting, and the character of the culture of their chosen lives. To the man, woman, and child, they were an amalgam of concerned stewards of western ranges. Just like the mission of the Ranching Heritage Association, they voiced concern and the dire need to preserve the physical, social and cultural aspects of ranching and perpetuate the traditions, intrinsic values, and history of our nation’s most important grassland (industry).

Seeking Protection

 The attempt to capture in the three most recent Westerner articles the cornerstones of the most important grassland industry in our country, and, perhaps the world was both a desired challenge and a burden. The sometimes spirited exchanges with The Westerner, Francois DuBois himself, were indicators of the complexity and the consternation the business and its participants face.

The decision to break the explanations into parts was done in order to devote time and effort to impact a particular target group … the United States Congress. It was yet another educational pursuit.

Our plight continues to be a growing chasm between knowledge and first hand relationships with the land and the vast majority of the folks whose view of us is not predicated on any bond or connection to the natural world. Their world is increasingly affected by political strategies suggesting natural, peaceful and pastoral balances that only exist in imaginations and theory. We are affected by the continuum of real life experiences that happen to coincide with biblical accounts that the world around us was made for the glory of our Creator. As such, our existence emphasizes individual human autonomy over the natural world rather than global and national coordination that must be planned centrally and protected from our existence.

The difference is stark.

Our existence is based on autonomy over our world, and, from that foundation, mankind has and will continue to develop. The growing antagonistic forces are increasingly political recapitulations of tyrannical regimes that have never recognized the individual much less benefited the whole of mankind. Our belief is founded in the importance of the individual of which all is derived. Theirs is the belief that the whole is the foundation which necessarily trumps man’s responsibility to subdue and perfect his surroundings.

Our approach and our heritage is God centered while theirs invariably suggests and accuses our stewardship of creating mayhem in the extreme and natural untidiness in the least. History shows, however, the greatest earthly tragedies emerge from tyrannical regimes not individual existence. The individual doesn’t have the wherewithal to spread death and destruction on a macro basis. Mass destruction only comes from scientific, sociological pantheism given the opportunity to blossom and run amuck.

Hence, we will take refuge in our world, and … we must defend it with intensity.

Our generational knowledge with all the accompanying ranching infrastructure, the cow herself, and the American constitutional gift of private property are the critical, foundational mainstays that will keep our heritage robust and intact. The collapse of any one of the three assures the failure of all.

As a culture and an industry, our general order is to protect those cornerstones. How we carry out that order is left to us, the autonomous, God centered individuals. My intent has been to elevate our stewardship into legislation in the form a purpose rather being cast aside as a categorized use of western lands that can be minimized through regulatory expansion or unilateral executive actions toward more restrictive land designations.

We must all recognize the importance of our ranches.

They were part of the framework that created the industrial revolution and they now stand in a crossroads of changes that will continue to fuel the next revolution. We can only strive to make that revolution a celebration of man’s dominion over nature … rather than the full evisceration of individual freedoms and the cloaking of intended actions through laws and regulatory despair.

Gone to Texas

The Ranching Heritage Center is not a shrine. It is a depository of both individual strife and achievement. As I walked its paneled and limestone hallways, there was no suggestion of big or little. Rather, it was the realization of belonging. It gave me goose bumps. The life I now live is all I ever wanted to do, but I am not alone.

If there are heroes, they don’t dwell there. Rather, they still exist as individuals in the sweeping expanse of our grasslands. Bassist and Texas swing musician extraordinaire, Jake Hooker, recognized that as he played to the big dance floor fashioned under the stars and filled to capacity song after song. When taking request after request, he noted that he doesn’t normally do that, but, with that crowd, he would play and perform to their wishes.

But, the emissaries were there … the Moorehouse brothers, Donald and Jo Allison, Walt and JaNeil Anderson, Luke and Connie Shipp, Bob Sweat, Bruce Green, Bob and Mary Ross Buchholz, Wilson Capron, Billy Klapper, Baru Spiller and on and on the names were revealed as they danced into the starlit Texas night. Collectively, each is united in the life we live.

This way of life is not so unique and special that it stands above any other, but it is symbolic and it is important. Our ranches, like our faith in God, are based on objective facts of History. They have sustained a great nation and will continue to do so if allowed to exist. We don’t think we have placed our faith in the wrong objects. Granted, salvation is always by faith through grace, but our natural surroundings annually reveal the magic of resurrection each time we replant our crops or observe the first calf of the next cycle.

As we headed home, another revelation confronted me.

The Summer Stampede was a welcome and delightful event, but home and the demands of this ranch life took preference and priority. So much to do with so many demands is superceded by the shear fascination of this life. As we drove west and out of green grass, it remained my most heartfelt hope that this baton I carry can be passed to a next generation individual who understands and accepts the huge responsibility of this culture. I’ll take personal responsibility of my own salvation, but our industry needs our help for the continuity of this way of life with its historic operations.

Draw a line and accept the challenge to defend it … this history has value.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “If private land ranches think they are exempt from the dismantling occurring on federal lands ranches, they are sadly mistaken. Once any pillar is removed … all are subject to failure.”