Environmental and Recreational Bourgeois

The price of breakdown

Environmental and Recreational Bourgeois

Sharecropping Revisited

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            Today’s trials are mine alone, but, framed in the backdrop of no longer reading a newspaper, the fact that I cannot match a functioning pump end with a serviceable driver from the scrap pile is certainly disconcerting. I really don’t care if it is a half horse driver or a horse and a half. I just need to pump one of the wells in the Coldiron Pasture so I can get water into the storage in “the hole”. I am not going to equip any well until it proves to be reliable hence the need to cobble together something that will shed some light on what is going on down hole.

            If one in a hundred of you understand my dilemma, I would surmise you are closer to the behavioral norms that were almost universally accepted between World War II and the era of the hippies than those of today. If you happen to be a modern day sharecropper, a federal land rancher, you’ll know exactly what I am inferring.

            The price of breakdown

            Far from perfect, I simply do not condone not standing for the flag when it is presented. My hat will be off and applied to where I think my heart must be. Likewise, a whole litany of standards can be arrayed that fundamentally ascribe to the same principle. Don’t have kids before you get married. Don’t live together before you get married. Ride for the brand. Don’t arbitrarily offend those around you in drink, words, attitude, or opinion. When you have a friend, be a friend. Be loyal to those who depend upon you. Be respectful of authority but be true to your beliefs. Be honest with yourself and patient with those who love you.

            When you say, “I do” … do it.

            Dusty told me his grandmother died believing she no longer knew the world around her. She was not just tired but disheartened by what she saw. Too many of us are probably finding ourselves in the same boat. We simply cannot understand what appears to us to be cultural destruction.

            Maybe I should have prefaced this by noting that last weekend our ranch family dedicated itself to packing accumulated trash off Massacre Peak. Massacre Peak, named for the massacre that took place off its northeast side in 1879, is owned in part by the federal government and in part by the ranch. It is the big flat topped massif in the north central part of the ranch. It lies wholly within the new national monument and our private property, which makes up the north half of the mountain, is simply trampled without regard. The care and the removal of what remains after the public forays into the ‘wilderness’, however, is ours by acceptance of our stewardship. The beer (and wine!) bottles would not be removed if we didn’t do it.

We care, and it is obvious we care more than an apparent majority of the people who flock to this mountain on the basis that it is their … right.

            Environmental and Recreational Bourgeois

            We no longer live in times that reflect our natural standards. Perhaps political differences were never solved by argument and persuasion, but today it is very apparent they are addressed by power and social force. That growing force today include the recreationists. Access to nature’s play ground is what they seek, and those in power must include the Left where it exists and where it is manifested.

            Marx invented the idea and then applied the French term to the condition. Originally, it was the normal condition of the middle class, those in want of refinement and elegance. It was then elevated to a condition, a social class that owned or controlled the means of production whose concerns were inherent in their property from which they perpetuated their way of life. Bourgeoisie was then applied to it collective destruction to alter the balance of the prevailing social system.

            If our system doesn’t alter its current course, a new Bourgeois is about to arrive in full fury and the resulting Bourgeoisie is the collective destruction of changing the order to seek all things outdoor and wilderness recreation. Environmental and Recreational Bourgeois is becoming the normal social order.

            If the condition is on the verge of becoming the standard of the American West, what happens if it turns out to be as destructive as the rest of Marxism? What if the progressive pursuit of wilderness recreation turns out to be socially wrong and the traditional land analysis of honest labor is closest to the truth?

            Moreover, who is going to pick up the beer and wine bottles tossed carelessly by those woefully wanting in outdoor elegance and refinement?

            Sharecropping revisited

            In the meantime, I have to find a pump that works.

            Actually, it will serve two purposes if a well can be dedicated to several new, pending improvement projects. The first is that I can more efficiently provide water to the rare and scant deer populations the new Bourgeois expect to slay in this wilderness. The second is I can enter the Star Chamber next week to face the federal owner who is going to grill me on why I want to extend more pipelines, replace several miles of pasture fencing, and install yet another water storage unit. Of course, those arguments must fit the conditions and the dictates of the various field manuals, and, because the practices will touch on federal lands, the dominion of the decisions will be assumed by the major landowner.

            Based on the email exchanges, there will be 11 federal officials and me. Regardless of the outcome, though, the ranch will still pick up beer and wine bottles because that is our duty regardless of field manual dictates and the demands of the great white father in Washington.

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “What else can you say?”