Tough, but Denigrated
Drought
Schedule of Events
By Stephen L. Wilmeth
The
doppler has been a continuum of disappointment.
The
promise of El Nino summer conditions was bought hook, line and sinker. Forecasters
promised above normal rainfall, but as mid-August arrives, there are pastures
that have zero accumulations. The older cows, still around as a result of the
promise of rain, cows that should have been sold, are only weaker and less
likely to raise that last calf to add to a last hoorah.
The national
drought monitor doesn’t yet show the conditions that contribute to the mood,
but that will change. Short of war there is nothing as frightening as drought.
Freddie McCauley once told me there comes a time when you can’t gather cattle. Indeed,
stories of piles of dead cattle still ring in direct verbal history links to
the late years of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th.
Those
guys had to be tough.
Tough,
but Denigrated
The
accusation was clearly intended, and it was directed.
The message
was the tedious talking point of western ranchers being overly subsidized. The
bloody arrow was hurled from an NGO king pen whose very existence is predicated
on charity and false prophecies. He is one of the curiously anointed experts
who now have extraordinary influence on federal agency decision making.
Readers
of the Westerner know his kind.
He and
his operatives are the ones quoted in the atrophying local newspapers whose
interpretation of issues are so rote and predictable. His crafted input is the
accompanying harmony for all major and minor progressive propaganda pieces.
He has no concept of rubbing shoulders with actual
survivors of a physical world that takes few prisoners. In that, he has missed
even the rudimentary experiences of the American West that produced individuals
of genuine character. Those great Americans will be lost in direct contact and
interpretation, but their accomplishments still deserve recognition. The sum of
their existence becomes more inspiring with each passing year.
They were the real pathfinders.
Schedule
of Events
The
first and continuing constraint of the West is water.
The
original settlements were always associated with free and conditionally
permanent water. In the case of our place now, it was a spring, Neire Spring on
the 1874 survey map, that supported a permanent resident. Without that base
water, permanent habitation simply couldn’t have taken place.
Across
the land, water beget homes or at least an approximation thereof. In the case
of my great great grandfather, John Moss (on the top of the bottom lineage on
my maternal side), it was first the covered wagon and a string of horses in a
reverse migration from Utah to the Gila Valley and New Mexico Territory in
1880. That was followed by a tent, then a frame house near the mouth of
Sycamore Canyon, and ultimately a rock and framed house on the ranch out in the
Blue Creek country in what would become Grant County.
The only
things I have of his life are a few pictures and the cornerstone of that Blue
Creek house. There was never adequate verbal history of John, but we do know it
was probably his mother who was born in the Salt Lake Basin in 1837. It was his
son, Hinton, my grandmother’s father who ushered in the known history of the
family on the Gila. He was one of the horseback pioneers who followed the
cattle trails.
Those cattle
trails led to expanded roads and highways. Ranch to town trails became farm to
market roads. On the ranches, they became routes to expanded water and infrastructure.
My grandmother
remembered her parents for not just their work ethic, but their attempt to mix
joy and gaiety into their family life. She talked about traveling horseback on
trails from their home above the upper Gila box to Redrock to dances only to
remount and ride home to do the next morning chores. Such a ride, largely in
the dark, is unfathomable today.
Where
water wasn’t permanent, it was developed, but it was always predicated on that
existing, conditionally permanent water nearby. The development included
improving springs or building earthen damns by building retaining walls or
earthen dikes within drainages. That was done with horses or mules.
As the
water was developed, cattle helped define the need for administrative fencing
by their use and movements on the land. Those fences were built not just by
property ownership, but by observing how the cattle used the lands around those
limited water sources. As time went on, long walks to water were shortened. Wildlife responded to the locations and
distribution of water alongside the livestock.
The
immensity of that human effort stretches the imagination. What those people
accomplished with limited means defies comprehension. It wasn’t magic, though.
Permanence and home, with all vested
private property rights therein, was being manifested.
Drought
Of
course, the rest of the story was eventually revealed.
The
longer-term fear of drought took an ominous if not unexpected turn. It wasn’t
just physical drought that was so dangerous. The increasing drought of
opportunity to perfect property rights became the larger obstacle.
The
eastern most 38 states were offered original rights whereas the western states
only garnered conditional rights. Title to most of the lands on those horizons and
continuing today were held by the United States. Western citizenry was never
offered the basic right to create its own economy and contribute to the
reduction of national debt (both of which were used as basic criteria for
statehood among the equal states).
History will show this departure
has had a huge impact on many things including the growth of the federal
behemoth. Many are now recognizing this western phenomenon has given rise to
the environmental state that now seeks to alter the entirety of the American
model.
Sadly, they are correct.
Stephen
L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “What was an American settler
doing in the Salt Lake Basin in 1837?”
A property rights drought. I like that description. It means property rights are...drying up...being dehydrated...are scarce...being confiscated...no wonder we are parched...will our thirst ever be quenched again?
--Frank DuBois
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