Going Home

136 Years and Counting

Going Home

Pass into History

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            Onward and forward …

            The skies look like the chance of rain might be better than the 40% prediction for two hours this morning. The nagging reluctance to get wet and making this cold worse is going to be given the priority so the loyal laptop and I are going to communicate for a while. After all, it is a new year and I’m throwing my vote toward a new decade, too. This business about a new decade not starting until the strike of midnight, 2021 seems like a lot of nonsense.

            Didn’t we celebrate the turn of the century at midnight, 2000?

            Going Home

            As promised, we went home yesterday.

            After making a pitstop at our highway pens to drop off a package, we looked at our herd westward on the north side of I10 for several miles. The cows have finally been rotated into the Coldiron Pasture and a good number of them were down near the right-of-way fence. Red hides stand apart from the majority black hides that now populate southwestern New Mexico.

            We’ll take the reds.

            The ranch country on toward Grant County was all viewed with high interest. Where there was rain, conditions were reasonable. Where there wasn’t makes the hope for spring annuals only more important.

            When the continental divide was passed, though, sentiment of home started to kick in. Too many cowmen will suggest northeastern New Mexico, or Buffalo, Wyoming, or the Flint Hills of Kansas have to be God’s greatest gift to cow country, but northwestern Grant County, albeit not very big, has to be a model of greatness, too.

            A reminder of what morning temperatures across most of cow country, USA were that morning compared to the temperatures in the Mangus Valley in sight of the snow covered Mogollons is full testament to the suggestion.

            Ranches worked by families of the past were called out in succession. The Turners, the Franks, the McMillens, Horace Hooker, the Fosters, Eddie Allison, one McCauley brother, the Browns, and Shelby Clark made the arrayed list in passing. Hitting the river, the farms of the now departed Brights and Harshes were passed before Lobo was crossed and the reminder that, at one time, P. M. Shelley dominated the west side of the river anchored by what is now Cliff.

            Lee and May Rice donated the land where the school stands.

            The ancient, volunteer pear tree that Nana so often picked for preserves still stands at the Y going to Gila. Then there were (once) the Howards, the Karchners, Noel Rankin, and finally Uncle Will’s. He, of course, was Tom and May’s brother, and his barn, built in 1931 by old world craftsmen and identical to the one standing just up the road at the mouth of Bell Canyon, screams of history and what the valley once was. Where the belt driven buzzsaw that Uncle Will had by the ditch for cutting firewood went is anybody’s guess.

            Then, there was Shady Bend where Grandpa Shelley moved when he started farming and established the mercantile. Nothing is left there, but memories. The continuing curve opens up to the view of the barn on Bell Canyon. That is truly home in every sense of time. It always will be.

            You can see Mogollon Baldy peeking over the ridge north of the house.

            Traveling further north, the road opens into the Rice farm where Lee and May’s headquarters has stood since the turn of last century. The old house is still there albeit in a growing, precarious condition. Only remnants of Ma’s once precious and productive orchards (yes, two) remain.

            The view from the top of the hill climbing onto the mesa is always awe inspiring. If anything, it is ever more impressive.

            For the first miles on the mesa, Rice country still prevails before Uncle Will’s ranch became, in order, Hooker and then Agnew. Terrell and Jerrell run 916 cattle on it now.

            The winding road up to the high mesa is like it always was when P. M’s descendants ran at it before shutting their engines off to see how far they could coast. Undoubtedly, Nana and Betty Blue hold the all-time records. Riding with them was taking your life in your hands.

            On the high mesa, and its backdrop against the Mogollons, spread the pastures that have eternal and mystical names of adventure and history. The George Clark Pasture, the Trivio Pasture, the Cross H Pasture and others ring in memory.

            The road at the 916 turnoff was a wet son-of-a-gun this day. Four-wheel drive was the order.

            Then, we were there.

This year the 916 Ranch, under Shelley ownership and devotion, will celebrate its 136^th anniversary. The historic place spreads out across the remaining mesa before falling off into the cavernous Mogollon Creek and the magnificence of the mountains beyond. Mogollon Baldy was aflame in snow. Shelley Peak was just at the snow line while Indian Head, 74 Mountain, and Watson were under it.

            Since the vernacular work is not in their vocabulary, dudes will invariably ask, “How on earth do you find cattle in those mountains?” The reality is only by living in the midst of it all your life and being horseback as long as you can remember is the necessary preparation for continuity and understanding of the place.

            It is bigger than life. Implicit in the prayer offered before we ate was that very suggestion. It was:

            We pray for the blessings of stability for our businesses, joy and happiness for our families, security for our churches, peace for our country, endurance for our President, and these, thy gifts, we are about to receive.

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Walt brought along his collection of Ben Lilly knives, handcrafted knives of the famous trapper and hunter who so often stopped at the 916 headquarters to pick up supplies or to drop off proof of bounty.”