Yuh Know...

Managing Reality

 Yuh Know …

Managing Derivatives

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            He vaccinated today.

            The scene was the Howard Pens that straddles our Apache and Trail Pastures. The calves were from the first calvers that started calving the third day of March. At issue was the relatively mild days we still enjoy and the fact the calves were getting bigger.

            We need to get those calves branded, Tertius had said repeatedly.

            So, we checked with our go to crew and there were enough of them that could make the day and it was set in motion. Our only grandson and only still preteen grandchild, Aden, was ferried part way from one of America’s once great cow towns, El Paso, to spend the night. He was up well before daylight and ready to ride.

            It was a maiden voyage in his life. It was the first time he was assigned to a drive that didn’t include Grandad. With a short number of cowboys and the way the pasture lays every rider needed to cover a swath of country, so he was assigned to a group of three riders coming up the bottom of Apache Flats.

            Use your head, Aden!

            As the gather approached the south side of the corrals, cattle were coming from three directions. From a mile away, I could see he and his little yellow horse behind the main herd coming up the valley.

            He was contributing.

That continued as we first penned the herd and then started sorting calves. The pens were dusty, and he was in that cloud as he helped keep pushing cattle to the three cowboys cutting in the pens. The thought of how many little cowboys across this country were lucky enough to be participating in such a near timeless ritual came to mind.

            The modern truth is not many, and the assurance of such a future may not guarantee anything … Yuh know?

            Managing Reality

            No, I don’t know. Tell me.

            The backdrop of today’s event is immense. The sheer magnitude of the work that has taken place on this place and others over time is becoming an object of history unto itself. Certainly, its scale doesn’t equate to world events like wars or even highway projects like nearby I-10, but it is still immense. Men, largely on the basis of individual initiative, created the foundations. It took years to accomplish the work.

            Over the past two weeks, we have been repairing a boundary fence line. Steel is being added to the existing fence, and the word, attempt, should the operative word. Most of it is over solid rock. Every hole has been drilled. We have hauled a generator and a impact hammer up there with the Little Cowboy and hammered and been jerked around to the point our legs are black and blue.

            From an economic perspective, the outcome of our stepwise progress is a real-world version of spreading risk. Few people even understand such a concept, but where little decisions are made as obstacles are encountered as opposed to landscape scale projects spread homogeneously across the horizons risk is inherently reduced. If the actions prove to be wrong, little is better than big … Yuh know?

            Managing Derivatives

            I may know a little, but there are way too many people who would suggest that is nonsense.

            This is Memorial Day weekend. In virtual space, some of our time should be spent considering what yet another federal holiday means to our existence. In this case, those honored deserve the highest consideration. Think of the immensity of the sacrifice and accomplishment of fighting and winning World War II.

            We didn’t start it, but we finished it didn’t we?

            We probably would have won several more wars if the impetus was honest and the ultimate rules of engagement were reality driven, too. The point becomes our world is managed largely on the basis of derivatives rather than truths or reality. We are now managed on the basis of open space around the issue or object rather than the object itself. The guiding focus isn’t on the physical. It is relegated to the virtual just like our current existence.

            We are being convinced we can’t do the kind of things that were once commonplace. Can’t is the byline. Can’t build new highways, can’t build new water projects, can’t control our own administrative boundaries … Yuh know?

            Yuh know …

            As the first draft of calves was about finished, the realization was Aden was carrying the vaccine guns and the pour-on applicator. It wasn’t my directive, but he had been drafted. By the end of the second draft, he was dancing in there in the dust and the smoke and injecting 7-Way subcutaneously and Enforce 3 nasally.

            When a smaller calf was coming to branding iron, he was handing the guns off and flanking as well. Normally, I wouldn’t allow that because it is important to be consistent and uniform to help the entire process, but I relented. I watched with an unexpected fascination.

            When we finished, the calves were turned in with the cows to pair before we turned them back out. We then loaded everything before we broke for lunch. Cowboys and cowgirls ate in more or less a circle and visited. Without thinking about it, a recapitulation of history was being played out.

            For the moment, we controlled our surroundings and our intended task. There in the dust, there in the sun, and there in a relationship with horses and cattle that our predecessors would have understood completely, we stood.

            Aden will understand that someday … he will know.

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “As I pulled out to take Ramon to retrieve his pickup, I could see Aden through the dust coming up with riders pushing the herd out of the pens. I could hear him whistle, too. Little did he know it was the exact whistle that his great-great-great grandfather passed down to all of us.”