Shirley Joan Rice Wilmeth

Editor notes: For time frame clarification, this was submitted to be published on Sunday, but for various reasons I was unable to post until today.

Hitting the Tops

Shirley Joan Rice Wilmeth

Look to the Horizons

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            This has been a hard week.

            For those close enough to watch these empty clouds and endure the back to back 106° days, the subject and the verb of this long sentence can be filled in with equal measure. The seemingly endless drought is rearing its ugly head once again.

            All across our landscape it is much the same.

            The report from Otero Mesa indicates something better change soon or the feed wagon will need to be cranked up. The only outcome of that course of action will be selling early and selling deep.

            On Mogollon Creek, a bit of relief finally arrived only to see temperatures hit the century mark. At that elevation, the real feel beats our 106°.

            Just above the lower Gila Box on Anderson Road, the early morning temperatures bely what the afternoon brings. A jacket, which feels good on a four-wheeler early, gets shed as soon as the Gila bottom is left. Then, it gets hot enough to expand Pima bowls.

            On the Mangus, ten acres of hay was laid down in a simple dare to the clouds not to look down and act. Dadgum them anyway.

            Then, there is Frank at the Point of Rocks east of Springer telling me his grama grass looks like a lawn. Ah, northeastern New Mexico, where were you when the rest of us threw our hats in the ring and wished for a chance to ranch?

            Hitting the Tops

            All but one of these folks will be with us tomorrow (but she’s welcome at our fire anytime).

            Their presence will be as much honored as it is needed. We will gather at the Mesa Cemetery at Cliff. That setting can best be described as hallowed ground. It is where familiar names are etched into granite head stones spread across three acres. So many I’ve never met, but I know them and know them fairly well.

            It isn’t hard to find where they rest even after lapses in visits.

There is one who crossed the Gila 136 years ago this coming month just a few miles north with a wagon filled with his family, the extent of his worldly possessions and followed by his little herd of cattle branded 916, left rib. His legacy can best be measured by the number of grandsons that would have to squeeze to fit a wide-angle picture if they were mounted and spread abreast in his memory.

His direct descendants surround him on three sides. Four of them along with their mother were the family in that wagon.

Another came riding in one day four years later on the same, seemingly endless trail with only one outrider and another herd. His cattle were branded with a take off of one of the most famous early brands in Texas. His PIT differed only by one letter from the road brand, PAT, of his former boss, another native son of Illinois that Texas cattlemen will remember by his sir name, Goodnight.

The owner of the PIT eventually married one of the two little girls that crossed the Gila following that aforementioned wagon.

There are many others that came in 1879, 1880, 1900, and dates well into the 20^th century as they arrived by migration or by birth. Each had a story. Each became a feature that endures if nothing more than the permanence of this resting place.

Shirley Joan Rice Wilmeth

The surroundings of Mesa Cemetery can be best described as horizons.

I never tire of the immensity of that view. It is home. I no longer live there, but it will forever be home. The fundamental beliefs, the political opinions, the mannerisms and figures of speech, and the myriad of human expressions and interpretations that make me who I may or may not be have their genesis there. The people of greatest impact are indistinguishable from the landscape. That will only be added to by the solemn occasion that this day brings.

An era is ending.

Of course, there is family and family in growing abundance, but the link from then to now is more straight line. It began with those early arrivals, and it expanded in the form of great great grandparents, then great grandparents, then grandparents, then my mother, and then the remaining two of us who form the concluding link in our maternal lineage.

Our mother, Shirley Joan Rice Wilmeth, is joining her departed loved ones, those people who set the standards and the benchmarks that make this place so special. We will lay her gently into a family section near the edge of the mesa. Words will be said, prayers will be offered, and traditions will be honored.

Jesus Christ will be present along with the fulfillment of His blessings.

Look to the Horizons

The formalities will end.

The grieving will ebb and flow. My father, ever more fragile, will be our main concern. The two of them were together 72 years. That alone describes the human saga that this occasion brings together.

Then, there will be the touching of family and friends. Conversation and remembrance will prevail. The grieving, its ebb and flow, will again dance in and out of the fellowship. The pressure to move on to the next portion of the COVID shortchanged process will build, and it will eventually take precedence, but the urge to linger will also remain.

It will grow stronger.

She is now with those souls who are indistinguishable from this landscape. Even the rocks of the mesa that make the digging difficult must be part of the epoch. They must represent the challenges she faced, we face, and they faced.

This is a good story.

In self-reflection, the horizons will be viewed with a somewhat different perspective this day. It includes an inward glance.

It doesn’t need to be shared, but …  it does have an ending.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico.