Bud and Skip

 

Bud and Skip

Reliance Interest

In Memory

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

 

            What 2020 wrought remains a daily and sickening reminder.

            Our corral full of weaner calves is but one example. For starters, it suggests how 3.04” of rain since July 1 simply doesn’t get it done. The resulting fallout isn’t only weaning weights, it is the manifestation of noxious weeds and daily tragedies. I am reminded of what a Kansas friend once told me about drought.

Drought always makes you a better manager if you pay attention.

Indeed, selecting cattle that weather these events is a step toward a more efficient herd, but, golly, it would be nice to celebrate sometime. Peeling back layer after layer of killing drought simply leaves the steward feeling weak and naked.

 It isn’t good for one’s psyche.

Bud and Skip

In recent days, two friends have left our ranges.

Both were known to us by affectionate monikers akin to old time cowboys who shaped the norms of even earlier times. They came to be added to the annals of Curley, Stiffy, Ace, Ick, Dick, Jiggs, Big Foot, Texas Jack, Clarke, Hap, Pinky, Hoppy, and Roy. They were woefully human, but they were shaped by what horses can do to you.

They toiled at professions, but they were cowboys at heart and the American West was their stage.

You could count on their word. It may not always be frosted with courtesies, but it was straight as a string. They were their own men and falsehoods, and nonsense, were tolerated much like idiots were treated venturing into their realm.

As life progressed, they absorbed an ever-deepening spirituality that arose with their connection to the horizons and the creation around them. In the riderless horse ceremony last Friday, that connectivity arrived in full display.

We are Westerners was the resounding theme.

Implicit in that must be certain unalienable rights, but at this juncture, the point is much more basic. They were friends. They knew that. We knew that.

We also knew something else and it is much more profound. At the end, there is a distinction. The creation shaped them and it does us, but … it is only the Creator who holds the key to eternity.

Reliance Interest

As the sign is being read, it appears this new fellow residing in the peoples’ house is more intent on dehorning the seed stock than sorting through the Corrientes. He is shutting down the federal oil patch, terminating an international treaty (Keystone XL) with an executive order, halting construction on the southern wall that has direct impact on our safety and daily life, and preparing to install climate change policies on federal range lands that will be predicated on his tripartite campaign pledges of environmentalism, social justice, and racial inequalities.

It is simply impossible to overlay the image of Sons of the American West over that agenda and come away thinking we are represented in any form or fashion. Too many interactions in our past have led us to be able to answer the test question that asks for the definition of unexplained inconsistency (in our dealings with the federal agencies).

The offering public comments for pending changes is always announced as a matter of law, but poll any oilman, rancher, miner, or timberman on federal land and odds are not a single one will be able to confirm any comment has been accepted much less interjected into policy.

 It just doesn’t happen.

In fact, the footprint of our businesses forms an ongoing war zone of political ebb and flow based on the newest occupant in the heretofore mentioned residence. History and experience have demonstrated the end result is a stepwise loss of freedoms for what the community has always maintained as inherent rights to do business in the West.

That is why the 5-4 SCOTUS vote last June is so interesting.

In Security v. Regents of University of California, the Court ruled that the administration had broken the law in doing away with the Obama era deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA). The Obama policy created a reliance interest on behalf of those young people, and, once it was established and relied upon, any change in resulting promise is accompanied by an incumbent contract to enforce.

Those children of illegals thus illegals themselves were awarded a right and the United States government was required to protect and enforce it.

Yes, the question must be asked. Why on earth, then, is there not an original right predicated on a reliance interest for these American industries on federal lands?

Give or take a decade the extractive industries of the West began operating about 1880. There was never a void of rationale in the undertakings. The oil business was and is completely reliant on oil in the ground. The rancher is completely reliant on the grass that grows from the soil. The miner is completely reliant on the target mineral he seeks in the ground, and the timberman is completely reliant on the timber that grows in the mountains west of the 100^th Meridian.

In the case of grazing, we are again and again reminded we have no right, but, rather, a privilege to graze on federal lands. Further, that mere privilege can be revoked at any time, but … a non-American can garner rights that must be enforced by the government.

In Memory

Bud and Skip were both incredulous and worried about the hyper partisanship that has infected our society. It was abundant in their conversation, in their frequent emails, and in their own personal actions as this epoch of their being neared its end.

Collectively, they stood with many others who fought the good fight, recognized and endeavored to correct personal shortcomings, and looked increasingly to a higher being. They were independent and free men who demonstrated what that really means.

They were good men, and … we must be allowed to create more like them.

 

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Friends!”