You are on my hero list.
Who boy. Hard one to live up to.
I am a romantic about Western land. To wit, I give you Palmer, Wyoming. The land leading up to it was part of the Hole in the Wall gang’s hide out network. The land there— or in places where you can hear thunder roll down canyons like stories of Paul Bunyan’s barrels—looks and smells of a vast freedom whose throttling we are witnessing.
I passed through a town in S. Dakota that had an auction going on—at a hardware store that had outfitted pioneers. It had been open since those days and had all manner of things.
I have also been fortunate to see wagon ruts from long ago. On the prairie.
These things are at stake. The Bundy situation reminds me of seeing the occasional cow that wanders off open range. On a highway. You stop up ahead and tell the first person you see about it, who promptly goes to see about the cow.
These images of leather and rope, of the smells and feelings of the West, are part of our heritage. These are to be turned into refuges for insects and reptiles? Solar farms littered like cement sun lasers? Stripped of human presence for the sake of human greed?