Cowboys, Mythical and Otherwise

By Joan McCarter, 6-13-08

He simply did what had to be done ... It would be easy, he told himself, to throw everything overboard and disclaim any responsibility. All he had to do was saddle up and ride out of the country. It sounded easy, but it was not that easy, even if a man could leave behind his sense of guilt at having deserted a cause. To be a man was to be responsible. It was as simple as that. To be a man was to build something, to try to make the world about him a bit easier to live in for himself and those who followed. You could sneer at that, you could scoff, you could refuse to acknowledge it, but when it came right down to it, [Conagher] decided it was the man who planted a tree, dug a well, or graded a road who mattered.

That’s Louis L’Amour, describing Conagher, the title character of one of his novels. That description, argues Jeffrey Lockwood in the cover story for the current edition of High Country News exemplifies why we still need the Cowboy Myth to solve not only the problems facing us in the region, but the nation.

Many well-meaning efforts to make sense of the West’s past and future misunderstand the meaning of Myth and risk aggravating social and environmental problems. I propose that we grasp the rich nature and complex role of these stories, rather than simply tossing out our cultural legacy and groping for whatever new perspective is most in fashion. We might find that our problems could be effectively addressed if we took seriously the Cowboy Myth. Many Western states are faced with the same challenges: How do we respond to the widening gulf between the rich and poor? What should we do about the high rates of drug abuse and suicide? How do we handle urban sprawl and uncontrolled development? Who should bear the costs and reap the benefits of mineral extraction? How do we foster viable livelihoods consistent with our cultural character and natural environment? Perhaps Conagher provides the answers we need.

I have to admit that I automatically bristle when the notions of “cowboy” and “politics” come together these days. After eight years of hearing the term (wrongly) applied to the would-be Texan who occupies the Oval Office, I’m more than a little defensive about the whole idea of cowboys. Particularly since this one would rather be on a mountain bike than a horse on his “ranch,” the former pig farm in Texas. Cowboy in the context of George W. Bush has come to me a kind of macho, go it alone and damn the consequences adventurism, informed more by testosterone than by intellect.

See, I’m the granddaughter of a cowboy. A real one, one of the last ones to ride the open range in Idaho and Montana at the turn of the last century. Thus, I’m just a little proprietary about the idea. So I approached Lockwood’s essay with trepidation. But Lockwood comes to praise the cowboy, or at least what he calls the Cowboy Myth, and his understanding of what being a cowboy means: honesty, compassion, self-reliance.

Applied to leaders and citizens in the contemporary West, this means we must take responsibility for ourselves and one another, blaming nobody else for our problems and relying on ourselves for the solutions. As candidates aspire to public office, we must ask if they ride “for the brand”—for the people. Leaders must be autonomous and possess a sense of duty to craft programs, laws and policies on behalf of the public, rather than allow mineral companies or real estate developers to define and (maybe) solve the problems. At a national level, perhaps what we need in the White House is an authentic Cowboy (not to be mistaken for a president who saddles up for corporations and rides away from his role while fostering economic suffering, environmental degradation and international terrorism).

Which is all very lovely, but the problem is, he’s still relying on a Louis L’Amour filtered concept of cowboy. As much as I love the Myth, and as many times as I’ll watch Lonesome Dove and True Grit over and over again, Louis L’Amour and John Wayne just don’t cut the mustard for role models in a troubled world.

See, most kinds of battles most cowboys had to fight weren’t battles of good vs. evil. They weren’t having exciting shootouts. They weren’t galloping their horses for miles under the Big Sky, chasing down the bad guys. No, the kinds of fights real cowboys waged were against the more basic forces of life and nature. The tedium of day after day of looking at a herd of bovine asses, eating their dust. Being alternately cold to the bone, or frying in the sun. Broken reins, balky horses, hard biscuits, and bad accidents.

These, at least, are the things that my Grandpa talked about it in his declining years, when I remember him. Grandpa left home in 1904, when he was still in his early teens. By the time he was 17 he drew top hand wages from one of the biggest cow outfits in the state of Idaho, but not before turning his hand at sheepherding (the beginning of his lifelong enmity to all things sheep-related), putting up hay, dam building, logging and doing whatever he had to do to keep body and soul together between jobs ahorseback.

Grandpa was modest--he didn’t approve of Grandma ever wearing any red clothing, as that’s the color fast women wore. He chewed tobacco his entire life, but his only other vice was ice cream. He took impeccable care of his stock and his tools. He always had three pair of Levis that he kept in careful rotation: one pair for outside work, the pair he changed into when he came into the house, then the “good” pair for dress up. None of them could ever be washed. When the outside pair reached the end of its lease on life, he bought a new pair and rotated the other two down a notch. He never saw the need for more than those three pair of Levis. At Christmas time, the first present he’d open would be the book, and he would immediately set to reading, letting the rest of the presents sit, unopened, indefinitely. Or until his grandkids pestered him into opening them.

He kept one rifle, and used it only when necessary--acts of mercy with injured stock or the rare problem predator. He didn’t believe in pesticides or chemical fertilizers, and much preferred his team to the tractor. He’d been ruined by a bank closing on him right after he’d made the deposit after the one year that he turned a truly healthy profit as a cowman. That pre-FDIC experience, and probably also being raised in the household of one of Idaho’s first legislators, a populist, cemented him as a Roosevelt Democrat.

He was always there to help a neighbor, but would take sometimes irrational positions on a person, deciding for no discernible reason that they were good for nothing. Self-reliance wasn’t a virtue, but a necessity. He and Grandma taught their children, my father and aunts, the lessons I learned growing up. That you’re capable of more than you think you are. To finish your chores and clean up after yourself (a lesson that still occasionally escapes both Dad and me). That a little bit of dirt won’t kill you and if you don’t get back on that horse, you’re done for.

And the phrase I hear again and again in my head when approaching something that I’d just as soon put off a bit: “There’s no time like the present.”

There’s not a whole lot of glamor in any of that, and it hardly competes with Western romance in print and on screen. But I think it’s far more instructive image of the cowboy way to have in mind when facing the kinds of challenges the 21st century is going to pose. There isn’t going to be much glamor in getting out of this recession, in dividing up and preserving as much of our precious resources as we can, in trying to keep the best of what’s left in the region. Figuring all this out might only be slightly more pleasant that eating cows’ dust for a couple hundred miles.

We don’t need the Myth of the Cowboy to guide us. We need the reality of the cowboy.

Editor’s note: Joan McCarter’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.