Category: Cowboy

Cowboyisms, farmer proverbs and other ‘georgics’.

Bucked Off

I’m getting too old for this. Or that’s what I thought when I slowly rolled myself into the half ton as we went to gather cattle.

It all started fairly innocent. My brother and I were assembling horses for all of the kids to ride, his son and daughter and my two boys.  All told there were 12 creatures attempting to work together. If it was a military operation you’d liken it less to D-Day than to Custer’s Last Stand.

We finally got all of the kids mounted, re-assured in their anxieties and somewhat fitted into their saddles. Then my brother saddled his new horse, and only I was left.

Since my niece was riding my horse, the old campaigner Baldy, I was left to choose from the two horses left in the pen. I could take my brother’s old horse Speedlord. He was a now nearly ancient thoroughbred with more grey hair than me. I’d ridden Speedlord a few times over the years, and I remember when we missed a tight right angle to enter a gate and he fell over with myself being flung forward into the newly seeded field. Never was I so thankful for newly tilled dirt.

The other choice was none other than the fabled Strawberry Roan. My brother had recently bought him from a calf roper at an auction. In the show ring a young woman had ridden the Roan and it looked so broke that it was ‘bomb-proof’. That’s the label applied to a horse that is so tamed and trained that a bomb could go off and the horse wouldn’t be phased at all. I was naturally suspicious of the ‘bomb-proof’ claim, but I decided to go with the Roan.

The Roan stood very quietly as I saddled him and fitted the bit to his mouth. I was very attentive to his responses at each point. Would he balk at the tightening of the cinch? Would he rear back at the offer of the bit? He did none of these, standing shiverless just like his reputation claimed.

I still wanted to be careful. As I placed my weight onto the left stirrup I was ready to be flipped backwards if the horse reared, or to be off-balance if the horse lunged forward. But he didn’t move. He didn’t even shift his weight. He seemed to have been ready to accept me as a rider without any discomfort.

I swung my right leg over the saddle and let myself down onto his back. With my full weight on him I thought this would be the beginning of the rodeo if it was ever going to happen.

So for a second I waited. Nothing happened. No shivers. No nervous steps forward. At that point it was clear that either this Roan was as advertised, was completely bomb-proof, and was safe for children, or he was the most cunning critter I’d seen in a long time.

I leaned slightly to tilt the fender of my right stirrup so that I could secure my right foot. I had the relaxation of mind that comes from passing through an anxious experience without mishap. My thoughts turned to the safety of my boys and their cousins. Did I have a warm enough jacket on? I was looking forward to riding a new horse with my family on a blue sky day.

There was no way to anticipate it. It was one of the dirtiest moves I have seen. When I went to put my foot in the right stirrup, the Roan went completely vertical. His front end went straight up so high and fast that I thought he was coming over backwards in that vicious man-killing way.

I was trying to stay with him but the saddle horn had slammed hard into my sternum. He went backwards onto his haunches and I was pushed out the back of him. I couldn’t tell what happened then. He bucked on top of me and I felt a series of hammer blows come down all over me as my face was smashed down into the dirt.

He kept bucking and I crawled to the fence where my sister-in-law looked on in stunned horror. I grabbed onto the drill-stem fence and lifted myself up, turning to see that the Roan was still jump-kicking like the tenth round of the National Finals Rodeo. After he piled me he bucked to the west end of the pen, crashing into my brother’s horse then continued bucking toward the four mounted youngsters passing through them and making all of their horses offer a crow-hop or two. Only Scooter the little bomb-proof stud ignored the blustery Roan.

The bark was knocked off my nose and blood was coming out of it. I was hurt all over and I didn’t even know how bad until later on. My chest hurt, but I didn’t think my sternum was broke. Two neighbours within a few miles had broken their sternums in the last month, one from the slip of a heavy combine wrench, the other in a horrible highway crash. My chest was sore but I didn’t think I broke anything. My right knee hurt. And I had a vague soreness on my left thigh and left elbow.

I didn’t get back on. I didn’t ride. I was feeling sore and old. I chased cows in the pickup. There was still the enjoyment of watching my sons and their cousins and uncle round up the cattle. But my mind was mostly preoccupied with my aching pain and also something else.

I thought a lot about mercy as I motored behind the cows. God was full of mercy to me that afternoon. I could have broken my sternum. Or I could have been paralyzed at the neck. Or I could have been killed while my sons watched. The fact that I was puttering around in the truck was evidence of God’s great mercy to me.  As the old prophet Jeremiah said, “his mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3.22-23).

I knew more clearly than the pain in my chest that God had not given me what I deserved, but instead had continued to give me good things that I didn’t deserve. Even for a pastor who preaches about the grace and mercy of God every Sunday I still had things to learn. And on that afternoon, I was expertly schooled by a powerful sermon ‘preached’ to me by God through that Strawberry Roan.

A Worldview Against the West

The author of the Hank, the Cowdog children’s stories wrote an article for American Cowboy on ‘political correctness’ and how that worldview sees the West. In our cultural moment, John Erickson’s article highlights the differences in worldview that are becoming inescapable.

Erickson writes:

It took me a while to figure out the obvious, that there are people in the entertainment business whose decisions are driven by ideology, not by experience or artistic judgment. And some of those people just don’t like the West I was describing—which I knew to the bone; which they might have seen through an airplane window at 30,000 feet.  

They don’t like the history of the frontier. They don’t like cattle or beef. They don’t like people who pray before a meal. They don’t approve of anyone who might spur a horse or rope a calf, and they sure don’t approve of women who stay home to raise their children. Maybe they don’t approve of marriage either.

I think that Erickson is pretty accurate as a recent Calgary Herald column gives evidence of the ‘dislike.’

But as we consider what our greatest need is, it is not for the culture of the West, as much as I personally love it. It is rather the culture of the new city and new world order established by the King of Kings, Jesus Christ.  If your world isn’t governed by this King, then who are you choosing?

“at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”.  (The Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Church at Philippi, chapter 2, verses 10-11).

 

See the rest of John Erickson’s article at: American Cowboy

On Harvest

Credit: Wikipedia, Public Domain
Credit: Wikipedia, Public Domain

In the West we are full of the limitlessness of possibility. In what sector of society do we not feel entitled to growth? No matter where we look, growth is sought at any cost. Stock markets climb artificially. College students grades inflate. Credit card debt finances disposables. Sexual promiscuity leaps distant hurdles. If there is ignorance of the inevitable in our age, how much more do we need the saying, “you shall reap what you sow.”

No Tree Keeps Climbing

What is forgotten in all of this growth is that the design of growth is fruition. There is no such thing as a tree that climbs unceasingly to the sky. At a certain point the growth ends, and the growth becomes ripe. Although growth may be spectacular and rapid, there will always be a fruition, and a ripening of it. In other words, all growth has an end to it.

Wheat and Weeds

I have seen this difference between growth and ripeness in the stages of crop life. It’s always good to go back to the source of a metaphor to be reminded of what the metaphor is all about.

When the first blades of wheat break through the soil after planting, they are green and virile. Yet beside the wheat, there is another green plant, the wild oat. In the early stages, wild oats and wheat are almost indistinguishable. They both are green. They both grow. Rapidly. But later on, as growth comes to ripeness, it is clear what is wheat or weed.

The Harvest of Wicked Growth

Growth of immorality, ignorance, exploitation, and greed cannot be commended simply because there is a positive expansion in comparison to what is past. This kind of growth will come to a fruition of ripe disaster, collapse, ruin and destruction.

Harvest Reckoning

As the apostle Paul told the Galatians, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” (Galatians 6.7). Our society is in large part deceived. We presume to mock God. But God will not be mocked. He knows that harvest-time is right around the corner. Then the wheat and the weeds will be shown for what they are. As Jesus said in his parable about harvest:

“Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” (Matthew 13.30).

New Spurs

What do you give a seven year old for his birthday? Video games and electric gadgets? This year my wife picked up a guitar for our son. Even though one of the other boys gave away the surprise within a half hour of getting it home, the seven year old was delighted with the guitar, crooning like a campfire chorister.
The guitar was more than enough. But I had wanted to buy him something for his budding horsemanship. He had been learning to ride on my big old horse, Baldy. The more he rode Baldy, the more it was his horse, not mine. Since he pretty much had my horse in hand, I decided to buy him a pair of spurs.

The spurs I picked out had no silver inlay, or scroll work. There was no lady’s leg shank or Mexican rowels. No jingle bobs. They were shiny plate forged smooth by a select Mandarin factory. They had small goldish rowels in a sunburst pattern more than a star’s. They were like the chrome trim of a 57 Chevy with the accelerator of a 67 Chevelle. All of this for only $14.95.

Well, the seven year old tried them out. We went for a ride out in the pasture. He rode Baldy and I rode the magpie-looking Paint. The spurs worked well. He didn’t use them much which is the best way to use them.

So we rode dodging the thistle and the gopher towns and keeping to the hardgrass until we reached the barbed wire. We rode parallel to the fence, enjoying ourselves and our expansive freedom from restraint and care. Then the wind started to blow a bit. As we neared the fenced corner, the seven year old’s horse turned. He reined in the horse as well as he could. He pulled. Hard. But there was no stopping Baldy as he pranced and bolted toward the horses to the south. I was ten feet too far to stop him. The seven year old wisely turned and bailed off, trying to protect himself like he had been shown in the steer riding.

The boy got up from the ground. His little arm was folded in half. Three breaks. I guess when you give new spurs you can expect new casts.

Alone with God Outside Eden Valley

I set out this morning throwing books and bags and breakfast into the cab of the truck like a Ponzi schemer the day after the cheques bounced.

I knew I needed to work today. I mean really work. The kind of work that sheeptenders are to do. Not just the public work of preaching and meddling. But the solo work. They pray, read, write, preach to themselves and pray some more. I knew I needed to get away from the crowds for a bit just like Jesus did.  I needed to be free from my phone, my email and even for a few hours, my family. My wife (wise woman she is) agreed to this adventure and commissioned me with a protein smoothie and a Stanley thermos full of bulletproof coffee– two spoons of butter, one of coconut oil and a strong batch of Kicking Horse.

I knew that I wanted to work. And part of that work is writing. So I sized up the endgate of the F-350 for a desktop. Then I grabbed the faded green plastic stacking chair and tossed it in the truck bed. Instantly I had a universally mobile work station equipped with four wheel drive. Who needs ergonomics when you’ve got diesel.

I threw in my tin plate Macbook, a commentary on the book of Genesis, a gilded edge leather bible, a Walmart Moleskine knockoff and my possibles bag. I piled them all together inside an old plastic milk crate. It was faded green to match the green chair, though not by design. And sure, it wasn’t a trendy backpack, but at least it had handles.

So I kissed my wife and hugged my boys and rolled through the ranch gate headed for the hills. Johnny Cash reverberated in the cab with the diesel engine cracking and wheezing and I broke West for Longview and beyond. I stopped in at the store to buy some famous Longview beef jerky  from the Korean lady but I saw no need to buy fireworks. I pedalled the Ford until it wheezed on towards the valley and past the cowboy aristocracies. The Rio Alto was there, much the same as it was in 1883 before the rails came. I kept going past other places I’d seen or known. I saw another ranch belonging to the family of a high school buddy. I had branded cattle there many moons ago. We were quick and the days were slow then. Now it’s the other way.

I drove on towards the Eden Valley Native reserve where the descendants of the first nations continue to fight the old demons while scraping a living in the new world.  There must be a parable there somewhere from another Eden’s valley, ancestors and the consequence of the past. I recalled the report that the name of the Nazarene is known there, offering hope and healing from the oppression of the past, and the present. I hear more parables.

Near the reserve I pulled into an abandoned campsite on the floodplain of the Upper Highwood. I backed up to a picnic table that had been upside down in the flood a year ago. I dropped the tailgate, unpacked the milk crate and set up my field office like a colonel on campaign. With my Steve Jobs typewriter unfolded and my steel green thermos I felt like there was something of Hemingway in it, but there was nothing courageous or concise to make it so.

I found some certainties there as I settled into camp. One bit of clarity concluded is that the steady splash of the river relaxes and readies the mind in a way that no coffee shop or Feng Shui office could. The other certainty came to me as I went to work, praying and writing and praying. I was busy like the water yet alone with the disturbance of the Creator whose significance of glory gives the elasticity of peace. I was alone with God outside Eden Valley, a wonderfully and terribly impelling solitude for a non-nine-to-fiver like me.