Category Archives: Rural Life

Night Horse

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One of the entertainers we’ve invited to Shooting the West this year is Brenn Hill, a singer/songwriter out of Hooper, Utah. My favorite song he sings is “Night Horse”, written by fellow cowboy Chuck Pyle. The song describes what can happen when cattle stampede in the dark. The cowboys mount up in a hurry and run with the herd until the cattle tire. Then, if they’re lucky, they can turn the herd back toward home.

But finding home can be a tricky proposition when you’re too far away to see the campfire and all around you it’s black as cats. So the chorus of the song tells the cowboys …

Turn it over to your night horse

Let him bring you back on home to the fire.

Now your night horse probably isn’t the flashiest horse in the remuda, but it’s the one with a sixth sense about where he is, and where he’s supposed to be. As Chuck Pyle says about one such horse …

He must use somethin’ other than his eyes

Whatever birds fly south on

I guess that’s what he counts on

Little Joe could carry me through to sunrise.

I once had a horse I could trust like that. He was black, with a white star on his forehead. Every time I hear the Night Horse song, I think of that old gelding. When I imagine riding through a dark night, miles from home, it’s not my horse’s abilities I question. It’s my own. Could I give the horse his head and lean back in the saddle? There’s always the temptation, as soon as I’m not certain of the direction things are heading, to snatch up those reins again. You know what I mean?

I’ve been working on that. It says on the quarter in my pocket, “In God We Trust.” That takes more practice than I care to admit, but I do realize the value in trusting someone other than oneself — beyond oneself. God makes a good night horse. Chuck Pyle’s song reminds me I’m not alone on the journey. When I trust, the reins lay slack.

(The illustration comes from a rubber stamp I picked up a few years ago. Thanks to “MD,” whoever you are.)

Shopping with the Madame

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Brothels are legal in most rural Nevada counties. The bordellos are fairly discrete, often tucked away on a dead end street. Even in a small town you may not notice the red light district. But I’ve run into the madame at the grocery store a few times — even sporting girls have to eat.

You might wonder how to tell an off-duty madame from any other shapely middle-aged woman. The most obvious clue is if she looks vaguely like her picture in the local yellow pages. No kidding. A few years back the full-page ads under “Brothels” were hard to miss in our phonebook. Of course, in real life, a madame’s face might look a decade older than the picture. In fact, even under generous make-up, her face might look a decade older than the rest of her body. No one ever claimed the world’s oldest profession was easy on a gal.

The next clue might be if she’s dressed to show off her well-proportioned figure in ways that seem a bit racy for a rural town. We’re not talking Las Vegas-over-the-top-glamor. Just boots with a heel a little thinner and higher than most women would wear to go grocery shopping. Or jeans a size tighter than a real cowgirl could tolerate astride a horse. And of course there’s the cleavage.

But the indicator I find the most interesting is how the experienced checkers act around the madame. This is a dead giveaway. The checkers treat a madame with an uncharacteristic formal distance. Their interaction is all business. They don’t joke around with the madame, or chit-chat, or ask her how her day’s been going. None of the usual friendly banter. This change in their manner is enough to alert the next person in line that something is up. And there’s a quality about the interaction that seems timeless, as if this is the way that the working women have been treated in small Western towns since the Gold Rush. Or at least it’s one of the ways they’ve been treated — I’m sure there’s been far worse.

The madame pays for her groceries and heads out the door as the sun sets. Almost time to go to work. I watch her walk across the parking lot, curious about what kind of car she drives. Curious about how a life lived so differently can intertwine with mine and it doesn’t seem so strange — and then it does seem very strange.

I’m relieved when the checker turns to me with a smile, starts unloading my shopping cart and asks how my day’s been. I can stop thinking about the madame and her next shift. But later that night, under a sleepless moon, I wonder if I’m cut out to be a Nevadan. My feminine soul has a tough time making peace with this economic need for sacrificial lambs.

Stock Dog Saves Cell Phone

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We have a Border Collie named Switch who came from a sheep ranch outside Yerington, Nevada. He’s a big, rough-coated dog who is fearless when it comes to herding animals ten times his size. But let a horsefly get within twenty feet of him and he runs for his dugout under the porch. Poor guy. Somehow those horseflies find the tender skin under his hind legs and inflict horrible, nasty bites. Switch hates anything that buzzes.

I don’t know if you folks keep your cell phones this long, but my husband has an old relic that just won’t quit. First, its screen went blank. Then the ringer gave out. If he set it on vibrate, and kept it in his pocket, he might catch an incoming call. He limped along like this until one day the phone turned up missing. I helped him look for it. I called his phone and put my ear next to the laundry basket. I listened for it in every room, inside the truck cab, out in the garage. No luck.

Several days went by. We were about to give up and buy a new phone, but we tried calling it one last time. I happened to be looking out the window when Switch dashed from the patio and disappeared. Hmmmmm … I went out the back door and looked around. There sat the phone, on top of the barbecue, buzzing like a fiend.

Bustin’ Loose

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This metal sculpture stands on a bluff overlooking Highway 20 a little west of Burns, Oregon. The BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro corrals are just out of sight behind the hill. I always watch for this spot every time we visit family for the holidays. Last week, I snapped this picture through the truck window. (No way I was rolling down that window — it was about 14 degrees out there!)

I like how the mustang looks to be bustin’ out of captivity. I hope you do the same in the New Year.

 

Christmas in the Great Basin

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In December, the Great Basin makes do with a meager palette. I often drive the better part of a day across the frigid “sagebrush ocean” to be with family in Central Oregon for the holidays. Hundreds of miles go by with only a wintry blue sky, the dark brown of volcanic rocks and dormant trees, faint suggestions of green on sage and juniper, wistful tan on the occasional wind-blasted building, and white skiffs of drifted snow. But every so often there’s a settlement — and the color red.

A few years ago, I came across this cheery wreath in Crane, Oregon.

 

Cute Little Varmints

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Some of my neighbors give me a bad time because I deport my pack rats. But seriously, could you off one of these little guys? I can’t. They drive me up the wall, but I still go to the trouble to live trap them and release them back into the wild — way downstream.

There are times this practice gets out of hand. Six rats, six mornings in a row can try my patience, but I suspect there are reasons to keep one’s pack rat karma in the black. For one thing, pack rats keep away mice. It’s some kind of territorial thing. This service is no small matter. In an old funky cabin, given the choice between twenty mice or one pack rat, you might decide to go with the lower density rodent.

On the other hand, one pack rat can take up the odiferous, audio, and psychological space of five teenagers. Their pee stinks, they stay up all night banging around, and they swipe stuff and don’t put it back. They’re hard to live with — especially in a small space.

So this morning I loaded up Bushy-tailed Wood Rat #68 and released her several miles down canyon. It’s a nice spot, along the creek, no human habitations for miles. Occasionally, it crosses my mind that the rats loop around through the sage, beat me to the truck, jump up on an axle and catch a ride back. After all the time we’ve spent together, I wouldn’t put it past them.