"We are limited as much by the fences we construct around others as by
the ones we build around ourselves."
Welcome.....
I reckon the first thing I should do is answer the most common question.
"Are you a real cowboy?"
The answer depends on your frame of reference. Tell me what you think.
For me, the answer lies not in the obvious, though signs are there, but in the areas often neglected in this time and place. The cowboy is a combination of American legend and fact. With a few possible exceptions, I believe he is unique in history. For the Cowboy represents, not a people, but an idea.
An idea that was born in a life of hard work and hard play. An idea shaped primarily by the image we have of him from countless movies, most of them bordering on the absurd, a few touching the truth. Is this good, or bad? Is it even relevant, has not the idea transcended the reality? Ponder this, as you go forward.
I am West Texan, born and bred on the Llano Estacado. This land tends to give its people a unique view on the world. It is high and dry, but most of all, flat. It is a place of limitless vistas, where sunrises and sunsets encompass the entire world in their glory. I think, in this, it is only matched by those seen at sea. But, where the sea uses water to add rainbows to the pallet, the high plains has dust. Dust that ads color to the sky in ways those who haven't seen it cannot imagine. A Navaho blanket may be the closest thing you might recognize. There, dust serves another purpose as well. Through its regular presence, the land becomes a part of its inhabitants. To some, it is a poison, to the majority, a connection. It is that connection that I cannot, would not, break. I was formed on the high plains, the dust and smells of cotton, wheat, milo, fresh turned earth, and cattle are as much a part of me as the fingers that put these thoughts to page. Though I chose to leave the path of the land, it calls me ever to it. The broiling sun and frigid north wind seem so much more inviting than fluorescent lighting and office politics. This call has yet to dim.
This land creates a people who dream large, for horizons are limitless. To see the next place on a journey is expected, as are the storms that may appear from nowhere to challenge and test. Visitors complain that there is nothing to see, that the openness is an emptiness that wearies the soul. We smile, and bid them well as they pass through. For the native sees, not things, but life. History, in the irregular scattering of trees in the distance, signs of homes made and lives lived in this place. The future, in the growing crops and scattered lines of diesel exhaust plumes, the dreams of those who still tend this land. It is this sight which sets us apart, it creates within us a desire to leave our mark upon the world. In this place, we do not know limits less than those that God placed upon the world. We have a concept of freedom and independence that relatively few understand. For in a limitless place, can anything other than freedom be comprehended? Free and independent, yes, but at the same time, we have a sense of interdependence that is also unique. For in this open place, anything might happen. Help might be needed at unexpected times and places. Here, everyone is a friend, or at least a potential friend. Here alone do we wave at everyone we meet on the road. Be it at slow speed on a narrow dirt track, or racing down an interstate, every individual is acknowledged. Their existence valued in some manner. And through this, comes a sense of responsibility. The idea that life and people are to be cherished. That honor is something to be lived, not just spoken of. That the concept of loving your neighbor is something to be practiced not simply preached.
This is who I am. Though many other things have gone into my making, this is my foundation. The things that do not set well upon it, are shaken off, discarded. For it does not allow deceit or double mindedness. In this open space, such things cannot be hidden, even from oneself.
Now then, as to a cowboy? Perhaps by now, you realize that to me it is an attitude toward life that looks beyond the horizons of most. I do wear boots all the time, and a hat a hat pretty darn often. But anyone can do that.
Although I have done many, not all, of the things he mentions not doing, a good definition of a "real cowboy" can be found below.
