Zombies, Roy Rogers, and the Old West

I’ve been humbled since my last post. Dragged back from my nostalgia and reverie about “the West as I knew it” to the West of today. I was ushered back as Patty Limerick’s class discussed the reading I quoted last time. The one by Dick Lamm about the death of the West. Inviting us to think critically about that sort of nostalgia (“elegy,” she called it), Patty pointed out that the West has not, in fact, died. “Who are we,” she asked, “Zombies?” And as for White settlers being likened to latter-day Indians, she pointed out not only that genocide is not comparable to the loss of farmland (which, thankfully, I had also noted) but also that the Indians are not gone. How dare we, she implied, invisibilize them further by declaring them extinct? Ditto ranchers.

Thus was I reawakened to the world of revisionist history. I had succumbed to the romantic idealization of the “true West,” the “old West,” which is based on what Limerick is fond of calling “the myth of the West”—the great frontier and the grand adventure that ended … when? The story line centering on the “death of the West,” she noted, began back in the 1830s—almost 200 years ago—when the fur trappers declared that the West was lost, dead, because settlers were moving into the frontier. Then, it “died” again when cattle ranchers took over the West from the farmers. And again when industrialization took over the towns and turned them into cities, took over the wagon trails and replaced them with railroads and then highways. Again when the search for energy began to consume the desert canyons and mountaintops.

It’s all part of the so-called settler society. It’s always been layered, one group following upon another, each thinking that their experience was the true West and that it was lost to invasion by the next. My personal experience with this progression centers around Moab, Utah, in the 1970s and 80s, when you could hear the resentment of local “natives”—descendants of farmers and miners—as they railed against the hikers and environmentalists … and then more recently as those very hikers and environmentalists rail against the mountain bikers and t-shirt shops.

Well, unless we’re Zombies, this is the West. For now. Enter Patty Limerick’s Roy Rogers Hypothesis: “Western reality and the myth of the West are entirely intertwined. You cannot understand one without the other.”

Back to my comeuppance. The irony of my (uncritical) embrace of Lamm’s nostalgic, romantic, elegiac view of the West is not that it was “wrong.” It’s that I know better than to think that it’s right. The sort of “deconstruction” that this class encourages—the practice of looking for what’s missing, who’s telling the story, who benefits from this view over other views, what’s hidden behind the obvious story line—is exactly what I did in my own field before I retired. But lo and behold, when it came to a topic this close to my heart (and so distant, apparently, from my scholarly instincts), I forgot to do it.

The requirement that I find enough psychological distance from this topic to consider it more critically changed my whole relationship to this class. Now I’m really a student again.

Cows?

You may wonder why I’m starting a blog with a (small, dark, somewhat blurry) picture of cows at sunset. Sure, the sunset is beautiful, but couldn’t I have picked a better foreground scene? Or a better picture? Well, as it turns out, I was actually thinking about cows as I drove past this little herd this evening, so it seemed a perfect opening shot. Here’s why:

I’m taking an amazing class from an amazing woman at CU. The class is “The American West,” and it’s being taught by Patty Limerick, arguably the smartest and funniest cultural historian of the American West on the planet. CU has this great “Senior Auditors” program that lets any old person sit in on virtually any class, as long as it’s not full of tuition-paying students. I got lucky and squeezed into this one.

The topic called to me because the West is my home. I’ve lived here all my life, with the exception of graduate school and one other sojourn around the country. I feel like I have a soul-deep relationship with the West. I’ve explored huge swaths of it by car, on foot, on skis, on snowshoes, by bike, by camper, and by canoe. Still, in the first few weeks of this class, I’ve learned more about the West than I even knew. By far. Besides, Patty’s humor and broad knowledge make every class (and even the handouts) a total kick. Recently, she challenged the students to support the argument that CU should have the cow instead of the bison as its mascot … which is why I was thinking about cows driving home.

Lots of what I’m learning goes beyond sheer content, slipping into what some folks have called “revisionist history” or “critical history.” Instead of just a review of people and events, this approach really examines the deeper meanings of what was going on and listens to the voices of people who usually aren’t heard (i.e., voices other than White men being politicians and soldiers). It also challenges long-held assumptions about the nature of the West and its popular portrayals.

Even though only three weeks have passed, I couldn’t begin to list all the mind-bending things I’ve encountered. Let me just highlight a few themes. 

• Question on day 1: What counts as “the West” anyhow? Is it defined by geography? Is Los Angeles part of the West? Is Hawaii? Is it defined by culture? Is Texas more West than, say, Oregon? What makes the West different from other sections of the country? Wilderness? Water (or lack thereof)? Open spaces? Cowboys? Buffalo? Sparse population? If it’s any of those, is it still the West if water is piped in, the Buffalo disappear (or exist only in captivity), open spaces are filled with developments and traversed by highways, and the only “cowboys” are country western singers? Or is it simply the nation’s dumping ground—for people (Indian reservations) and nuclear wastes (Yucca Mountain). And whatever your response to these questions, why? 

• The West has always represented two very different visions, two urges: the longing for wilderness, adventure, unbounded freedom … and the striving to conquer that wilderness. That was true during the westward movement. The “frontier” was wild and dangerous, until it became valuable, and then the cowboys and gunslingers, gold miners and settlers, ranchers, cattle barons, and farmers moved in. The standard story line of Westerns—peaceful little town saved from villainous thugs by the noble lawman—reflects the real-life battle between those who wanted freedom and adventure (gunslingers, cowboys) and those who wanted law and order (towns folks). Some people wanted open range (freedom) others wanted fences, farming, and towns (wilderness conquered). And the conflict persists today. We crave open space, remote wilderness where we can “escape from it all.” But recently, even that remaining remote wilderness has been increasingly paved and developed and populated. Partly by people (still) wanting to “get away from it all”—to find “wilderness” among the manicured lawns and paved walking paths. But mostly by economic interests who found something valuable in the land to conquer. 

• A very huge portion of land in the West (but not in the East) is federally owned. Much of the land that’s farmed, much of the land where cattle are raised, much of the land where minerals are extracted is federal land. Those economic activities take precedence over recreation, over environmental concerns, even over social and cultural values. The ones that make the biggest bucks (mining) take precedence over the less profitable ones (farming, ranching). Put those together, and you have a West that is rapidly being eaten up by energy interests and the cities that support those interests. And the highways and railroads that connect those cities. So now what counts as “the West”? 

• Familiar portrayals in “Western” movies and books notwithstanding, the West was (and still is) an extremely politicized place. Lots of what we “learned” about the West happened right around the Civil War, though you’d never know it, and the history of the West was deeply shaped by that war. Jesse James and his gang, for instance, were outlaws regarded as heroes because they were seen as standing up for the dying South and against the corporate, industrializing North. The other major conflict was between the West, with its frontier mentality, and the Northeast, with its industrializing, corporate frame of mind. Train/bank robbers were seen by some as heroes because they challenged the “incorporation” of the West and by others as villains because they interfered with the imposition of the new industrialized social order. 

• The (mis)treatment of the West and Westerners—especially ranchers and farmers—at the hands of the East and Easterners, both in the “old West” and more recently, has been equated by some to the treatment of the Indians by White settlers moving west. In each case, the people who were on the land were summarily moved off, their lands confiscated, and their lives discounted in the name of “progress.” In the case of White Westerners in the recent past, it has been in the name of energy development. Some Westerners who have been treated this way comment that now they know what the Indians felt like. (Not entirely, I’d say—genocide is hardly the same as losing the farm—but it's an interesting parallel.) The players are different, but the dynamic is the same—as is the direction from which the oppression has come. You begin to get an idea of why Westerners often feel like Easterners don’t understand the West—not the land and not the people.

 All of this has been thought provoking and even moving. But I think the most poignant piece I’ve read so far was the prologue of a book co-written by Colorado’s former Governor Richard Lamm. A few lines from that piece:

There was something special about the West in the 1950s and 1960s.

It was a unique and wondrous place for those who loved the outdoors, who cared about the land. Its air had an unbelievable quality. It literally sparkled. In the mornings, the mountains and desert and farmland stood out in crystal clarity. And the sun shone with a special brilliance, a counterpoint to the coolness of the mountain air.

Not many years ago, you could still catch a native trout. Float a lonesome river. You could escape the regimentation and restrictions of the civilized world.

We took it for granted drinking from a running brook … being able to camp at random, safely and in privacy … the chill feeling of space, infinity, at a mountain dawn.

We saw the West change before our eyes, but the images, the memories still linger.

This was our West.

And it is dying.

A new Manifest Destiny has overtaken America. The economic imperative has forever changed the spiritual refuge that was the West.

We know the West will never be the same again.

We understand.

But still we anguish. For the West we loved and lost.

                       

                        The Angry West: A Vulnerable Land and its Future. (1982)

by Richard D. Lamm & Michael McCarthy. Houghton Mifflin

Now, I can be about as nostalgic and anyone I know. And the West that Lamm and McCarthy write about is a version of the West I know, well. And miss. A lot.

Still, I realize, now, that there is so much more to the West, so much more to understand. And I realize how lucky I am to be taking this class.

BTW: I’m also taking part II of my Spanish class. Estoy mucho aprendiendo, pero aún no hablo español. Stay tuned ...