So, my neighbor finally got a
ranchette. Whether it’s five acres or 40, the next step is
apparently the perfect entrance gate. Rancheteers have made these
huge gates the latest symbol of affluence in the West.
They boast uprights bigger than my house, flanked by imported
decorative boulders. The crossbar seems sometimes to be a whole
tree. The majestic sign in the middle may perpetuate some notion of
Western myth: Misty Mustang Meadow Ranch. Or the place is named for
the wildlife driven out by building: Dancing Deer Development.
Honesty would call it Gone Grizzly or Elk Eradication Estates. Some
folks try to be clever: Poverty Pastures.
The last time I
looked, the sign across from my ranch read: “Everything is
Everything.” Maybe that’s this owner’s philosophy of
life, a scary concept in gate slogans. What if he really thinks
that’s everything? One of the most pretentious gates
I’ve seen straddled a dusty road leading to a scabby-looking
trailer backed up against a bare hill. An economy car and a poodle
stood in front, both looking confused.
An immodest
rancher might reveal his first name on his belt — but not in
letters a foot high. We prove our financial worth by supporting our
community directly — no billboard boasts.
Antique
machinery sometimes gets piled next to these self-important gates,
turning tools into décor or even worse, planters for
geraniums. This array is exhibitionism, a thug flaunting victory
over the vanquished. You might as well decorate a driveway with the
tombstones of neighborhood ranchers, or hang their heads in your
den.
Once the gate’s up, some landowners turn five
horses to “graze” on five acres of dirt. In this drought, with no
supplemental feed, horses have starved to death because their
owners didn’t bother to learn the facts behind the fantasy.
Many newcomers, for example, plant trees that won’t survive
without irrigation — wasting the entire community’s
groundwater. The National Arbor Day Foundation misleads us all by
giving away Colorado blue spruce, alien to the High Plains. By
contrast, my junipers survive on natural water after 10 years of
drought, while the lone spruce someone gave me died two years ago.
There’s a reason we choose to grow scraggly trees and bushes:
We’ve learned from experience which trees will grow into a
windbreak in our lifetimes.
Remember the wind. Building
on a hilltop only shows old-timers that you can pay higher heating
bills and that you’d rather wreck the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge than conserve. When fuel runs short, you’ll
need more firewood than we’ll burn in our little houses in
the gullies.
Amazingly, some folks build a log house on a
prairie where the tallest plant is a sagebrush. After a few more
years of drought, those logs will be so dry they might as well be
living in a full matchbox.
And what do newcomers do when
their Western estate is complete, when they have created a dream
ranch? They buy the perfect finishing touch. Picture it:
embellished by the hat, the Hummer, the horse, they look out on
rolling acres of subtle, tawny grassland beauty. They’ve got
every Western dream money can buy. And to protect all that’s
held dear, they surround it with — a white plastic fence?
Kinda like duct-taping pink flamingos onto Vatican
marble. Red noses on Mount Rushmore’s presidents. A mustache
on Mona. OK, I’m a grouch. Moreover, I shouldn’t blame
uninformed folks who fantasize about having Bonanza’s Hoss as
a saddle pard. Greedy developers who sell land without educating
buyers are mostly responsible. They are, however, ably assisted by
city and county officials too short-sighted to accept
responsibility for warning newcomers about the semi-arid West.
We ranchers are also responsible. We’re apparently
too spineless to use zoning laws to protect our agricultural
livelihoods. We’d rather just wail bad cowboy songs about
loss. We’re all afraid that if we tell the truth about the
West — about the persistence of drought and fire and fencing
laws here, not to mention depression and the scourge of
methamphetamines and other drugs — no one will buy real
estate at inflated prices.
Here’s the truth: There
isn’t enough water and oil on earth to make viable
communities out of most subdivisions in the West. But if
you’re tough enough for the honest West, and you really want
to be part of a community, come on out and get acquainted. I might
introduce you to Hoss.
Linda M. Hasselstrom is
a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News. She splits her time between a South Dakota
ranch and Cheyenne, Wyoming.
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