The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
Book Discussion: The Cowboy Way
Front-Ranger:
I think I am gonna have to read that Roustabout Days next. Thank you also for the link to the pics!
moremojo:
--- Quote from: Oregondoggie on February 09, 2007, 02:41:56 am ---(And, if you want to see a few heartbreaking pictures of Sage, go to www.dustylens.com/ghost_towns.htm --made my tears flow again.)
--- End quote ---
Those pictures (and captions) are so very haunting. So eerie and lonely...I'm at a loss for words...
Ennis...?
Front-Ranger:
The Cowboy Way takes place on one ranch in Montana. Called Birch Creek Ranch, it's near Tucker. Tucker is a mountain, but it's not called Mount Tucker, just Tucker. "It is a lesser peak in an obscure range called the Big Belt Mountains, which is in turn a tiny section of that enormous upthrust of granite and dime-store romance called the Rocky Mountains." The author, David McCumber, talks down the mountain in whose shadow he worked but hastens to add that this flyspeck of a mountain changed his life.
So reminiscent of Brokenback Mountain! I saw it from the air and though it is a lovely mountain, it is overshadowed by the Cloud Peak Range to the east of it, a set of peaks so spectacular that the highway is named for them--the Cloud Peak Skyway. But, ahem, back to our story of The Cowboy Way.
Oregondoggie:
Here's what Annie Proulx has to say about The Cowboy Way..."McCumber's clear, fine writing conveys the push of season, the intensity and danger of ranch work... There are hundreds, thousands of books about cowboys and their gear, the old West, the new West, cattlemen, and ranchers. But of the real and gritty ground-level work of the contemporary ranch, there is only one and this is it."
Here is something echoed in Brokeback Mountain...
"I had to fix a flat on the Chevy retriever one morning... the wheel was the old split-rim variety and the tire was a tube type. It was a bitch to break down and even harder to reassemble, but I'd just about finished it when (the boss) came in and found me kneeling by it, holding the air nozzle on while it inflated.
"You know, when I was in high school, a hired man at Dad's ranch ...had his head in front of a split-rim wheel while he aired it up, just like that, and I was given the job of CLEANING HIS BRAINS OFF THE WALL, he said."
Front-Ranger:
Whoa, doggie, I haven't come to that part yet, scary and eerie!!
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