Before I ride off into the sunset (my final sunset) I want to feel more fresh air of the grassy mountains and the warmth of a good horse under me. I had an epiphany (a profound realization) of an origin story as I brought two retired horses home from a far pasture to graze the regrowth on the home field.
This origin story was founded on the commonality of hunter gatherers which was recently referenced in a book, The Ecological Buffalo.
According to this book, 24,000 years ago Indigenous peoples of North America were hunting buffalo. They were probably experiencing the feelings of some more recent settlers which was captured in the song line “don’t fence me in … Give me land lots of land.”
Ranchers and pastoralists the world over retain the deep commitment to thriving on the land knowing that the commandment of the creator to steward the land meant conserving rather than exploiting it, thus sending it into a downward spiral towards degradation and even destruction.
I dwell on this idea because many of us think that we want an empire of land— bigger and bigger control of the open prairie or the grassy valley. We feel we want to own a spread—land we control—for as far as new can see.
What was my grandfather thinking when he settled his family in the 1920s in the Cariboo having been driven out of the droughty prairies of North Dakota by the coming dust bowl?
No doubt he was feeling what we felt returning home and starting to build a ranch in the 1970s on land still having its original fertility. That land had fed and housed settlers who failed to achieve the golden age promised by the gold rush.
They saw a different promised land which the original peoples had somewhat temporarily vacated because of pandemic of smallpox. They saw free, open and unoccupied land that for a dollar an acre, building a house, clearing and seeding it, it could be owned.
Controlling one’s own destiny in this “new land” was a primary motivating factor for Europeans who had grown up in a feudal system which severely limited opportunity and freedom. This feeling became part of the American Dream.
Ranchers resisted the fencing of the range land but came to see it was necessary to protect cattle that might be otherwise preyed upon. To this day the laws of the open range prevail.
This article sets the stage for more musing about how fencing and ownership of land in Canada set settlers and Indigenous people apart for the last decade or two.
