The Other Side of Civilized

Twenty-three years of dreaming of western skies—

Where are the vermillion sunsets, like hot coals streaked with crashing waves of magenta? They must be somewhere way out there, where the honey-laced voice of Marty Robbins still recounts a dozen gunfights, a dozen raven-haired senoritas and a dozen wiry broncs. Is it still wild? Do I live in a silver-screen spaghetti western fantasy? Can a man still lay claim to a humble parcel and try his hand at individualism?

The rugged archetypes are gone. Abbey, Muir and Roosevelt have wandered into the lost canyons of history. There are no pine boughs left to sleep under—only 5th wheel trailers ringed by bug zappers. Trails where cougars stalked are worn hard by mountain bikers and ATVS. Men with spandex clothes, $20 water bottles and Lance Armstrong wristwatches are the only danger these days. One struggles to find the American Wilderness because there is a Starbucks behind every waterfall. Camp coffee-pots are as likely to be filled with Pike Place Blend as they are with pine needles or chicory.

Hell, an old Winchester in a cracked leather scabbard would cause incontinence in half the people that you would run into while out adventuring. They don’t see the need for pitted steel and cracked walnut, much less for tarnished brass and dull lead. Likewise, bowie knives—once as common as sunlight—would now lead the public to believe that you are a serial killer. You can’t walk sheep paths in the mountains anymore because they have all ventured up—up and away from the raucous engines and the drunk humors of those that “use” the land for recreation.

Even those who are tasked with preserving nature’s primitiveness don’t know what to do. Streams that once shone star-like with silver shapes of salmon now lay dismal with no dorsal fins to pierce the water’s gurgling surface. But, we’ve got ponds full of hybrid monsters that wouldn’t know upstream from upside down. Bison that roamed both woodland and prairie exist only as domestics: more stock than game. The timber wolves have stirred us—but in a way that we don’t know whether to defend them or destroy them. For eons and eons the native tribes burned and let burn the land in an act of restoration. Now Smokey the Bear makes sure that we don’t let that happen. If this is destiny manifested, we are in dire straits.