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Peanut Babb and Mark Lally, off the rim for a cold one
I feel extremely fortunate to have escaped much of the Cat 5 Garbage Tornado that is Big America while down in Paisley, Oregon, with videographer Sam Pyke last weekend – where we began filming for the Len Babb Movie Project.
Just one note on the collapse and then I’m moving on: I feel emotionally and physically very distant from all of the pillaging and ransacking but one thing I’ve grown extremely weary of is the trend toward righteous political thinking. That’s become inescapable and dangerous because it appears now to be hardening into militancy on a broad scale. Most of this stuff is simple: treat people the way you want to be treated – but the messaging has somehow become so convoluted and spastic and packed with overwrought emotion and finger-pointing and historical nonsense and outright fear that I just find no profit in engaging.
And, while all the morally upright and progressive world-savers were defacing the Lincoln Memorial and killing each other because some bad cops blew it, out on the desert the ZX cowboys were pushing a couple of thousand head single-file down a draw fit for a Charles Russell painting.
May you someday be blessed to behold such a vision.
At any rate, last Sunday morning I rolled out of bed at 3 a.m., pouring coffee stronger than hot turpentine down my gullet – which isn’t my usual morning jam — and drove south into Bend to load up Sam and a small mountain of production gear. Sam runs with no fewer than five cameras — including a Mavic Pro 2 drone for which he has a very snazzy FAA license – which one would expect from a guy who travels the world shooting outdoor television shows and short films and whose work is so superbly – and I really do mean superbly — accomplished.
Sam’s work reveals that he has feel, that intangible thing which elevates both art and horsemanship and is exactly what this project requires.
At Sam’s place we got the gear squared away by the glow of my taillights. There was a gray buzz in the air when we rolled south through the zombie-tweaker forests of La Pine, Oregon, and made the hard turn east, onto highway 31, down the Oregon Outback Highway. And you could almost feel the burdens of Big America fall off like an old skin as we left the smoking crater of human passions well behind — racing past the ancient packrat middens of Fort Rock in the rising sun and onward onto that great big desert that raised me and stole my heart and soul so long ago.
For me – and we are all different – creative projects come in the form of random threads and hazy images. They just come flashing through, and I’ve learned to pay attention to them, which is why I have piles of notebooks everywhere. 99% of those flashes come to nothing, but I get them down in the books anyway. And so my head and notebooks are filled with images I want to put in this movie project about buckaroo and western artist Len Babb, and one in particular meant that we had to drive up on Winter Ridge to shoot some B‑roll footage.
History buffs might remember that it was up on Winter Ridge, in 1839, that Fremont came stumbling out of the Klamath country, mostly lost and wandering, and found himself on the sheer-edge of a towering fault block – one of the largest fault blocks in North America — in two feet of snow, staring down into the Great Basin desert and what looked like an oasis paradise far below.
Summer Lake under the clouds
Fremont’s travels gave those places the white-man names they are known by now: Winter Ridge and Summer Lake, but natives had been living in the country for over 14,000 years and presumably had their own names for them. Far across the valley sits 5 Mile Point, the oldest known habitation in North America, and the frisson I experienced next day, when we were filming Len and the buckaroos work cows within a stone’s throw of those same caves was nearly overwhelming. History on the desert is layered, and nuanced and just quietly as complicated as anywhere else.
At any rate, Kit Carson and the other scouts with Fremont found a way down off the ridge and built an enormous bonfire at the bottom so that the others could aim for a point to land. Based on my unscientific calculations, and Fremont’s journals, that fire would have likely have been built and burning somewhere behind where the Summer Lake store sits today.
And some truly unlucky bastards in the party had the unenviable task of getting Fremont’s howitzer off that mountain too.
As we approached the turnoff to Winter Ridge – it’s an eighteen mile trek on decent dirt roads to get to Fremont Point — the weather did not look promising for shooting video or even still photography. The light was dull and bad and everything sat under a kind of thick fog. We had been watching a bank of clouds that seemed to be squatting on Winter Ridge but as we approached we discovered that high winds were pushing the clouds around and the result was an unbelievable opportunity to shoot in almost magical light. Every hue in the spectrum was somehow suddenly dazzling as the clouds shredded in the wind. There were clouds boiling over a rocky precipice and Sam launched his drone to capture some very impressive footage that will feature in the trailer we are producing.
High up on Winter Ridge the grass was green and deep and the only thing missing were the elk, who were probably watching from some of the Tolkeinesque meadows that are strung unexpectedly through that part of the country — and this time of year full of nutritious feed for ungulates. There are wolves back in that country which will play absolute hell on elk populations on into the future.
We shot a lot of great film up there before coming down the Government-Harvey road into a scene that seemed to jump, fittingly, straight out of Russell or Remington. To the north Summer Lake was a flashing mirror under clouds and out east the shadows of those clouds went racing across the desert floor into a kind of prehistoric distance.
We made it into Paisley where there are no stoplights and the café burned down last year before heading on up to Len and Gloria’s for lunch and to interview Len.
After, we followed Len down to the Len Babb saddlery — now run by Len’s son Peanut — and were fortunate to be able to interview both Peanut and a working ZX cowboy named Jody Cooper. Jody works the Viewpoint ZX out of Christmas Valley, Oregon, and is learning to build saddles alongside Peanut. Peanut builds about a dozen saddles a year and fetches a fine price for what are handbuilt masterpieces of functional art.
The saddle shop itself is a kind of memorial to the desert cowboys who call this part of the world home and headquarters, and enormous ranches like the ZX remain high on the checklist of working cowboys everywhere because they still send cowboys out to ride every day. Every year new crops of cowboys passes through and the walls of the shop are covered with photographs of the legends.
The interviews went well though I began to see that this project is bigger than I had initially imagined, and so a lot of this process will be me refining what it is I’m doing, what questions I’m asking, and probably circling back to re-interview. I had expected that – to some extent – and anyway I’m always comfortable when I’m learning something new.
The mean streets of Paisley at 0400.
The next morning started early. I was out of the rack at 2:30 and opened the door to my room at the Sage Inns to see what the sky looked like. The report had called for rain which is sometimes hard to come by on the desert. But it had been raining and when I opened the door an old black cat was staring at me. It skittered off but I’ll admit I worried about the omen proving some superstitions are packed into the marrow.
I made a pot of coffee that was utterly terrible but by 4:30 Sam and I were gathered outside the pasture where Len and Peanut keep their saddle horses. We filmed them saddling up and shortly after Brady Murphy and the rest of the Murphy Ranch crew rolled up. The horses were loaded and away we went out onto the desert.
I’m going to leave it all right here, for now, because I’d like to leave some surprises in the trailer and also the feature film, and also because its raining and I’ve already had one lightning fire on the Figure 8 this year — and I hear lightning cracking again. Lightning struck an old juniper not far from the barn last week and turned that tree inside out — a raging flue fire until the firemen showed up.
I’ve attached the GoFundMe.com video update that I’ve made for contributors to the project, which will give you a flavor of some of what we are doing. The first few minutes is me yapping which you may want to skip, but the latter half of this vid has some images you might like. The high quality stills are from Sam’s professional cameras, and the vids are just iPhone stuff I shot for the updates. The real stuff is off the charts good.
At any rate, keep dodging the rocks and bottles, treat your neighbor the way you’d like to be treated, wear a mask if it makes you feel better, and when you lay down tonight after getting a full toxic dose of the evening news, maybe conjure up those cowboys out there on the desert rim, pushing 2000 head single-file down through the rimrock just last week.
Matthew says
Great that you are doing something meaningful. Too bad that everyone else is too busy rioting to do something positive.
Yup. Opportunistic violence is its own kind of virus.
RLT says
Good way to spend the weekend.
“Some bad cops blew it” doesn’t do justice to watching one human being slowly force the life out of another on camera, over the course of 10 minutes, all the while clearly enjoying it. In fact, I’d call it a pretty egregious understatement.
Been glad to see solidarity with peaceful protest from law enforcement across the country.
You are cross-eyed to the warmths of my campfire, and the woods from which you came are growing cold on your back. Don’t forget to condemn as you move on. It will help solidify your bonafides with the committees, someday. And also, piss off, Black Robe.
Miss T. says
RLT, I don’t spend much time with the Big Garbage news, but dipping my toe in: like you, I’ve been glad to see solidarity with peaceful protest from law enforcement across the country. It’s brought tears to my eyes.
I used to live in a place where rioting was fairly common. Still got scars on my knees from picking up glass after the windows were broken in the shop where I worked. It became obvious that rioting was just an outlet for all sorts of frustration and immaturity, often disconnected from the real political issues raised in whatever protest sparked said riot.
It’s also interesting to chat with people from various protest movements throughout the decades. I’ve heard story after story about folks central to their local movements finding that outsiders come in and turn peaceful protest into riots. It’s even more obvious in small towns, where the small cadre of legitimate protesters all know each other.
Opportunistic violence sucks—whether committed by enraged protesters, paid infiltrators, or law enforcement officers.
I worked all kinds of protests and also riots. Cops love peaceful protests—at least we did at my department. What we didn’t like was criminals who exploit legitimate dissent to victimize innocents—which is what we have been seeing a lot of recently.
Jim says
I find myself more of a gentleman farmer then a buckaroo so I didn’t plan to respond. Responding, I would normally find myself five or six commenters down. But since only two responded, one from the wokescold, I feel there is an unwillingness to touch this. So like a kid with a screwdriver, I will put it in the socket.
While the offense at hand appears to be tangential to the whole point of the article, duh…, the mere mentioning of such a thing requires the proper deference to and approval of the wokescold police.
An offense has occurred. The mob has formed. The pitchforks and torches have been passed out. Failure to join publicly and obviously are grounds for punishment. The only way to avoid the wokescold is to find another Prol to give over to Big Brother. And you are permitted to point to that act as proof of your wokeness. Please do so in 240 characters or less.
So Craig, perhaps you have punched one too many doggies and forgot. Nowadays, it’s not what you say, it’s what you don’t say as well. Shame on you!
So RLT, maybe you forgot that this is isnt Twitter. You don’t get extra points for finding offense in everything. Especially in a blog about an interesting ranching character.
Great article. I wish I was in the middle of nowhere with you.
Thanks Jim. We are, it appears, in the midst of a fully-fledged racial inquisition, and many are being put to the test. Some are actually being burned at the stake. The passion-play grows more fierce by the day, fueled by major media garbage and rank stupidity from every corner. One of the major sins identified by these modern-day inquisitors appears to be what they consider a lack of sufficient-grief, or insufficiently demonstrated prostration and self-loathing. The tribunals get really worked up over that and in their mind it is condemning evidence. It’s pathological, but that’s where many have arrived — full focus — and full of seething. I won’t play the game. I punch back at all Inquisitors who come at me with their books and candles and bells. My village and my campfire have always been open-invite, but Black Robes only come to steal your freedom and your soul. They are harbingers of terror and tyranny. So they get scalped and hung in the trees for birdmeat.
RLT says
Jim, we’ve both been on this site long enough to know that we come here because it ain’t Twitter. I’d hope you know me a little better than that; I don’t go hunting for offense. So if I talk about something I find concerning, perhaps you should weigh it more than you have.
A throwaway comment is just that–but framing any event in a throwaway unrelated to the rest of the (otherwise great) piece is a rhetorically important move.
I don’t reckon the Twitter police are coming for anyone. If they were, none of us would be here.
Jim says
Engaging in dialogue usually requires the give-and-take of ideas. We hope, as sentient beings, that those ideas are born out of some kind of logical reference and not an emotional reaction. The reaction to the recent event is proof that purely emotional views are neither trustworthy nor helpful. But why is this emotional. Because emotions drive a narrative. Hence, when comments are made that an individual’s response didn’t ring the appropriate rage, I get a little irritated. I know Rullman. He’s not a bigot and he doesn’t need me to say it. But why is it somehow he has to prove he’s not a bigot every time he puts pen to paper or opens his mouth? Because that’s what your concern implies. Afterall, this entire debacle is not about white people getting beaten, it’s about black people getting beaten.
What happened to George Floyd was tragic. However, people who view it don’t appear to be seeing it from any any logical point of view. How is this? How can I even suggest such a thing? It was a racist murder plain and simple. Everyone can see it. To think anything other than that is to be a bigot and a jackbooted thug. Failing to ascribe to that narrative requires shaming of some sort. The current vogue statement for that is “White passing”. Essentially, failing to attack racism in the approved method is proof of your implicit racism. You might not even know it. One might not have done anything racist, but self defense of your words is simply denial and denying it is an admission.
I watch that video and I’m pissed. I’m pissed at the stupid ass cops that were there. I’m pissed at their department for running what appears to be fast and loose. And if he is a racist then he can burn in hell. But.…
Was it murder? I don’t know and neither do you. Were all four cops engaged in a racist act of murder? I don’t know. But I do know that two of the cops had less than one week out of the academy. Should they have said something? Maybe but I don’t think diapered rookies are going to get far telling a seasoned trainer about their arrest tactics.
Was it racist? I don’t know and neither do you. All we know is the cop is white and the arrestee is black. He might just be an abusive asshole cop. I’ve known a few of them.
Isnt it on video, right in front of you? Well, sort of. I’ve seen 270° of the encounter. I’d like to see the most important side.
Is pressing your knee down in the persons neck good police tactics. No. I was never trained like that and I don’t know any department that trains like that. That idiot cop bought the farm for his behavior.
Didn’t he have 18 previous internal affairs complaints. We don’t know what the complaints are. I can tell you from having complaints made against me and from being the internal affairs cop who investigated others, a lot of complaints are made without any basis in fact. Could he be a rogue bigoted Sociopathic cop? Absolutely! But I don’t know that, and neither do you!
I tend to look at these things a little more dispassionately. It’s funny, even my sister said it was hard for her to watch. I didn’t understand that. She’s no shrinking violet. Perhaps my tolerance for the shock of how people abuse each other is worn. But I’ve seen babies beaten dead by their asshole father. I’ve seen women raped and beaten so badly that you couldn’t recognize their face. But when I look at that case I see a tragedy that can’t be undone and actions by a cop that require deep review of him and the department. We need to find out what happened. Because we don’t like it, and I don’t, does not mean I get to pony up and shame or cancel anyone who doesn’t agree with my anger.
But the cancel culture can’t live with that. There’s a crime and that’s all that matters. Anger and frustration must be satisfied. But the majority of those rioters and some of those protesters couldn’t give a rats ass about George Floyd before he died. If along the way that turns into a 55 inch Toshiba television, so be it.
The reason why your inquiry struck a chord is because it mirrors all of the ‘check your logic at the door’ thinking that drives this current event and requires compliance without accusation. If I fail to appropriately respond to a rape, does that make me an ally of rapists? No! Why then would a 1/2 dozen words show a person’s insensitivity to injustice.
So, let’s agree to use logic and I’m all in.
Even a remote study of the inquisition, or any of the major political revolutions in recent times reveal many of the same themes at work. Logic lost to the engine of emotion, the requirement of the innocent to prove negatives, scourging, shaming, burning at the stake…there are elements of all of that in play right now, right in front of us, and on a massive scale, including the bizarre image of ritual foot washing and forced public “apologies”. It is very nearly unbelievable to see this kind of bullshit unleashed in America. So, I will at all times vigorously defend my ability to say what I want, when I want to say it, and in whatever form I choose to say it. This whole “discourse” thing made its ugly appearance right here in our little town some time ago. It is an attempt at controlling what people say– period. It was followed closely by people trying to get me fired from the newspaper because they didn’t like my position on guns–which is equally non-negotiable. Like most power-mad asshats, these people believe their good intentions and progressive emotions absolve them from utterly corrupted logic. I’d rather lose everything I have than take a knee to satisfy the psycho-sexual lusts of an outright mob, and I won’t tolerate attempts to lecture me about it.
RLT says
Hey Jim, been really busy last two days but I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten about you, especially with the effort you put responding. I appreciate it and I agree completely about the give and exchange of ideas that makes up a good dialogue.
My only real response is that the scope of my original comment is much narrower than I think it’s being taken. And that’s understandable; these days if someone accuses you of X, they also mean Y, and Z, etc.
The only thing I took issue with was the tone used to describe a discreet event. I didn’t say or imply that Craig is a bigot, racist, opposed to justice, or should have an emotional reaction to anything that lines up with anyone else’s. The reason I didn’t say those things is because I don’t believe them.
What I said was that Craig’s description of George Floyd’s murder seemed callous and in poor taste.
That doesn’t mean anything else, except that in this particular instance I felt the language was such that I needed to point it out. I know folks are used to being damned in all ways when they put one toe out of line, and it’s an unfortunate fact of our society, especially at the moment.
When I say something, I mean exactly what I say, and nothing more.
Thank you again for your lengthy response; I believe we are committed to the same kind of dialogue, and I appreciate it.
“What I said was that Craig’s description of George Floyd’s murder seemed callous and in poor taste.
That doesn’t mean anything else, except that in this particular instance I felt the language was such that I needed to point it out.”
Last warning — if you continue to grandstand I’m going to shut you down permanently. You don’t get to come on this site and start policing it for language that better strokes your sensibilities. One more word, since you already hijacked my post to salve your very delicate little feelings, and you are done here.
FRANK JENSEN says
Great project Craig ‚thank you for the update. In a world full of nonsense Cowboy shit is good.
RLT says
Craig, I would much rather not have mentioned it at all, and I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t brought it up in the first place. And I’m not sure why you chose to include that sentence; as you say, it’s entirely tangential to the rest of the piece (A piece that, like the rest of your writing, I otherwise enjoyed reading.)
When someone I admire and respect says something that concerns me deeply, I’m going to tell them. Your dismissal of recent events concerns me deeply; doubly so because it’s on a public forum that I have come to care deeply about. RIR has a unique Overton Window all of its own, and I don’t want to see that window move left, right, up, down, or sideways.
Part of that Window, at least to my understanding, is our standards of discourse. We could be talking right now about oathbreakers, about honor and dishonor, about how we once more admire Simon Kenton because his largest regret was killing a man he didn’t have to. Better yet, we could be talking about your film project, which looks both exciting and important.
I’ve been here since the start; hell, I’ve even published on the site. I got a shout out a few posts ago, and I’ve been told time and time again (most recently by you) that my presence is deeply valued. I have no intentions of moving on.
Of course, I don’t expect other visitors to know all that. But I’ll tell you, your reply to my comment really surprises me.
Your comment betrays you as a scold and a Black Robe. I don’t tolerate priests with an agenda who come out of the woods with books and bells and try to control my speech and therefore my thought. It is not for you to decide “standards of discourse” and then to upbraid those who fail to meet whatever standard it is you think you are upholding. It is, frankly, quite dishonorable, and even pathological, to insist that others share in whatever level of grief you might be stewing in. If that appears “throwaway” to you, too bad. I have a long and distinguished history of bucking anyone who tries that side-passing control shit on me, which gave birth to Rullman’s now very famous “standards of discourse”. Number one on that list is: Don’t Be a Pussy. You are not in a position to suggest to me what, or where, or most importantly — how — I can write about any topic — that’s a serious trespass which suggests that you would also like to control how I think about things in the broader spectrum. That strain of censorial and Maoist garbage — and if you don’t see it you aren’t looking at it very closely — doesn’t get tolerated here. If you don’t like what I have to say, or how I say it, don’t read it, but don’t even pretend to offer a lesson on responsibility at MY campfire, or suggest that I need to work on some element of my character in order to satisfy your needs. You will get scalped for that, which is the reasonable response by grown men to Black Robe bullshit. And don’t bother replying because I am not negotiating with you. I am drawing very precise boundaries and telling you how it is, and if that surprises you, or you don’t quite understand, all of the work to figure it out is yours, not mine.
Roger says
Craig; Keep up the good work, saying what you think without concern about tender sensibilities being offended.
Our society needs a hell of a lot more folks standing up for our rights, our constitution and our freedoms.
I am sick to death of the whining, apologetic fools and particularly the gutless wonders that bow down / take a knee to anarchy.
I did 4 years in the military including a tour in Vietnam. I did NOT do that to defend the above listed.
Honest to God, these people are straight of Orwell and, blinded by their own righteousness, they are completely incapable of seeing it. My powder is dry and my dander is up.