It’s been a crazy, eventful month and I’m still reeling emotionally from the death of my good friend, followed closely by the death of my brother-in-law. Plus, I’ve had to make some major decisions affecting me personally, so at times I feel like my emotions are being turned into a dinner salad. It’s hard to focus, and harder still to be creative.
For something entertaining to offer on the blog today, I decided to turn the space over to Slim Randles – thank God he’s always willing to share his essays – and I wish I’d read this one sooner. It’s a bit dated since it was written to be shared about the middle of the month, but it’s such a great story, it’s well worth a read even though it comes a bit late.
Grab a cookie and enjoy.
In a few days, all those rhymers who lived in Tin Pan Alley back when Gertie was a pup will be fulfilled once again.
How’s that you say?
Was a love song ever written that didn’t have both moon and June in it? And the full moon will be here in a couple of days and it is our responsibility to go look at it.
A full moon is probably the basic cause of most superstitions and spooky stories and maybe even a religion or two. And that’s because it shows us our world in an entirely different light than we’re used to. A moon softens the hard edges of our everyday world. It casts a pall of loveliness on rocks and water and even old cowboys. And you know this is another reason so many people are married.
In moonlight, even a cholla cactus looks friendly.
Many years ago a few of us from the bunkhouse used to go to a place in the southwest part of Death Valley to catch wild burros. It was legal then, of course. Now keep in mind this is Death Valley in the summer. The lizards only came out at night and they each had a canteen.
Yes, it was hot.
So, what were supposedly human-type cowboys doing out there in that kind of heat? Sleeping in the shade of the stock truck, if we could. Because we only went jackassing there during a full moon, and only at night. This limited our burro roping possibilities, of course, because we wouldn’t run our horses through the lava beds or in the shadows. The shadows were pitch black, and those lava beds could turn you and your horse into ground round, and becoming two acres of cowboy burgers didn’t appeal to me.
We’d hide in the shadows and watch the open valley before us. The valley was dotted with sagebrush and some other types of puckerbrush, but it was safe to run a horse there.
And soon, here would come the wild burros, wandering out into the valley, and we’d build a loop and come boiling out of there like the dawn of doom.
And if we were successful, we’d lead a wild burro back to the stock truck, talking to them all the time and letting them know that we had no intention of eating them.
One night I roped a little foal, put it up in front of me on the horse, and rode back to the truck. Along the way, I named him Barney. When the sun rose the next morning, I changed HER name to Barneyetta.
We were the best of pals for years.
So why does this memory carve so deeply into my soul? Probably because it was done under a full moon. A full moon in the desert makes it almost light enough to read, at the same time making ugly objects become steeped in magic and mystery and beauty. Even old cowboys.
Full moons and baby burros are good for us.
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Brought to you by all the wild burros in Butte Valley and Death Valley in eastern California, except for that one-eared old stud jack. He’s too mean.
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Check out all of Slim’s award-winning books at his Goodreads Page and in better bookstores and bunkhouses throughout the free world.
All of the posts here are from his syndicated column, Home Country that is read in hundreds of newspapers across the country. I am always happy to have him share his wit and wisdom here.
Slim Randles is a veteran newspaperman, hunting guide, cowboy and dog musher. He was a feature writer and columnist for The Anchorage Daily News for 10 years and guided hunters in the Alaska Range and the Talkeetna Mountains. A resident of New Mexico now for more than 30 years, Randles is the prize-winning author of a dozen books, and is host of two podcasts and a television program.