(Traveling in the remote Southernmost reaches of America this week and an audio version of this post is not possible. Not much wireless available in the great out yonder. Please consider subscribing, free or paid, if you like what you read. I tend to write about politics, travel, history, and the great sprawl of existence that attracts my fancy. That’s just about everything. The great joy of my life has been that I am interested in everything; it’s also been the grand curse. Makes for good material to write about, though. – JM)
Great piece, as usual, Jim. I share that dichotomy between legend and fact that is hard to share in Dan Patrick's Texas. One can admire the Mt. Olympus of Houston, Travis, Bowie and Crockett while understanding the full picture. Carson, Cody and the rest are our version of knights and dragons and just as much a mix of truth and mythology.
Your American cowboy reminds me of Texas Jack Omohundro who went from the prairie to the Proscenium and on into myth.
I’m envious of your finding that silence under the stars. It may no longer exist on this planet and if it did, my tinnitus would invade it. But I can still imagine it as an overwhelming some thing found in no thing.
Thanks, Jim, for another marvelous essay. The two paragraphs describing that night in Utah, enjoying the cosmic silence and nothing but the hum of the universe, ought to be in an anthology of … something.
The first thing I notice when I cross into the Trans-Pecos is the silence. Pulling over on the road between Sanderson and Marathon, where a car passes only every ten minutes. The quiet at midnight in the Broken Wheel Bar, nothing but a breeze in a pine tree and the slow movement of the stars overhead. The silence along the Pinto Canyon Road, the landscape exactly as it was 10,000 years ago. Thanks for evoking that so powerfully in your words.
Also, thanks for the re-introduction to Don Edwards.
Thanks, Roger. Agree on all your points. As I began writing I realized the subject lends itself to a book, if only people still read books.
Great piece, as usual, Jim. I share that dichotomy between legend and fact that is hard to share in Dan Patrick's Texas. One can admire the Mt. Olympus of Houston, Travis, Bowie and Crockett while understanding the full picture. Carson, Cody and the rest are our version of knights and dragons and just as much a mix of truth and mythology.
Your American cowboy reminds me of Texas Jack Omohundro who went from the prairie to the Proscenium and on into myth.
I’m envious of your finding that silence under the stars. It may no longer exist on this planet and if it did, my tinnitus would invade it. But I can still imagine it as an overwhelming some thing found in no thing.
Thanks, Jim, for another marvelous essay. The two paragraphs describing that night in Utah, enjoying the cosmic silence and nothing but the hum of the universe, ought to be in an anthology of … something.
The first thing I notice when I cross into the Trans-Pecos is the silence. Pulling over on the road between Sanderson and Marathon, where a car passes only every ten minutes. The quiet at midnight in the Broken Wheel Bar, nothing but a breeze in a pine tree and the slow movement of the stars overhead. The silence along the Pinto Canyon Road, the landscape exactly as it was 10,000 years ago. Thanks for evoking that so powerfully in your words.
Also, thanks for the re-introduction to Don Edwards.