The Long Trail: My Life in the West

by Ian Tyson

  We did come pretty close to stopping the dam. The fight went all the way to the Supreme Court — which ruled that an environmental assessment for the project was necessary — but those Mormons were bound and determined to get their water. In the end they prevailed, despite all the good arguments and evidence against it. Even though we lost, the attention we brought to the dam forced the government to take more seriously the needs of fish and trees — and to change the way it operated the dams in light of those needs. That’s been good news for the cottonwoods downstream.

  After the Oldman loss I started becoming more cynical about this country. I’m talking about the way it operates, not the rocks and the trees. I had never been a political guy before and I’m a little sensitive about politics, probably because Sylvia and I always got a bad rap in the folk days because we were more into music than protest. But when it came to my beloved open West, getting involved in political causes just felt natural.

  Ever since the late 1980s I’ve taken on the role of celebrity spokesperson for ranchers in this area. In 2006, Compton Petroleum Corporation of Calgary wanted to drill exploratory wells in the eastern slopes of the Rockies west of my place. The locals wanted me to get the situation into the media, so I took up the cause and headed into Calgary with John Cross of the a7 Ranche (he’s the grandson of Alberta ranching pioneer and Calgary Stampede co-founder A. E. Cross) and Pokey, my mare.

  I was supposed to ride Pokey at the McDougall Centre, the provincial government’s headquarters in downtown Calgary. I was apprehensive because I thought she would spook on the pavement and tear my knee up, and then run over a bunch of people. Pokey’s like that — she’ll buck you off at the drop of a hat. But my worries were unfounded. She thought the whole thing was great. She loved all the noise and the clatter and the big tall buildings. We rode right up the building’s front stairs. Bud, my gelding, would not have tolerated it, but Pokey absolutely loved it.

  It turned out that the event didn’t have media legs. It didn’t matter, though, because Pokey made the experience a lot of fun. Hell, she wanted to go out for lunch and drink martinis afterwards. It was another reminder that horses are nothing if not mysterious. You never know what’s going on in their heads.

  These days I’m still helping out local ranchers and conservationists who are trying to preserve the eastern slopes for future generations. Suncor, a Calgary oil and gas company, wants to drill sour gas wells and build a big pipeline out on the slopes that would cut through pristine land. The damage would be incalculable. All these oil and gas projects require new roads, and it’s the roads that really screw everything up. They get built along the line of least resistance — in other words, in the wildlife and water corridors. I’d been hoping the government would have the sense to not approve the Suncor project, but then it went and did it — business as usual in Alberta.

  I try not to get too preachy about all this. You can’t blame the people working in the industry for these problems — they’re just trying to make a buck. But if you rip up the eastern slopes of the Rockies for short-term profit, what have you got then? That’s the heritage of Alberta.

  ———

  It’s not just the landscape that’s changing. The entire field of agriculture has undergone radical changes in the past couple of decades. I didn’t know anything about large-scale agriculture when I started ranching, probably because there wasn’t much of it around here then. But then the agricultural industry exploded. Companies figured out ways to house chickens in huge numbers — in the most inhumane way — and then how to do it with hogs, in equally inhumane ways. Now there are feedlots for cows and even horses. But nobody thought about what to do with all that manure. No one considered the runoff into the rivers and riparian areas, and what effect that would have on the ecosystem.

  We North Americans want an endless supply of cheap food, and we want it retailed to us in the most convenient manner so that everything is just as simple as can be. But that simplicity comes at a big cost, and now it’s all coming back to bite us on the ass. We’ve got all kinds of environmental problems and we’re injecting hormones and steroids into these animals — all for corporate moneymaking. Consumers, meanwhile, are completely removed from the realities of what’s going on. They don’t see the poor chickens or hogs in those inhumane conditions. Out of sight, out of mind.

  Ranching as I learned it was much more holistic — and still is. In the cow–calf business, cattle have a couple of really nice years before they walk that last mile. Even cattle in feed-lots live in way more humane conditions than fowl and hogs.

  If I were starting over again, I would put more time into working for the humane treatment of domestic animals. The way we treat them diminishes us as human beings capable of creative thought and compassion. Adelita used to comment on that when she was a little girl. “It’s terrible the way they treat those animals,” she’d say. (I’ve always hoped that Adelita will find a career working for the welfare of animals, maybe as a lawyer. She’s certainly bright enough to do it, and is now working on a master’s degree at a college in Texas.)

  There’s a push now to eliminate cattle branding as inhumane, but that’s nonsense. The brand is momentarily painful but those calves are pretty tough — an hour or two later they’re sucking on their moms’ udders and they’re okay. Branding is nothing compared to the terrible existence of industrially raised chickens and hogs, but that industrial system is dug in pretty deep now, and the farmers and ranchers find themselves stuck in a bad situation. It’s the corporations that are crunching the numbers and setting the methods.

  If I can find free-range chicken breasts at the grocery store, I’ll pay the extra money. And if enough consumers decide they don’t want to buy chicken that has been raised inhumanely, the system will change. It’s as simple as that. You can see it already with companies such as McDonald’s that are slowly changing their practices.

  We need a major agricultural revolution. I’m fascinated by the grass-finished beef movement, in which ranchers raise livestock on marginal grasslands — terrain that’s not prime agricultural land. Canada’s got lots of that marginal land; Ontario, for example, is full of it. The area where I used to farm there is short on quality topsoil, it’s very rocky and it’s thinly covered. Cows can be finished on that grass instead of being stuffed with barley in a feedlot — it just takes longer. (In the old cowboy days it was common to raise steers for three years, but today most North American hamburger comes from sixteen-month-old steers. That’s as far as they get before they’re slaughtered.)

  People in Morocco have the right idea. I visited the country in early 2010, and I could see that, unlike North Americans, Moroccans utilize all their land. Sheep and goats are everywhere. If Canada followed Morocco’s lead, all our grassy ditches would be full of animals (and in Morocco I never once saw a sheep or goat step into traffic). That land would be more productive.

  Ironically, it’s the city dwellers who seem to be catching on to the need for an agricultural revolution. In Detroit, for example, people are turning vacant land into urban gardens. There’s also a big movement supporting people in cities who want to keep chickens in their backyard for the eggs. And why the hell shouldn’t they? I think it’s great. Have a goat back there too, for milking. That’s why I love Tucson, Arizona. The Mexican-Americans there all keep chickens in their yards, and the first thing I hear in the morning from my downtown hotel room is cocks crowing. I can’t think of a better way to wake up.

  While urbanites are learning to raise chickens in their backyards, ranchers are driving cattle with ATVs and training horses in big indoor arenas. That was never my idea. I always wanted to be out on the hills, in the mountains, on horseback. But there are very few real cowboys left. New Mexico still has a few because they can’t grow wheat or anything else down there; the land won’t permit it. My friends John and Jean Brittenham run cattle on many sections of New Mexican mesas and canyons and don’t even own a tractor or a baler. John does, however, use
a rickety grader to keep the red clay roads open when it rains. Other than that, it’s a horseback deal.

  That’s what I love about New Mexico: nature has made sure that all you can do is run livestock — sheep, goats and cattle. And the terrain is such that you can’t herd the animals with ATVs. You’ve got to do it either on horseback or on foot. You might be uncomfortable but at least you’re outside, which sure as hell beats being stuck in some dark arena.

  Being outside is a romantic element of the cowboy life, just like the six-gun. You can’t divorce romance from reality in the West, because the whole deal has been romantic right from the beginning, all the way from Manifest Destiny onwards. The romance stretches from gunslingers such as Pat Garrett and Jesse James right up to today.

  I was lured to the West by Will James, by Native cowboys in purple satin shirts, by the paintings of Charlie Russell and the cowboy photographs of Jay Dusard, Bank Langmore and William Allard. Allard’s photos of people in the West startled me when I first saw them. Although they were taken in the 1960s, they looked like they were from the 1880s. I thought, Who are these people? I had to find out. And a bunch of other people — photographers, songwriters, painters and so on — had to find out too.

  You can’t separate romance from the West in the same way that you can’t separate Hollywood from the West. They constantly feed off each other. Hollywood reinvented the West and kept on reinventing it, and then the characters of the West started imitating Hollywood cowboys. It’s life imitating art. That’s what the folklorists didn’t understand when they tried to keep me out of Elko in 1985. They didn’t want me around because, in their minds, there was a true West and a fake Hollywood West, and they thought I was part of the fabrication. But there is no pure West. You can’t make a credible case for that separation.

  In my part of Alberta, for example, the movie industry is huge. A lot of westerns have been filmed in the Longview area, including Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. Hollywood is a big part of Longview’s economic existence. There are operations out here, such as John Scott’s ranch, where the cowboys and the longhorns are maintained just for the movies. If it wasn’t for the movies, they wouldn’t be working. And when the movie people come to town, they buy their gasoline at the local Fas Gas, their steak at the Longview Steakhouse and their coffee at the Navajo Mug. Hollywood stimulates the local economy in a very direct way. It’s all part of that leisure industry that my dad couldn’t get his head around.

  I remember when you couldn’t easily buy a pair of Levis or a cowboy hat or boots. That’s how it was when I was a kid in B.C., and that meant there was no easy access for the wannabes of the world. I remember buying my first snap-button cowboy shirt — in Seattle, strangely enough. It cost seven dollars, a lot of money at the time. The shirt was green and I hated that colour, but I was going to buy that sucker because it had the snap buttons.

  Now there’s a massive western apparel industry for people who want to play cowboy. The reality is that, economically, the West needs that wannabe element. If you allowed only the remaining cowmen to be part of the West — the hardscrabble on-the-land ranchers raising their cattle — there wouldn’t be much here. I certainly need that element. My concerts absolutely won’t happen if I don’t have the wannabes. I love it when the authentic guys come, but there aren’t so many of them anymore. My songs allow people from all walks of life to enjoy the West vicariously.

  Near the Oldman River in Alberta, in I999. (COURTESY IAN TYSON)

  With Cowboyography I became one of those people who portray the romance of the West. Some would say I also became part of the problem. Someone once told Kurt Markus and me, “The West is fucked now, and it’s your guys’ fault. You put the final nails in the coffin.” They meant that we had blown the cover of the hidden West of the buckaroo and inspired all these idiots to move in on the terrain. But that view is kind of selfish. Everybody wants to be the last one in, the last person to discover the West before it disappears.

  CHAPTER 9

  Beef, Beans and Bullshit

  I’ve always liked Scotch, but in 1990 my days of drinking it appeared to be over. I got very sick while touring the Maritimes, and by the time I got back home from the tour, the illness had developed into pneumonia. Soon I could hardly function.

  “You’re going to the hospital,” Twylla told me.

  I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me, so I followed Twylla’s advice and went to the High River hospital, checking into Emergency. Turns out I had a group A streptococcus infection. It scared the hell out of my doctor, Keith Spackman, because that same virus had killed Muppets creator Jim Henson the previous week. (Jim had got pneumonia and died in a matter of days.)

  I was pretty out of it, and Dr. Spackman was terrified. “I just treated you like a steer,” he joked later. “I ran you into the chute and didn’t know what medication to give you, so I IV’d you and gave you everything.”

  It was a close call. I don’t remember anything about those days when I was hooked up to the IV. Whatever Keith did obviously worked, because I slowly recovered. But I’d developed asthma from the experience, so Keith sent me to see a diagnostician up in Calgary.

  Riding Bighead (Second Summer) at the Tropicana Futurity in

  Las Vegas in I988. (COURTESY IAN TYSON)

  “It’ll probably go away,” the diagnostician said of the asthma.

  Wonderful, I thought.

  But he had a few questions for me. “What do you drink? Scotch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No more.”

  Shit.

  “Wine?”

  “Yeah, some.”

  “Red or white?”

  “Red.”

  “No more. The tannic acid is bad for you. Vodka’s probably your best bet — or a nice Chardonnay.”

  The rest is history. My asthma lasted for four or five years and then it was gone. White wine became my drink of choice because it’s easier on the body. All my buddies thought I was nuts back then, but they’re all drinking Chardonnay now too.

  After I got out of the hospital in High River, I set about starting a beautiful filly given to me by Dan Lufkin. She was an own daughter of Doc O’Lena, one of Doc Bar’s most famous sons, and we called her Roanie.

  I used to be able to swing the saddle onto Roanie with one hand. Now I could barely lift it. If Roanie breaks in half, I thought, I’m in trouble. Somehow she didn’t, which is very strange, because Roanie always seemed to do the wrong thing. Later that year she bucked off the woman I’d hired to work for me — twice. But she never did buck with me. Maybe she was taking pity on me in my weakness.

  Not all our horses were that kind, however. Old Pin Ears jumps to mind. Of the many colts raised on the Tyson ranch in the 1980s and 1990s, Pin Ears was one of the most colourful. Dan Lufkin, breeder of the great horse Missin’ Cash, had given me a breeding to one of his young studs around 1989, and the result was a bay colt foaled at my ranch, outside on a raw, wet March morning. The colt was okay and nursing well but I could see that the tips of his ears had frozen. Other than that, Pin Ears was fine.

  I started him at age two when he was a green colt — a little on the slow side. He’d buck a little but it was nothing to lose any sleep over.

  Then, in his third year, on July 9, 1992, Twylla was riding Pin Ears in the round pen when he started bucking. She flew off, landing stiffly in a manure pile. It happened in an instant and there was nothing we could do to change it. The fall broke her back. We were all traumatized by the accident. Adelita was six at the time, and we didn’t know if her mom would ever walk again. But Twylla’s surgeon did a miraculous job of putting pins into her back. In a matter of weeks she was up and walking (thank God for Canadian health care).

  Twylla didn’t ride much after her accident. Over the years I’ve been bucked off horses many times, and although I’ve broken my wrist, ankle and ribs, I’ve never been that seriously hurt — I know how to fall. But in September 2009, one of my colts got mad and came apa
rt on me in the round pen. On the fourth stiff-legged jump, I knew I was in trouble. I took a big spill and my boot hung up when I came off. Thankfully I shook it loose. I was okay, but that scared me. It’s the first time I remember being seriously scared about riding. I’ve been bucked off lots of ranker horses, but this was different somehow. It finally made me understand why Twylla had stopped riding after her back injury.

  Everybody involved with horses gets injured eventually. It’s the law of averages. You can’t spend your life with them and not get hurt, even if it’s just from the wear and tear on your body. I had my left knee replaced not long after Twylla got hurt.

  Years later I got pretty beat up at the same spot where Twylla had her accident, thanks to a buffalo I kept at my ranch. I had about eight of them at the time for training cutting horses. Buffalo are great for training because when you put them in a round pen, they move in a predictable pattern. Unlike a cow’s turns, a buffalo’s turns are pretty much in the same place every time. That repetition and predictability help a horse learn how to cut.

  Buffalo enjoy doing bluff charges: they’ll run twenty feet towards you and then stop. But as far as my cutting horse Bud is concerned, there’s nothing fake about a bluff charge. To him it’s the real thing, and one of the buffalo came at him while I was riding in March 2004. Bud panicked and, because he wasn’t shod, when he spun around, he slipped on some ice and went down with a bang. When he scrambled back up, I was hung up in the stirrup.

  Here we go, I thought. Sure enough, Bud started dragging me across the prairie. I was using heavy brass oxbow stirrups, one of which flew up and whacked me in the face, swelling my eye closed and gashing my forehead. (Cowboys love the narrow, rounded oxbow stirrups because they have a good feel, but they’re dangerous because you can’t get your foot out easily.)