Joys of Outdoor Writing and Writers

By By Otha Barham / outdoors editor
May 9, 2003
One neat thing about spending most of your time fussing over words, trying to turn a meaningful or inspiring phrase, is getting acquainted with other writers. I suppose it is so with other passions, like when an archaeologist meets a stranger who also is addicted to searching for ancient artifacts, or when two horse lovers find each other at a boring business meeting.
A commonality emerges almost instantly between writers, an important element of which is their mutual acknowledgment of the shroud of ambivalence that encompasses their hours at the desk struggling with whether to say it this way or that.
Too, I always value a writer's take on the widely held view that writers do not work, and therefore should forsake their stalling and go out and get a real job. I prefer writers who chuckle at this familiar inference over those who fret about it. Even though Hemingway answered an interviewer who asked what was the most difficult part of writing by noting that it was getting the words right, his answer shed little light on how difficult it sometimes is to do.
It is great fun to get to know writers from entirely different backgrounds than your own. One such acquaintance of mine is a poet who was raised on a ranch in southern California. His mother was Mexican American and his father of Irish heritage. Their home community of Dulzura lies a short cow chip throw from the Mexican border.
Besides Ed Keenan's side-splitting lines, I am attracted to the fact that he is a real honest to goodness cowboy. Readers may know that becoming a cowboy was an early ambition of mine but that it was not to be, because, as I explained in my book, no cowboy on earth is named Otha or any name that doesn't have three letters or less or consists of only one syllable. Because I also dreamed in my youth of being a writer, this California poet/cowboy is just about my perfect hero.
Ed's writes poetry I can understand in his book, "Cow Chip Poetry Lies, Lingo an Lore." The book contains an extensive glossary of cowboy lingo. Here is a sample poem:
A Grizzly Wearin' Long-Johns
Ol' Clem and Elam sat down with the Indians
To chew on some natural peyote
The more they chewed the longer they stayed'
Till they was howlin like a coyote
Now a cowboy knows bout hydrophobia
When it leaves an animal frothin
Clem and Elam weren't quite rattled
But they was snortin and a'coughin
So they headed out to the timberline
To get a hunk of fresh air
And tryin their best to clear their head
They run in to a grizzly bear
Then Elam says, hold up there Clem'
I've been in this spot before
I know that the only chance we got
Is to create a little folklore
Here's what we do to turn em around
And send him the other way
I learnt it from the Hellarwe Indians
Who never had much to say
The first thing that we both gotta do
Is to make him turn his ear
You circle around and go over the ridge
And sneak up from the rear
When I toss the rope around his neck
You heel him from the backside
We'll stretch em out and snub em down
But don't expect a hayride
We propped open his mouth with a stick
And I reached clear down to his tail
Clem tied a loggin hitch at the very end
And I dallied runnin down the trail
When the rope hit the end of the line
His tail came out his throat
His big ol' hide was turned inside out
Whiter than a billy goat
Turned backerds facin the other way
Runnin through brush and fronds
Embarrassed to be seen half necked
In his new pair of long-Johns
Now he roams the hills way out of sight
A' wearin his white underwear
Like a scalded pig in a fur lined parka
He's hot but cold where it's bare
So if yer ever lookin for a cow hidin out
Up just below timberline
And you come across a hairless grizzly
Don't think you lost yer mind
Unless you've been with the local tribe
Chewin peyote or locoweed
When they tell the legend of White Bear
That's not like the other breed
He runs straightaway skinned inside out
Hide slicker than Indian tom toms
Some cowboys swear they've seen Bigfoot
But it's the grizzly wearin long-Johns