The View from Back Here: May Reason Prevail

The other day as I rode my bicycle up the winding dirt road of Coyote Canyon, I found myself directly behind a herd of cattle being moved along from all sides by a couple of cowgirl friends (and, I hasten to add, a cowboy) along with two clever dogs. I jangled my trusty handlebar bell, not certain whether to turnaround or ride on through. 

“Just stay behind and follow us for awhile,” said Kathi. “We’ll be turning and heading up the ridge about a half mile up ahead.”

And with these words she bestowed on me the (perhaps dubious) honor of watching the rear view of the procession at close range from the saddle of my bike. To be sure, there was a lot of dust and dung back there, but the cowboy thing still holds a bit of novelty and romance in my mind, and it’s always fascinating to watch competent people do what they do, and anyway, it was hot riding up that canyon, so I paused for a bit and then pedaled along, feeling quite content to contemplate those bovine buttocks for awhile.

Sometimes I need to learn patience. Sometimes I need to slow way down and consider whereI stand and how I got here. I am a city girl by origin but I live now on a ranch, and my life has been that way: a series of surprising outcomes and unlikely convergences, a collection of truths that don’t always mesh comfortably but somehow coexist.

I am not a member of an organized religion, for example, but in some private way I am a person with faith, and I think church is great for those who choose church, but I hold no principle more fundamental to our democracy than the separation of church and state, and I am appalled and concerned about the erosion of that barrier, particularly in this election season.

I am dismayed, in fact, by the kind of intolerance that reared its head in St. Paul last week, and the nastiness as well. It's alarming when a candidate demeans community organizing and grass roots effort, trivializes the debilitating downward spiral that so many have experienced over the disastrous course of the Bush administration, and tries to sell us the same party and the same failed policies by slapping on the word ‘change’ and trotting out a plucky prom queen who believes the war in Iraq is our special task from God – oh, it’s a chilling choice for next in line to a president who would be starting out already in his seventies. This is a woman who despite empirical evidence remains unconvinced that global warming has human causes, thinks the personal choices of others are her business, drove a city of 5,000 souls into debt while mayor, and as governor ofAlaska is respected for being good with a gun and putting Alaskans first...but Alaska is real close to Russia, so that's sort of like foreign policy expertise. I suppose it would be funny if it weren’t so disturbing.

But with or without her, anyone whose primary calling cards to the future are “drill”and “fight” makes me pretty nervous. I feel deep unease when a prisoner of war story is played and replayed as evidence of a candidate’s character to the exclusion of his more recent history of misjudgment. He's had a lot of years in Washington to demonstrate what he's about: consider Keating Five and all it implied, the telecom legislation and its benefits to big business, the insane rush to invade Iraq -- and he pushed for it hard, and a 90 percent endorsement of the policies of George W. Bush, despite the media mythology that the man is a maverick.

Which brings me back to cattle, I suppose, and the competence of those cowhands, addressing their task from all angles but functioning as a team, doing the work of season and circumstance. When I slow down to pay attention, even from the dusty irrelevant rear, I see with new clarity the breathtaking incongruity of my being here, and I sense in turn astonishing facts in all our varied lives. I remember the bigger cycles, too, and how we ready ourselves for what is to come by working and thinking and making sense out of things, learning from what happens, and recognizing complexities and challenges -- and when it’s clearly time to change direction, we rise to the occasion, as now we must.