Naturalpath

A cowboy is made by being ground across the rocks and thistles of the wilderness – sometimes literally, when the horse tosses you. A cowboy is shaped and moulded through backbreaking labor in the still mists of morning, by delivering the breech calf in the dead of night. When you’ve broken ice around the dying baby calf, carried it into the barn with its lowing mother following, and lit the kerosene stove to warm it up and watch the life rise back up in it, that’s when you start being a cowboy.

I was never a cowgirl. I grew up near New York City . I ididnt know much from horses except for one I rode at summer camp when I was thirteen and enjoyed the ride. And guns – forget about it!

But over the years, when I went to school in upstate New York, I knew that the farm and country life was in the heart. When I did my student teaching stint, I'd stop off at a students farms and watched their families manage their enterprises, keeping cattle under control and selling them off for extra money. I remember when J's father bought more land for the farm he could barely afford at first. He sold off the tobacco base, focusing on having land to wander, and never allowed hunting for fear one of the damn slickers would shoot one of his animals instead of a deer. More than once, he ran off encroaching hunters. Men with two-shot deer rifles won’t cross an angry mounted cowboy with a gun and a whole bunch of bullets.

He doesn’t do that stuff any more. But he’s always going to be a cowboy. He’s always going to have that thread of America running through him, the refusal to back down, the determination to succeed through hour upon hour of fruitless practice, willing life out of stony land and frozen baby calves.

A cowboy isn’t Gene Autry or even John Wayne. Most cowboys never got into a gunfight. But when you’re finding someone who defines who and what America is, that’s the cowboy: grit and determination and hard work and love for freedom and what you have. Being a cowboy isn’t about possessions or money. It’s about finding that toughness at your core, the moral structure, the work ethic, and growing that fibrous root into a cactus flower, prickly and remarkable. It’s about making the desert within us bloom. And it’s about just existing, being as much a part of the world around you as it is a part of you.

I shoulda' been a cowgirl

As an innkeeper of many "cowgirl" hats, I am definitely fine tuning my DIY vs PAY theory. Okay, this may be the wishy-washiest rule ever. But I guess I think of my rules more as philosophical cattle-prods than actual strict instructions.

* Don't pay someone else to do what you can easily do yourself

The thing that comes to mind first when I think of this rule is salad dressing. Who needs $5 more, Paul Newman or me? Why would I buy someone else's bottled salad dressing when I can make my own delicious concoction in about 30 seconds with simple, inexpensive ingredients? (Recipe: one clove crushed garlic, big pinch salt, a few grinds of pepper, dash of balsamic vinegar, about 2 tbsp red wine vinegar, about 6 tbsp olive oil. Shake in a jar and then pour on.) Must be the innkeeper in me.

Here's a few other things where this part of the rule applies:

• Do my own nails vs. going to a salon
• Get a great Wahls clipper and do my own hair, havent been to a hairdresser in ages.
• Paint my own walls instead of hiring a professional
• Buy unfinished furniture and stain & varnish it myself
• All of these are things I don't mind doing and can do well.

But that brings up the flip side to this issue:

* Pay others to do anything that you will take from bad to worse.

When a fairly new water pressure tank went out which could have wreaked havoc on our private well system, instead of Dan taking out his myriad of tools to fix, we called the ever reliable Joe Davis who'd installed the original one. While that one was still under warranty... it would have been worth whatever money to get that one nipped in the bud. Obviously, different people have different skills. If you are good at household renovations, of course you'll save lots of money doing them yourself. But if you're not so good, you may end up incurring extra costs, not to mention the potential for personal injury or at the very least, a migraine in the making.

 

Giddyup