Well Pat and I got home from a long road trip. We were gone for a week and saw lots of the Country. I noticed that some good western folks were helped out a lot by the heavy rains in September. There is plenty of hay rolled up from here to the Rockies. While driving west to New Mexico, we saw many acres of wheat pasture coming up too.
We saw lots of mule deer and wild turkeys while driving but sometimes driving there you will see buffalo on the Philmont Boy Scouts camp. They are gorgeous beasts and lots of them but no such luck this year.
The writers’ meeting I attend each year out at Red River, N.M., is at 9,000 feet. It’s a beautiful place where people go to get cool in the summer and ski in the winter.
Do you ever wonder what writers talk about at gatherings like that? We talk about writing more. I usually get some questions from women who are writing western romance novels. Questions like, how far can you ride in a day? I usually counter with how bad do you want to go there? I think 20 to 30 miles is a good distance.
How do you find distance? Easy I make a trip on my computer from Tulsa, Okla., to Ft. Smith, Ark., and get the mileage. It will be close to riding a horse from one spot to another. We took the wagon train in 1976 to Prairie Grove, Ark., the first day on the Bicentennial wagon train. On the second day we drove to Natural Dam. So I have some gauges. In the old days teamsters coming from Huntsville or going to Springdale stopped the first night at the white house and barn at Spring Valley on 412. That was about a 30-mile trip. So they made about 15 miles a day, I’d say.
Passenger trains back then traveled at 15 miles an hour. That was a federal law. I always wondered in those western movies how a horse could catch a train. Any horse worth his salt could catch a passenger train at that speed.
After leaving New Mexico we drove down to Abilene, Texas, which is home to one of the greatest western museums in the world. They call it the Texas Frontier Museum, which tells the history of Texas from cave men time right on. Including the various Indians that populated Texas until the Comanche ruled it and ran off the other tribes.
The story of the Comanche is interesting. They were a very backward mountain sheep eating tribe who had been crowded off the plains by the Crow. Some warriors from the Shoshone people came down from Wyoming, got the horse and learned to use it in raids, to push about every other tribe out of Texas. Then they ruled it for 200 years.
Also on our trip we attended a regional meeting for farm businessmen and women across the street from the Alamo, I heard about the problems of agriculture. They talked about Oklahoma’s efforts with the declining population of the Lesser Prairie Chicken. I knew that was a very large problem looming over not only agriculture but also the petroleum boom. There are plenty of ground nesting birds in the far west and destruction of their habitat is being closely examined.
God bless you all, Dusty Richards
