Grass beyond the mountains

My logger grandfather handed me his copy of GRASS BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS by Richmond Pearson Hobson, Jr when in his eighties during one of my visits to his home with my grandmother, in Eugene, OR at 745 Lariat Drive. Born in 1897, so awhile since I've been there; maybe 845, the one story on the corner.

My grandfather had hunted and fished with Pearson in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, as a man himself forced out of the logging trade by a lawsuit he'd eventually won after a couple years litigation; souring him enough on private enterprise he'd quit his trade when hardly fifty years old. A slash fire the wind had driven suddenly in the wrong direction, which ruined the other litigant in the case. My grandfather had to sell everything he owned to win, his logging concerns.

GRASS BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS became the source of a recurring dream I'd taken a long time to recognize for that relationship; until discovery in the Eureka, CA Public Library Pearson had written two fine sequels, NOTHING TOO GOOD FOR A COWBOY and RANCHER TAKES A WIFE, each of the three covering roughly a decade beginning with the first at the height of the depression in the 1930s. There are passages in both GRASS BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS and RANCHER TAKES A WIFE which seem as if solitary horse back encounters of the same remote vista high in the mountains of the interior of British Columbia. Where after winding for quite some time in a narrow defile between rock walls close enough to touch on either side, Pearson suddenly around a bend, comes out into the open and a view stretching for hundreds of miles to the north, of the range of mountains he as at the south of, their snowy bases and peaks eventually disappearing beyond the horizon. Or at least thats the way I remember reading the two books, I've recently gotten new copies of; but, haven't read in several years say a decade or so. In my dream I had probably half a dozen times, I seemed as if above the planet looking down a range of mountains stretching up the coast and into the interior of British Columbia to the southern parts of Alaska, yet also able to see some of the small coastal villages in detail yet slightly so as the visions were brief of those places like Bella Coola for instance. I'd driven a modest amount in British Columbia myself though never to that place. Knowing a single mother and her four year-old son from there though in one communal living situation, whose boy had liked me as much as she hadn't I could never understand?

GRASS BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS is the story of the college educated author's never forgotten childhood ambition to become a cowboy. His father a one-time rear admiral in the Spainish-American war, he'd been to an Ivy League college and was selling real estate in New York when the great depression of the 1930s hit on "Black Friday" in 1929 when the stock market crashed. This led to his migration to Wyoming, and shoveling horse manure in a barn there for six years without once sitting atop a horse; but, enough of a very modest return to keep him fed and healthy I think earned room and board, and thirty dollars a month if the owner could afford that on top of the expense of keeping him. Until one night in a thick cloud of tobacco smoke, veteran cowboy Pan Handle Phillips revealed his well thought out plans on some maps he'd had; of traveling to the interior of British Columbia to try to develop the last un-grazed free range area in north America.

They head out with their gear in an old panel truck nicknamed "the Bloater" for reasons forgotten for the moment; and Phillips ever the most talented of psychologists, once they've gotten as far into the interior of remote British Colombia as they can, has them build the rudest of six foot by nine foot shelters to winter in, then they set off to visit all the few other inhabitants of a vast region, reasoning on their novelty as newcomers thinking to establish themselves a great attraction to an outpouring of friendly hospitality. Dead on the money reasoning, too.

This book as the other two, contain some of the most exciting and realistic descriptions of some of the most difficult and beautiful situations imaginable. One of Canada's most popular television series ever which ran for two years, titled after the second book NOTHING TOO GOOD FOR A COWBOY based upon all three books is described as a "romantic comedy" I've never seen. There is certainly plenty of elements of humor in all the books, though one imagines some sort of superficiality in the television depictions; as the dramatic elements of the books are the heart and guts of these. Brutal encounters with the elements, man and horse and cattle fighting together weeks on end in remote drives moving herds; tens of degrees below freezing, crossing raging rivers, battling one's own capacity at living on the extreme of one's endurance for long periods of time. Encounters with remote native tribal people not at all familiar with the encroaching first elements of European derived civilization, as heavily embattled disenfranchised indigents themselves, lodged in the forest's darkest most foreboding and difficult regions, hardly prime real estate though at least still apart from the dominating other.

I got my first traffic citation since '70, winning the lottery in reverse for a person living life on a SSDI/SSI income; a California DUI April 15th, 2001 both tax day and Easter Sunday that year; due to a brake malfunction where I'd not been cited for any driving irregularity, since deftly avoiding all but a minor scrape by jumping the curb to keep from rear-ending the car stopped at the bottom of the freeway off-ramp, when my brakes failed to take hold until the last 125 feet before the stop sign. A poorly lubricated pin the right-front brake caliper is supposed to float on which had frozen, I was told later by a mechanic in the Eureka, CA Ford agency had been the problem.

This led however to my having to attend the fifteen week California Drunken Driver course; which was curious evidence to the lack off efficacy of the Alcoholics Anonymous movement. The whole time there felt discouragingly like having to attend a series of their meetings. What was interesting though, was a movie we were shown, about the tribal indigenous people of the town Williams Lake and the region surrounding that place, which figures often in GRASS BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS and the other two books, as the most highly developed realm of civilization in the whole remote region. Alcoholism by the 1960s had become a vast dominating oppression of the whole native population; who'd finally collectively taken successful action over a period of many years to overcome and supplant this, and create a better way of life for their society and culture than that had become en-mired with.

One of the comic delights of GRASS BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS is the recipe and surrounding story of a strong brew called ITCHA MOUNTAIN FOG made by stewing dried fruits in brandy long enough that is fermented, then adding the result to an even bigger batch consisting of lots of raisins and sugar. Which is what sufficed for the occasional inebriated blow-outs of the ranching community's infrequent gatherings. You'd imagine with the passing of the depression finally that many of these personalities would've been given to a few more frequently imbibed commercial alcoholic beverages; but, also that their sensitivity to the native population's deep impoverishment would've prevented their using alcohol to further disadvantage and alienate the tribal people while they were having to attempt to adjust to the prevailing forces of capitalistic domination of society. So, I suppose the entrepreneurial efforts of corporations seeing only a ledger book, is what wreaked so much havoc for so long there the documentary depicted.

The closing of GRASS BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS is about the first attempts to gain some economic foothold with the opening of the ranching country of the remote interior of British Columbia. The details of reading that are hazy at best for the moment; except that what the situation boiled down to were some very hard-bitten considerations, where the fact that each of the ranches were well able to be self-sustaining without outside capital for long stretches of time due to the industry and ingenuity of all involved; made possible eventually designing to try to turn a profit. The pure lust for fresh air and open spaces though, is not likely to reproduce such an interesting alternative in the stultifying death throws of capitalist imperialism during contemporary or future times; since the planet with a much larger population than then, hasn't the equivalent of places so handy if one were able, to go and avoid the prevailing chaos and grim fortunes of an economic collapse. Even though a lot of right-wing reactionaries sure seem try to paint a picture of such options still existing and being healthy ones. The romance of the parasitical class, the plutocracy.

If a person enjoys the elements of intelligent humanity at their best under adverse conditions of the most pacific sort; then GRASS BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS and the two sequels to that are certainly going to be inspiring reading to a person with a love of the out of doors and wilderness. Which as a person myself with only a taste rather than a sustaining diet of that, makes me guess others only able to experience these things vicariously also will enjoy greatly GRASS BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS too. Transcendant literature of a high order, depicting our species as humans as a comely sort, attractive and capable with very modest means.