June 12 - The people

My guide Kyle and his son Ben working hard on his ranch

June 12^th

“The rich are different…they are not like you and me”.

Ok…a little bit of a paraphrase from F. Scott Fitzgerald, but it does serve to make a point. 

This blog entry is not however about the “rich”….it is about the people that, for the most part fall outside that vague gilded sphere. 

This is about the “rural”.

Their wealth is immeasurable.  They may not have monetized their holdings in the crass traditional sense.  They bank their wealth in the bonds of their friends and neighbors and yield dividends that far surpass the shrewdest commodity investor.  And yes….they are not like you and me…. they are vastly superior in so many subtle ways.

I grew up in the heavily sanitized suburban environments of Southern California in the ’70s and ‘80s.  For us, outdoor exploration involved scrambling up the grated dirt hills of a recently sterilized subdivision.  Inroads to the wild were the still gleaming black cul-de-sacs that dotted the edge of “civilization”.  Surrounding these were 6000 square foot mesas resting side by side awaiting concrete slabs and roll out lawns that developers would slap together to meet the growing populations demands.  These vanguards of the middle class pushed the boundaries of the untamed wilds back further and further, displacing anything resembling wild game, laying the path for thousands of families and a “better way of life”.

Occasional trips to the neighborhoods of the outliers….people who lived on the outskirts of mentionable society…in the rural farmlands, were like trips to developing countries.  It mattered not “who” they were….they were “the others”.  Families that had not mired  themselves into debt to “move up”.  Families that were more invested in the land, than their 401K.  Clearly they were the downwardly mobile.  A way of life to be avoided.  Study hard! Go to college! Get a degree…any degree!  Live in the most compact urban zip code possible…that was the pathway to success! 

Ok…snobbery rubs off,…I was a snob.  This is what I had learned from those around me.  From the media, from popular culture in general.  There were two Americas!  The West Coast…the East Coast made up the first…everything else that existed between the two was the hinterland. 

Then I started hunting.

This brought me into contact with guides that actually lived in these “other” places.  Along with them I met their families, their friends and neighbors, and often the people that lived in “town” near their hunting operations. 

I noticed something early on:  These people were…well…people.

They were both more “human” and “humane” than I was.  They lived with a code of honor and acceptance of others that far exceeded the garish caricatures that we in the suburbs or the snobs of Hollywood had crafted for them. 

We were compartmentlists and  our subjects and rejected their boxes. 

I remember on my bear hunt we were relaxing around a campfire when two “neighbors” of our guide wandered into camp.  Before introductions were complete my guide had given them some of our venison in case they ran low on food.  They reciprocated with a six pack of beer.  This trading of goods elicited “thanks”…but it was perfunctory…the generosity was  expected…it was the way things were done.

In New Mexico, My guide was in the process of skinning my buffalo when a neighbor showed up with a few bales of hay.  Apparently he was in the “neighborhood” the previous week and noticed that my guides other neighbor, (who was in the hospital) had run out of hay for his small herd of cattle.  Not wanting to make a forty mile trip back home he came on my guides ranch…looked for my guide who was not home….took a few bales of hay for the other neighbor..fed the cows…then headed off to his own ranch.  Now it was time to head back and replace the hay that he had “stolen”…along with some lumber to add to my guides’ wood pile that the good Samaritan had noticed near a work project.  Again, the act was met with a “matter of factness”….My guide offered him some coffee as the two talked about the goings on of their ranches.  This was the way things just “were”.

In Africa I noticed a level of ethics that existed between my white professional hunter (PH) and the Zulus that worked for him as trackers and skinners.  They were less employer / employee and more family.  After a few days I mentioned to him that the level of dignity and respect that existed between everyone far transcended the racial divides that exist between us suburbanites and the immigrants that wash our cars and mow our lawns back home.  This was all the more surprising since I had grown up on a steady diet of anti-apartheid messages.  South Africa was the bane of society.  Whites and Blacks were mortal enemies with the whites decidedly on the wrong side of history.  This was not what I saw.

My guide explained that in the city..specifically Johannasburg…that dichotomy might be correct.  He wouldn’t know…he avoided the city like the plague.  Out in the bush where he lived no one could afford to be a jack ass.  Their very survival was dependant on the next fellow.  It mattered not  what the color of the persons skin was, or the size of his bank account.  What mattered was the quality of the person…and weather they would be there for the other when  “being there” mattered most.  That was how a person was judged…that is what was “expected”.

There are many “lessons” learned from hunting.  Not all of them have anything to do with the pursuit of game.

My PH Ally, his assistant PH and two of his Zulu trackers.