AI helped me get lined out this morning. With my sidekick near, I woke with a cowboy tune in my head.
I couldn’t remember the exact words, only their lyrical meter and sentiment about trusty things by your side. Once at my desk with coffee, I worked through word searches on the internet and, with AI help, identified the music as “My rifle, my pony and me,” sung by Dean Martin, with Ricky Nelson and Walter Brennan accompaniment, in the 1959 John Wayne movie Rio Bravo.
I was glad to identify the tune but the setting was sunset instead of sunrise and I struggled with some of the other lyrics, especially “… with my three good companions, just my rifle, pony and me …”
I also am not a fan of Rio Bravo. But further research, and a dive into AI, revealed the tune I remembered had evolved from a theme in John Wayne movie that I do like, Red River, by the same songwriters.
Here’s Meta AI: “The song “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me” was written by Dimitri Tiomkin and Paul Francis Webster. It was featured in the 1959 movie Rio Bravo, where it was sung by Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson. Tiomkin composed the music, while Webster wrote the lyrics. The melody is based on a tune Tiomkin had previously used in the movie Red River.”
And here are the complete lyrics:
The sun is sinking in the west The cattle go down to the stream The redwing settles in the nest It’s time for a cowboy to dream
Purple light in the canyons That’s where I long to be With my three good companions Just my rifle, pony and me
Gonna hang (gonna hang) my sombrero (my sombrero) On the limb (on the limb) of a tree (of a tree) Comin’ home (comin’ home) sweetheart darlin’ (sweetheart darlin’) Just my rifle, pony and me Just my rifle, my pony and me
(Whippoorwill in the willow Sings a sweet melody Riding to Amarillo) Just my rifle, pony and me No more cows (no more cows) to be ropened (to be ropened) No more strays will I see Round the bend (round the bend) she’ll be waitin’ (she’ll be waitin’) For my rifle, pony and me For my rifle, my pony and me
And what is it with cowboys drivin’ and ridin’ to Amarillo?
Meanwhile, this photo of Cowboy 1 might have worked better for my morning reverie today. I posted it with some morning thoughts five years ago, (click here) “Coffee with Cowboy and O’Keeffe.”
It was kind of a cloudy morning but we’re working it out.
Great to meet Roger Bergmann for breakfast at The Range in Bernalillo today, 50-some years after our Inyo Ecology Center days In California, where we learned the food was better in fire camps and spike camps than our mess hall 10 miles north of Bishop. I didn’t have any trouble recognizing the cheerful, Montana-raised Crew 1 leader, who was on his way to the rodeo in Santa Fe.
Looking at this photo, I also remembered that we were forbidden by our employers, the California Division of Forestry, from wearing beards, long hair and, I think, even mustaches back in 1971-73. We were told they were “fire hazards.”
Maybe yes, maybe no.
And cheers to old friends Chet Baker and Robert Elliott, who Roger said he sees semi-regularly in Bishop, Bob Heberle and Matt Stothart, who remembers that Roger was the first person he met upon arriving at our 80-man Ecology Center barracks in the early 1970s.
Cowboy 2 and I heard a loud clicking sound during lunch. Cowboy turned his head, trying to identify the noise. I looked around the kitchen sink. Then we spotted this big fellow doing his mandible thing on the fence outside.
I left some books behind on move overseas in the late 1960s, including my treasured 1964 copy of Starr’s Guide to the John Muir Trail. The Sierra Club publication got a little mildewed over time but two thoughtful friends in Mill Valley, Ca., found it and returned it to me in 2015, with this 1966-1967 Fillmore Auditorium flier gracefully covering the damage. I had to regain some of my psychedelic perspective to read the handbill for the December 30 and 31st performances of the Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
Apparently I bought a second copy in the interim and here are the front of the 1967 edition and the back of the 1964.
I spent more time hiking and backpacking in the 1960s than participating in psychedelia. I’ve attended only one rock concert in my life, in fact. It was Cream, with Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco in the late 1960s. I thought Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin were the second act but AI and my memory aren’t synching on this point.
By the way, the life of Walter A. “Pete” Starr Jr. is worth reading about. Here is the Wikipedia entry:
Walter A. “Pete” Starr Jr. (1903–1933) was an American lawyer and mountain climber.
A graduate of Stanford University, Starr was a respected lawyer in San Francisco, but he is better known for his abilities as a mountain climber and an explorer of the Sierra Nevada. Starr was well known for his hiking ability in the mountains, sometimes walking up to 50 miles a day for several days in a row. Starr was a life member of the Sierra Club.
In August 1933, he failed to return from a month-long hike in the Minarets. The search that followed, which led to the eventual discovery of his body by Norman Clyde, is one of the most dramatic true tales of the Sierra exploration. His body was buried where it was found.
Starr’s final notes were compiled and edited by his father into “Starr’s Guide to the John Muir Trail and the High Sierra Region” which was published a year after his death by the Sierra Club. This book has been edited and revised many times and served hikers and climbers for many years as the standard reference to the trails of the Sierra. A revised version is currently available.
Walter Starr is the namesake of Mount Starr in the Sierra Nevada.
Somehow my brain jogged from a 6:14 am text from my stepsister about a wildfire near Durango to the Facebook group Vintage Backpacking through the 1970s and thinking about out my own gear from the 1960s.
Before the fancy Sierra Designs aluminum frame pack, I had a wooden packboard and canvas packbag from the great old Smilie outfitter store in San Francisco, which also sold Wilson bacon bars and chunky dehydrated potatoes, post-John Muir luxuries if you could afford them.
I bought the Sierra Designs pack in Point Richmond, Ca., in 1967 or 1968. My late friend Holly drove us there in her VW bug. She bought a blue one.
I think my father bought me the Alp Sport sleeping back for my 16th birthday. I believe he bought it at the North Face store in North Beach, San Francisco, and gave it to me at a birthday breakfast at Sam’s in Tiburon.
After all the gear talk, though, I wanna say my favorite backpacking image is of a lone walker I passed near sunset on Donohue Pass in the Sierra Nevada in about 1965. He didn’t say a word as he headed down toward the Lyell Fork of Tuolumne River and maybe Tuolumne Meadows, 13 miles north. A beat-up saucepan flopped against the back of his pack. He looked like he cared more about walking than gear.
It’s 92 degrees at 7 pm this Saturday night and the no-see-ums swarm me as soon as I get near an Apache Plume, which are everywhere, of course. So, no walk. Heading to the couch to watch the start of the Fastnet race live from the UK on YouTube and talk on cellphones with sister Hope, who is with a bottle calf — an orphaned twin — in Montana.
dream ranch 