VIEWFINDER

Riding Fences Cowboys and photographers live a dream and pay a price

A DUST DEVIL was dancing galleta grass high as I exited Interstate 8 at Sentinel some 27 miles west of Gila Bend. Watching nature's own whirling dervish from the bottom of the off-ramp made me think of the cyclical nature of life-things I'd learned and forgotten and learned again. After regaining my earthly bearings, I noticed the most prominent features visible at this isolated freeway oasis were a clay-colored gas station and a semi-sized cattle truck. Comfortably seated inside the red cab was Pat Lauderdale, someone I hadn't thought of for more than 25 years. No reason to. In 1981, I'd photographed him for an Arizona Highways story about working cowboys. Normally, I shoot a story, put it behind me and move on to the next project. But this one had stuck with me and now came rushing back as I got out of the car and walked toward the semi.

That article had affected me since it was my first major magazine piece and my introduction to the cowboy life. Growing up back East, I knew little of livestock, native grasses or leather chaps. So documenting the CO Bar Ranch outside Flagstaff launched me as a young photographer into visual nirvana-rough men in Montana-peaked hats with massive brims and cowboy boots with rowel spurs that made an unmistakable "ching" with each stride. However, breaking into that exclusive and rough-hewn men's club proved to be an entirely different story. Fortunately, Pat would step up and occasionally grace us with an anecdote that offered a glimpse into the real world of hard knocks, broken bones and lonely times that lay behind the myth of the West.

Lauderdale was born into that world, a third-generation cattleman earning his first paycheck at age 9 on the back of a horse. Even then, he was told that the lifestyle wouldn't last and his cowboys days were numbered. It didn't seem to matter; he loved it and wasn't about to change.

At 71, Pat is still a cowboy. Now at the R-TEX Ranch near Gila Bend, his once jet-black moustache has turned frosty white. Powerfully built, he's still punching cows-the years have been surprisingly good to him.

"I've been lucky. I've never wanted to do anything else and fortunately never had to try. There's plenty of work for a good cowhand willing to look for it," he explained.

As we revisited the old days, names, faces and experiences, I was struck by the parallels between the cowboy life and the lot of a freelance photographer. For one thing, if you throw a cowboy into a swift river, he'll just naturally float upstream. Most photographers I know are just as stubbornly independent.

Of course, cowboys and photographers have different blackhatted enemies. For cowboys, it's the relentless development that keeps gobbling up ranchland, subdividing the wide-open spaces into disjointed Scrabble squares on a topo map.

For photographers, point-and-shoot digital cameras and the gush of Internet images have flooded the marketplace with mediocrity. This combination has all but killed the stock photography trade that keeps many working photographers in business, and effectively fences our once-verdant pastures.

All the smart people saw it coming. Back in the '70s, people told me that still photographers ought to be added to the endangered species list. Get a real job, they said. But I had the bug bad and refused to listen. No matter how many parttime jobs I had to cobble together, I was going to, somehow, someway make a go of photography. No doubt, if I'd taken all that good advice, I'd be driving a newer truck today. But what would have come of the inner creative drive-that need to tell visual stories? Losing that would be like ranching through a 10year drought. Like Pat Lauderdale, I had to listen to my heart.Oddly enough, despite all the technological and economic changes of the past quarter century, Pat and I still ply our respective trades much as we always have. We rise long before sunup and work on past dusk. We share the joy and burden of witnessing nature's uncommon beauty, alternately cursing and reveling as the storm breaks over us. We have each befriended the solitude that accompanies our chosen lives, knowing that sometimes you have to go it alone. We both hate fences.

Maybe we are both members of our particular "vanishing breeds," but what a great ride it's been.We do what we do, because really, our job is our hobby.