555 10 9760 https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/e724e8257da7e5fe520a3c444cb18f5c.pdf 7f1544f97026f5533ac30032a37f23b8 PDF Text Text EMERGENCY CONTACT CHAD HANSON poetry The phone rings in the middle of the night. She’s hesitant, but she answers. It’s the hospital. They have a patient, just transferred out of intensive care. Morris Baxter. “He listed you as his emergency contact.” She says, “Excuse me?” The voice on the phone tells her, “Baxter,” and she hangs up. She assumes it is a prank. But then she starts to wonder. Do I know a Morris? Have I ever met a Morris? She takes a cab to the hospital. They show her to his room. She doesn’t know the man. The next day, Morris opens his eyes. He rolls over and he stands up. When they discharge him, he finds her waiting outside in a taxi. SANTA CLARA REVIEW | 39 � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Magazine Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emergency Contact Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2015 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource English Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The <em>Santa Clara Review</em> is published by Santa Clara University https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/63a026a452014b318c9a3837089ed536.pdf 882fdfe6d9946223c81ee652072e4c66 PDF Text Text Infinite Wave fbetrybyChad Hanson Photo by Leonor \felente The surf feels right. So right, he cannot remember how long he's been in the water. In between sets, a bottle floats up near his board. He sees a piece of paper on the inside. He retrieves the message. It says, “You would not believe how much I miss you." TTte handwriting looks familiar. He catches a wave, and then he paddles back into the surf. Out passed the breakers he rests his body. He closes his eyes. When he opens them, he sees another bottle. This one holds a message, too. It says, "Things were so much better when you were alive." This time he recognizes the author. The message is for him. 1 �Love in a Time of Economic Recession Poetry by Chad Hanson Photo spread by Vadim Zhavoronkov In the spring, when the sun warmed the cement of the city, he sat under an oak to the next Biltmore Apartments. Amy left the building in the afternoon. knew her name, because doorman. She smiled whenever He she spoke she to went the past. When she did that he felt the concrete soften into a cushion. Today, he stands and waits. After she steps out, he opens his mouth with the intent to invite her to stay and talk, but his nerves press his eyes to the ground. He sees their shoes; a pair of shiny pumps and two lop-sided sneakers with Velcro straps. He lets her go. Then he slides down the trunk of the oak until he can’t slide anymore. 9 � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Journal Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Infinite Wave" and "Love in a Time of Economic Recession" Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_59 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>The Chaffey Review</em> is published by Chaffey College https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/13f213a556ee63a22b4fd1586af96d25.pdf 7844cabb80c5312a5c82f94421c4967e PDF Text Text CHAD HANSON Its for You In a coffee house, adjacent to a bookstore in Boulder, Colorado, an elderly man talks on a phone with a level of assertion high enough to alarm the patrons. “I want you to e-mail the governor. If he thinks we can take another budget cut he’s mistaken. We can start over. I am trying to help you. Can you let somebody help you? Are you capable of that? My van has been stalled in the canyon since I gave my keys to Jennifer.” He sets the phone on a shelf and disappears behind a stack of books. A woman at the next table sees that the phone is made of rubber. She turns to her husband. Then she nods toward the phone, and she says, “Fisher-Price.” They roll their eyes. They take bites of a sticky bun. They forget about the kook with the play phone, and then it rings. 54 � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Magazine Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource It's for You Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_60 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The <em>Broad River Review</em> is published by Gardner-Webb University https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/bd37922b373cd8ba4838270cccbedcd9.pdf 0b443cd97c0b32994c8c949df167ba83 PDF Text Text DRUNKDN THE FLDDD The rain came hard in April. With the help of a cousin, Garrett moved the livestock up to higher ground. While they rode, the river pushed his barn and his ranch house into a box canyon. Ever since college, Garrett has sung along with the words to songs by Neil Young. The lyrics were unclear, but he remembered Big John, and drinking, and something on the order of a river taking Emmy Lou. After sunset, he left the bar to walk the railroad tracks. A mile out, he met the point where the rails sank into the flood water. He finished the flask on the shoreline. Then he finished the walk. The river stung his eyes, but he did not close them. � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Magazine Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Drunk on the Flood Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_61 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>Permafrost</em> is published by the University of Alaska Fairbanks https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/3262dd51b6c1f44a87af69d47eec28e8.pdf e3e804b006f9ad3d7a5e97d1933aec2c PDF Text Text poetry PRESCRIBED BURN Chad Hanson Emma let her grass grow. The blades dried and stiffened. The lawn became a field of khaki wheat shafts. She burned them. When the fire chief came, he asked, “What happened?” She tried to reason. She said, “It’s a prescribed burn.” He said, “Prescribed? Who prescribes a burn in a suburban neighborhood?” She told him her doctor suggested that she do something to tame her sensibilities. Something other than lying in the weeds. Listening for a badger. “Anyhow,” she said, “The ground kept complaining about the cold.” fcOGaA.VAF.UlW 47 � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Journal Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Prescribed Burn Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_62 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The <em>Río Grande Review</em> is published by the University of Texas at El Paso https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/5adf8af426f14f73f573b0c27e72ac08.pdf f1deef12d23359f99eaf844fb7c3b463 PDF Text Text Chad Hanson Take a Picture When you live in Wyoming, your home often serves as a staging area for trips to the parks of the old frontier—Yellowstone and Grand Teton. I wouldn’t have it otherwise. My wife and I enjoy acting as tour guides and outfitters. When our visits to the parks numbered in the single digits, I stood beside friends, siblings, and nephews and we stared at jagged rock formations. We fixed our eyes on sparring elk, stately herds of buffalo, and steaming azure-colored pools. We searched for adjectives to describe what we saw: serene, majestic, out-of-this-world.Then we repeated the terms wherever they were needed. -Two summers ago, something started to change. I pulled up next to a crowd of tour­ ists alongside a highway in the northeast corner ofYellowstone. Each person held an optical device. There were binoculars, spotting scopes, and telephoto lenses, each one trained on a member of the Slough Creek wolf pack that bounced and played in a field of sagebrush and prairie grasses at the base of a hill. Shutters clicked, flash units pulsed, and the onlookers produced a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs.” I like wild animals. Each year, I make a point of watching them when I’m in the parks. I’ve written countless letters to government officials and members of Congress, urging for the animals’ protection. I am committed to the presence of wolves and bears in the Greater Yellowstone region. Even so, while I stood before one of ■wildlife-watching’s most sought-after prizes, I found myself pulling away from my camera to scan the scene around me in the ditch on the side of the road. There were men and women in the group, young and old, all festooned in brightly colored clothing: hats with atypical bills, footwear made for different occasions, back­ packs with patches sewn on them, and sunglasses that gave people the look of human flies. I heard three different languages. A couple standing next to me spoke French. A family behind me shared a story in one of the Slavic tongues, and I also recognized an Asian dialect. All around me, human beings shuffled and chattered, voices rising and falling as people related to each other. A row of parked cars rested behind us, half on tar and half on gravel. Each one was chosen to say something about the owner. There were sensible Hondas, rough and tumble trucks, and perky Subarus. These people interested me more than the dark spot in my zoom lens chasing its tail through a meadow. Throngs of people fill our parks. Yellowstone receives more than three million visi­ tors every year. If you drive the park’s highways in the summer, you will notice that people and cars are the defining features of the area. For most of us, our fellow "visitors are a source of frustration. We believe our experience of nature is diminished by each person with whom we share the world. We feel romantic about solitude. We adore the image of a lone cowpuncher shifting back and forth in a saddle, his horse stepping toward the sunset. 87 �REED My friend Carl lost two wives to cancer in a span of seven years. Afterward, he bat­ tled depression. Today, he is remarried, but for a time he struggled with a deep feeling of loneliness. At the height of his condition, I watched him chase a ten-year-old out of a fishing hole so he could have it for himself. Two years ago, on the Firehole River, a mile north of Old Faithful, I watched three men gear up for fly fishing. They sat on the tailgate of a pickup truck. When they fin­ ished rigging their rods and zipping their vests, the men dispersed along the stream, far enough apart so they could not see or hear one another. Everything we’ve been taught suggests that we should put distance between ourselves and others. Then we start com­ peting. We ask, “How many did you catch?” When I fish alone, I enjoy being by myself, but when I fish with companions, I like to fish with them. In August, my friends Bear and Graham visit from Idaho. I don’t think they would mind if I called them sld bums. They work when they want. They live in peace, and they ski like high-velocity members of a Russian ballet company. They come to Wyoming in the off-season when the snow melts oh the west side of the Teton Range. They are rarely in a position to buy out-of-state fishing permits, so they leave their fly rods back at home. Therefore, we only have one rod with us when we hike along the shore of a river. It’s a perfect three-to-one ratio. We fish each bend and pocket as a team. We com­ plement each other when the fly falls gently onto the surface. We cooperate, and when we’re through, it feels like we did something together. Last spring, my wife and I set up our canvas teepee in Yellowstone’s Norris Camp­ ground on the shore of Solfatara Creek. The majority of the families there slept in trail­ ers or recreational vehicles. I took a walk through the campsites after we unloaded our gear. I noticed rigs with names hke Hornet and Predator. A pit bull growled at me through the -window of a camper van. Back at the tent, I told Lynn I expected a manufacturer to soon unveil a new flagship RV called the Leave-Me-Alone-or-I-WillKick-Your-Ass. We visit parks and nature for the seclusion. We drive through hours of traffic. Then we set up camp in beehives of activity. It’s enough to test the most garrulous and outgo­ ing of us, but we survive because we all ignore each other. This summer, I find myself sitting in a row of chairs, set up auditorium-style in the basement of a natural history museum in Seward, Alaska. The chairs are pointed toward a television set.The screen flickers with a live feed from a camera mounted on an island. Birds like gulls, loons, and puffins cover the island from the summit to the shore. The curators call the exhibit Gull Cam. It’s a popular display. As I sit in my chair, people 88 �come and go. There are no fewer than twenty people watching at a given time. Nobody says a word to anybody else. Side-by-side in our seats, each of us pretends that we are in the middle of a private visit with the animals. i thought about taking a boat to the island. I figured it might be fun to strut into the camera’s view. I wanted to duck walk back and forth, flap my elbows, shoot my neck in and out, and squawk like a seagull. I felt like showing the bird watchers that people aren’t really so bad. We’re more compelling than most of the other creatures on this Earth. By all rights, we ought to mount cameras on the corners of busy intersections and gather to watch pedestrians. If you are going to watch people in parks, you’re going to see them taking photo­ graphs. Visitors have been making images of the parks in Wyoming for more than a cen­ tury. The first Europeans to visit the area were astounded. When they saw the land sur­ rounding the Snake River watershed, they believed they had entered a place of Biblical significance. Since the rugged peaks and valleys showed no signs of cities or settlements, they assumed the landscape mimicked Eden—nature as God intended—unmarred by homes or factories or farmers’ fields. The great artists of the day flocked to the region. Painters like Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt rushed to see the grandeur. For the first time, artists began to make images VTith no human subjects. The land spoke for itself, and it captured the imagination of the railroad companies. Businessmen hoped to capitalize on westward migration, and they used pictures of forests, lakes, and wildlife to lure tourists and settlers across the Mississippi to the mountains. Their advertisements succeeded. They convinced Americans to travel west—to hunt, fish, and revel in the beauty of the surroundings. They also persuaded lawmakers to create and then protect the parks, exempting our scenery from the scars of logging, mining, and real estate development. In the same era, we became a society of employees. We began to punch time clocks during the week. In the span of two generations, a majority of us made our living by means not connected to land or animals. We worked shifts, indoors, at desks, or on assembly lines. When we were lucky, we were granted twp weeks off, and when those two weeks showed up on the calendar, we took vacations. Travel turned into a form of leisure. We invented sightseeing. Since our vacations account for a small number of our’days on this planet, we began to look for a way to commemorate the time we spent away from our jobs. Fortunately, cameras went up for sale at the same time we started to look for a way to prove that there was more to our lives than what we did for work. Ironically, composing photographs is work. For groups and nations shackled by Cath­ olic guilt and Protestant work ethics, the act of leisure is unsettling. The next time someone asks what you are doing, tell them, “Nothing,” then see how they respond. Do­ ing nothing is not an option for Americans, Germans, or the busy people of Scandinavia. Tourists from nations like ours adjust knobs, set up tripods, and click shutters as a hedge 89 �against the angst associated with spending time in unproductive ways. Picture-taking is also a way to remind ourselves that our stories contain meaningful chapters. We want to illustrate the passages so desperately that we take unnecessary risks. A half a dozen tourists are killed or injured on the South Rim of the Grand Can­ yon each year. They ignore warning signs, step onto ledges, and then fall while taking photographs. Last summer, I watched a fly fisher wrestle a brown trout to the ground on the bank of the Yellowstone River. He used his foot to pin the flopping fish on the shore, then he took a photo from above. Dry pebbles stuck to the trout’s skin. The spectacle struck me as awkward, even lamentable. The fisherman would not let the trout back into the river without proving that he owned it, temporarily. The scene reminded me of a phrase coined by Native Americans. The Ojibway describe some of us as “far-hearted.” While the vacationer struggled with the trout, his heart hved somewhere else. In the early years of the frontier, native people refused to let photographers take im­ ages of them. They thought cameras had the power to steal souls. I can see why they felt that way, but for most of us, the act of taking pictures is binding. Pho'tographs connect us to landscapes, animals, and each other. A century ago, we lived in large, extended families—three generations on the same farm or homestead. Today, small family units bustle from town to town in search of the most abundant revenue stream. In the process, we lose our sense of a place’s history or of a like-minded group of people who can help us define ourselves. So we take photo­ graphs. In a book of essays titled On Photography, Susan Sontag explains that photos came along at the right time to offer disconnected people a way to take back or establish a sense of community. When cell phones started to come with cameras, they became almost ubiquitous. But in homes with children, we still find the greatest number and widest range of cameras. You can see the intent on the faces of parents when they point a lens at their kids with a snowy peak in the background. They’re shooting a web of significance onto the siblings with the hope that the image will hold them together by bearing witness to the shared experience. Crowds gather at the base of Old Faithful six times a day. Likewise, the parking lots with scenic views of the Grand Tetons are full from June to September. We know what we’re supposed to value, and we have a good idea which photos we are supposed to carry home. There is comfort in knowing that you’ve travelled in a direction that is well-regarded by others, but this approach is not perfect. When parks become our des­ tination, travel plans turn into nothing more than strategies for collecting pictures. I like to think that travel offers more than just an opportunity to fill hard drives and kitchen drawers with images of people grinning in front of landmarks approved by society. �There are also consequences attached, to approaching life as an image. The camera shapes our notion of what is worth seeing. Parks are worth seeing. But what about the land and animals that fall outside the boundaries of parks? When we decide that one landscape or animal species is worth our attention, in the same step we are deciding that others are unworthy. For example, some species are considered majestic when they’re in the parks, but they become pests if they happen to walk outside the lines.The buffalo ofYellowstone serve as a case in point. Buffalo don’t know what we’re up to when we define and redefine the land according to our whims. We can stand with our feet on either side ofYellowstone’s northern bor­ der. We can look to the left, and call what we see there a park.Then we look to the right and say, “Grazing allotment, measured in animal units per month.” Buffalo don’t know the difference, so they wander into Montana toward the end of December, We attempt to haze them back into the park by helicopter, but if the choppers don’t scare them into Wyoming, the creatures are destroyed. They’re killed because some of them carry an infection called brucellosis, which can cause cows to abort their calves. The concern is that the disease could spread from buffalo to cattle. But brucellosis is not native to this continent. Livestock brought the condition with them from their homes in Spain and France, then gave the infection to the herbivores of North America. If the buffalo gave it back to them, Christians would likely call that reaping what you sow. Wyoming is a land of contrasts. Within its borders, you’ll find the last vestige of a complete, intact ecosystem: Greater Yellowstone. To the south and east, big swaths of land have been offered up as a biological and geographic sacrifice. Near the town of Pinedale, Wyoming, just an hour’s drive from Grand Teton, there lies a region where natural gas drilling pads are so numerous and so close together, the area looks like a me­ chanical pincushion. T& the north and east, coal mines ravage the land. In the Thunder Basin, we dug an open pit so deep and wide its scale rivals the river canyons of the West. Tourists don’t visit Thunder Basin, Photographs are not taken. Nobody wants to re­ turn from a vacation with a picture of a strip mine or a drilling rig. So the gas fields remain out of sight. Open pits don’t cross our minds, and the aerial image ofWyoming keeps changing. People from all over the world snap photos inside the borders ofYel­ lowstone and Grand Teton, satisfied that we live in a kind of earthly paradise. Mean­ while, the gears of industry turn the rest of the state into an outdoor factory. The United States is a new nation compared to places like Japan. The Japanese love nature as much as they love economic growth. They live in urban apartments. They work long hours in corporate offices. Then they go home to bonsai trees, tiny reminders of nature, groomed to strict cultural standards. Our parks are bonsai trees, islands of carefully pruned organic matter, floating in a sea of mechanization. Life in our national parks has changed, even in the short history since white people 91 �REED settled the West, The first European visitors carried shotguns and rifles. We carry cam­ eras. Our relationship with the scenery is different today. When the parks were first established, we felt intimidated by nature—wild animals, brutal winter storms, and hostile Indians. People turn to guns when they’re afraid, but we don’t have much to fear anymore. Everybody knows that we not only tamed the natural world, we beat it into submission. Now we take photographs. We take pictures when we feel sentimental. Photos of the shrinking glaciers on the Grand Tetons are nostalgic. The Ucross Ranch is an artist’s retreat east of the Big Horn Range in Northern Wyo­ ming, In the fall of 200S, the organization commissioned a series of photographs. They paid twelve artists to take pictures of the natural gas pumping stations in the Powder River basin, an area of sage flats, rolling hills, and rugged breaks formerly untouched by roads or fences or buildings. When the photographers finished, the Ucross Foundation presented the images in the form of a travelling exhibit. They titled the work “The New Gold Rush. In the two years that followed, the pictures appeared in museums across the West. “The New Gold Rush” was scheduled to appear in Casper’s largest art museum in the fall of 2006. Two weeks prior to the opening, the gallery’s director, announced that they would not host the exhibit after all. Public galleries depend on donations to run programs and manage their affairs. In Wyoming, the most generous donors earned their fortunes in the new gold rush—the rush to turn the nation’s last remaining tracts of wide-open space into gas drilling operations. Images are powerful. When the local newspaper covered the museum’s decision to keep patrons from seeing the photos, I thought, The artists that made these prints are dangerous. The/re like a dozen Pancho Villas with adjustable lenses. Last year, the Federal Government went through a process of planning for the future of the Bighorn National Forest. I packed my camera and headed to the mountains. My luck, the balsam roots were blooming. The waters sparkled and a fresh coat of diamonds covered the glaciers. I sent the pictures to the Director of Planning, along with a note that said. See what you 11 ruin you allow logging in here? Did I influence the outcome of the Forest Service plan? Judging from the final report, I would have to say no. But I’m just one guy with an old Nikon and two semesters’ worth of art classes. Can you im­ agine all the potential in the cameras spread around this country in the summertime? This year, I started taking photographs of people taking photographs in Yellowstone. 92 � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Magazine Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Take a Picture Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_63 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>Reed Magazine</em> is published by San José State University https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/83157fd7fe65ea87b934352c75519b2c.pdf 1a930a2fab5acf3ce6f900e0fe068625 PDF Text Text THE SOULS OF WILD FOLK We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. —Henry Beston, The Outermost House BY CHAD HANSON I df my camera out of the backseat. Then I unfold a In 1868, a man by the name of Peres stumbled onto the s s Ikid I rode a pony with a painted coat. My family On the highway west of Casper we run into rain. Then the called her, "Daisy" She could run &ster than any of rain turns into a full-throated storm. We find ourselves press' tripod, dean the surface of my most powerful lens, and we mouth of a cavern in the hills of northern Spain. He de­ the horses within five miles of our house. She beat ing into wind driven hail. I see a patch of blue sky on my left, start to trek through the sagebrush. When we saw the horses scribed the spot to an archeologist. Marcelino Sautuola, who thoroughbreds. Arabians. Once, she outran a quarter horse. A so I ask, * Would you like to see the Red Desert/* I met Lynn from the car they were grazing but when we start to hike they returned with his daughter and a pair of oil lamps. Once they I loved that pony I loved her right up until the point when in Tucson. She likes deserts. She says,"Sure. Go left. Look. show signs of alertness. 'They don't stop eating but they lift were inside, she noticed familiar shapes on the ceiling and I discovered motocross. After that, my attention co horses There's a road." It doesn’t take long to escape the weather. their heads to check our location. We push onward, closer to waHs.'LooL Animals." They discovered the Altamira site. The waned. I developed a crush on metal and plastic. I still live in Soon, we're headed south with the sun beating through the them. We shorten the distance until thirty feet stand between cave hosts one of the oldest and most elaborate collections of a world of machines and technology, but I replaced the motor' windshield. As the dirt and vegetation dry I begin to see hors­ us. After that, they begin walking. cycle with a mountain bike. It’s quieter. Until last spring, it es. I assume that we're on piablic land. I ask, "Who’s horses/* Through my telephoto lens I see their coats. Scrapes and bison, but the scars of the exhibit are horses. Altamira repre­ had been three decades since I’d known a horse. Then I point out that we are probably on public property scars mark the terrain between their shoulders and haunches. sents an early effort co capture the majesty of the world with a Lynn says, "I don't know" Then she looks at a map. After a Manes jut in between their ears to cover up their eyes, In one two dimensional image: one of the first attempts at art. When in-the-Wall region of 'Aborning. It's a landscape of ted difEi moment she says," We're on a herd area, run by the Bureau of case, a forehead sports a cluster of burrs. They form a gnarled human groups began to explore aesthetics, they did their best and mesas. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid used to hide Land Management." She says, "Those are wild horses." hacof hair and dehydrated plants, In another instance, a dread­ to mirror the form and essence of the horse. My wife and I had pbnned a weekend trip to the Hole- in the area, among the bluffs along the Middle Fork of the Wild Horses. Wild? Wild is one of my favorite adjectives. Powder River. In the time of Butch and Sundance, Wyoming I didn’t know Lynn when she was young but she grew up enjoyed a shortage of bwmen. Plus, as far as hideouts go, this with horses, too.*Why don't we scop?" she asks. one is scenic lock hangs from one of their necks. These are nobody’s horses. 'They're scrappy. They are unkempt—and they’re beautiful rock art ever found. ’The images include examples of deer and As human beings, we’re inconsistent when it comes to our tastes. For example, historically we saw mountains as land­ scapes co avoid. We thought of them as harsh. We assumed chat they were barren and dangerous. We preferred the safety �and order of gardens and neighborhoods. Tctday, we cherish We can’t take our eyes off of the mustangs. 'Their legs war parries into Spain. Not to be outdone the Spaniards also justed." Misfits. Those who don’t wear blinders. People who mountain peaks. We paint them. We sing songs about them, churn the dry grasses. They kick up a storm of dust. 'Then began co keep horses. Ridii^ became an art. Finally, in the days refuse co follow. and when we have co leave them, we begin to look for a way chey come co a hale. Ten feec away, che hooves of the lead of Christopher Columbus, horses were loaded on ships and re­ On some level we understand what che wisest among us back. On another note, in our past, women used co wear the horse dig in the dirt and they all stop. Dust clouds our view, turned co rhe homeland of cheir ancestors. The lucive pe<^>le of have cried to teach. In some ways we acknowledge the value bodies of flamingos on their heads. I’m glad co say, today, we but when it clears, the horses emerge: chests heaving, nostrils the West have a saying, The grass remembers che horses." The of wildness. We admire those with a will strong enough to find that kind of fashion excessive. Desires change. That said, flared, and ears in fighting position. tribes of che plains found spiritual parraers in these animals, overcome che pressure co conform. The mustang serves as a whose teeth acxl hooves evolved on American soil. mascot for one of the high schools in our hometown: Casper, I have searched, and I cannot find a time when we did not see beauty in horses. The two of us turn into sculptures of ourselves. At flrsc I look ahead but even blinking feels like an act of aggres­ In spite of cheir role on farms and in militaries, anyone Wyoming. Since we lack a professional football team, most of sion. I turn my eyes coward the ground. Then I realize that I who has witnessed a band of wild mustangs running can us cheer for che Denver Broncos, and every vehicle registered am no longer breathing, so I remind myself to inhale. 1 hear see chat their bodies were carved by the elements of west­ in the state bears a license plate emblazoned wich an image of Lynn trying to keep herself from crying. We stay this way for ern states: prairie wind and wide open spaces. Compared to a bucking horse. In some sense we know che value and appeal Lynn and I spend the morning trying to move in closer to the fifteen minutes. Maybe more. We’re stuck in a standoff, with che other animals that we turned into pets or commodities, of a rebel. We identify wich the spirit of che mustang. Vfe herd. I'm hoping to make a photo of their faces. We know fear and curiosity as ^ue, binding us to che horses. horses wear their domestication lightly. After a single genera­ made the wild horse into a symbol of unbrokeness. better than to march up to them, however. We move ten feet 1 whisper.'I’m going to make a picture." tion bom in fteedom, chey return co che patterns of behavior toward them every few minutes. We talk in hushed tones, so Lynn says.'Yeah. Slowly Don’t make any noises." that served them since the Cenozoic. Like the offspring of from over two million to less than 56.000 in two genera­ they know that we are not two-legged cats trying to stalk up The camera makes a subtle beep as it brings che lens into hatchery raised salmon, bom into rivers, they only know one tions. The state of Wyoming recently sued the Bureau of on them in silence. We do not walk in straight lines. We tack focus. The sound attracts the horses’ attention. Their ears lock state. The wild. Land Management, If che state wins the lawsuit, the ruling left and right co convince them chat we're just two friendly onto the black box at che top of the tripod. They look both­ In a well-known passage. Henry David Thoreau sug­ bipeds, out meandering on the prairie. It does not work ered, but then after a moment, they start to relax. 'The quiet gested, "In wildness is che preservation of che world." It is one within our borders. In addition, state representatives have Each time we step closer the horses look up from the ground. clicks and chirps actually seem co put them at ease. I suspect of the most enigmatic sentences in American letters. Specula­ proposed kgislacion that would lift our current ban on horse 'They spot us. Then they readjust cheir position. After a long che sounds make us seem safe—a pair of birds—mote like tions about what he meant abound in diflerenr directions, slaughter. John Fire Lame Deer, a member of che Lakota pursuit-in-slow-motion we are a half a mile from our car. I’m chubby cranes than grizzlies. buc most scholars agree that the hermit of Walden used these Sioux tribe, once told an interviewer," When a people start killing off cheir own symbols they are in a bad way* We also decreased the number of mustangs in the West will force che BLM to further cut che number of wild horses starting co gee hungry and it's been too long since we drank After I’ve made enough pictures, I look up from my words co remind us that societies can take a coll on our better any water. We decide to head back to the road. I untie the viewfinder. I stand for several minutes, staring eye-to-eye at nature. In towns and cities our culture goes to work on us. We flannel shirt chat I've been wearing on my waist, but before the "other." The Sioux and che Cheyenne called chem,"The become domesticated. Our thoughts cum into reflections of I put my arms into rhe sleeves I flap it co shake off the dust. Horse People." This band’s leader is a male char we’ve seen popular, buc often dubious beliefe. I flick it down and then back up. When I do that, it makes a often in che time since our first encounter. We guess chat loud crack of a sound. he’s an old stallion, spending his golden years roamit^ with a set of blinders, much like those chat we would place onto the one another. They start to nuzzle each other’s feces and necks. Stampede. group of bachelors. His body is charcoal A dark coat covers eyes of a draft horse. Blinders curb what you see. They make One of them looks like he is sleeping. Over time, in a land­ One moment the horses are grazing and the next they're Our culture limits our vision. Societies ask us to wear a After an hour, che horses in front of us turn cheir attention to his back and shoulders but it breaks up along his neck. Under it possible for us to look at human beings as if they are one scape without any shelter, horses learned co lean on members flying through the sage. No transition. When the sound of my his throat, che color changes co a marbled spread of black dimensional. We tend co see ourselves as workers. In the past, of their families. shirt reaches cheir ears—the landscape shifts. The calm swells and white. On his face, he wears a set of marks that give him our culture drove us co view others as slaves. When we look and troughs of che prairie roil into a storm of motion. 'The luminosity. As I look into his eyes I am struck by che sense at che dry grasses of our prairies and deserts, coo often, we toward the car. We haven’t even taken time co pick a place to horses run away from us in the beginning. Then a band that I'm looking throu^ time. It feels like I am looking into dwindle what we see co that of a forage factory, a pasture for camp. Our original pbns would have puc us on a creek a hun­ four breaks to the right. 'They make a wide turn. We watch as the eye of the Earth. sheep and cattle or an economic entity, chou^t of in terms of dred miles to che north. After we walk several paces, 1 cannot they bend cheir route. They circle around until it appears chat animal-units-per-monch. Thoreau would not have pictured help myself, I turn around. The horses have begun co follow chey are running back toward us. the prairie that way. f ie saw a rich pallet of boch humanity us. They do not walk us all che way back co the road, buc they and nature, stretching from his feec coward che West. follow us for fifty yards, and then they watch us leave. 'Then it becomes clear that chey are runnii^ coward us. I 1 fold che tripod and we begin co make our way hear Lynn say.'Oh.'It's not a word, however. It’s more like a Horses evolved on the North American continent. 'They sound. Tm speechless, too. I mutter.'Uuugh?" Then I grab my evolved here, and nowhere else. They grazed alongside woolly thoughts on land, people, and animals down to the level mountain bike and start the usual commute co work. I begin wife and pull her beside me. We stand together behind the mammoths. They ran from rhe threat of dire wolves and of economics. For example, when we crafted legisbcion to on a well-worn path: two lefts and then on a right on che camera, which is perched on top ofa tripod. It's not a bunker, saber-cooched cats. Paleontologists suggest that horses went protect wild horses, we stood up for aesthetic values and the paved grid of our nei^borhood. Before I reach che office I but it’s all we have. extinct in this hemisphere during che last ice age. At lease, moral case for conserving their habitat. Richard Nixon signed notice I am running early, so I jump the curb. Then I cake off that’s one story. 'The fossil record demonstrates that horses the Wild and Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act in 1971. into the empty grassland at che edge of town. are educated when it comes to safety in che wilderness. We outlasted other species in the Pleistocene, and some evidence Today, I hear the American mustang discussed as a tuiisance. know what to do if we’re attacked by a black bear, or a grizzly, suggests that small bands may have even survived into che era People describe them as pests or misfits. I do not cake issue or a mountain lion. We've taken time to practice, so we can act of European conquesc. Even so, it’s safe co assume chat most with che notion chac chey are misfits. 'They belong to another without having to think about what to do in the case of emer­ of them migrated over the Bering land bridge into Asia. age—a time when che grasslands of this continent were still gency. None of our training prepared us co protect ourselves Mongolians were the first to climb onto a horse’s back. untamed. For that reason alone, we ought to appreciate wild from a scampede of wild horses, so we stand together, making From the steppes of the Himalayas, the animals travelled to Af­ horses. During a speech on civil r^ts, Martin Luther King sounds from behind an aluminum tripod. It is sad, but in a rica and Europe. Some took on stripes and turned iruo zebras. junior joined Thoreau by placing faith in wildness. King said, way, a little romantic. The herdsmen of che Mediterranean used others to launch "Human salvation lies in che hands of the creatively malad­ We’ve spent long parts of our lives in rugged places. We 20 thewayfarer.horrveboundpubllcatlons.com At times, we rise above the tendency co shrink our Back home, Monday morning, I throw a leg over my PbotB SWd Hotxa and Burra* tn © BuJtw of Land Manapnoi thewayfarer.homeboundpublicatfons.coin 21 � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Magazine Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Souls of Wild Folk Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2024-07-29 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_64 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>Wayfarer Magazine</em> is published by Wayfarer Publishing https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/9056f3b5a2129fe8093fad113dd6e8db.pdf c30a6bb1d20250b0c87332e70086f87f PDF Text Text Chad Hanson The Wild Horse Question s a nation, we imprison almost as many mustangs as We allow in the wild. The situation strikes everybody as unfortunate including public officials. Even so, the number of horses held cap­ tive in Bureau of Land Management (BLM) pens has grown. BLM agents find themselves without a strategy for managing the animals that Federal law charges them to protect. Questions loom with no answers. How many mustangs do we allow on the prairie? Where? Under what conditions? Do we sell them to slaughter houses? Can we increase adoptions? Sterilization? A good number of agribusiness people would like mustangs removed from public land in order to make more room for cows. Hunters claim that horses eat the plants that feed their quarry. Mustang advocates would have the BLM release the horses that they’re currently holding captive. When you add up all of these perceptions, you find the sort of dilemma that policy scholars describe as a, “wicked problem.” The defining trait of wicked problems is they lack a technical solu­ tion. We cannot address them by determining true or false. Instead, they require us to make distinctions between good and bad. Rather than turning to data for answers, wicked problems demand that we judge potential solutions against an array of values, some of them at odds. The situation makes it hard to even frame proper questions. For example, in the absence of wolves and bears, mountain lions are the only animals that prey on mustangs, and they only take the young, sick, or aged. Thus, in years where there are low rates of mortal­ ity, wild horse numbers hold the potential to grow by up to 20 percent. Some suggest that we should remove horses from public land because predation cannot cull their numbers. But on that line of reason, one might argue that the problem is not that there is a potential for too many mustangs. You could cite the problem as a shortage of preda­ tors. Stated that way, the answer is obvious: increase the number of A PILGRIMAGE 63 �wolves, bears, and mountain lions so as to maintain stable populations of horses in the wild. Personally, I like this framing of the problem. I also favor the solution, but it is possible that agribusiness people dis­ approve of predators even more than they dislike wild horses. Stock growers keep lists of things that bother them about nature. Herds of mustangs, coyotes, and prairie dogs make the lineup, but wolves, bears, and Rons have always stood at the top of the list. Still, the law protecting wild horses serves as a testimony to our national priorities. In 1971, Congress passed the Wild and Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act. Ihe act received unanimous support. It passed in both the House and Senate without one single vote of dissent. The act makes it plain: wild horses “enrich the lives of the American people.” In other words—they’re good. Mustangs are beautiful and free. Americans have a hard time resisting beauty, and we also tend to covet freedom. The Wild Horse Act is a statement of our values. In the late twentieth century, politicians from different parties often found issues they agreed upon. Proposals frequently enjoyed bi-partisan backing, but today, rifts and rancor define our discourse. If a bill contains a moral statement, we consider it suspect. Politicians avoid issues that relate to ethics because they understand that declara­ tions of value will be met by opposition. We don’t propose or pass laws on the basis of good or right or beautiful. Rightness and beauty don’t even merit a conversation. If they did, we would find the discussions uncomfortable. The rifts between us have grovm. We lost the ability to unite around a set of beliefs. Instead of collaborating and crafting laws with a shared sense of beauty or truth, we hmit ourselves to technical questions or questions of economics. We talk about maximizing efficiency. We write laws in the allegedly unbiased language of scientists, but we do so to avoid arguments about desires or virtue. The wild horse debate makes for a case-in-point. The original act that granted a place for mustangs in the wild contained sweeping statements about the animals’ importance, but the bill has been amended twice. In 1976 and 1978 the law received alterations that, together, add nearly as much language as found in PILGRIMAGE 64 �the original legislation. The amendments detail a series of technical matters. They describe the conditions under which the BLM can either remove horses from the wild or destroy them in the case of illness, age, or injury. In the years since the passing of the Wild Horse Act’ the BLM has used “science” to justify the removal of mustangs from more than 40 percent of the land granted to them by Federal law. We live in the age of the engineer. Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs serve as examples of the sorts of figures that we elevate to hero ­ like status. In contrast, few people can name the nation s poet laure­ ate, and even fewer can identify a scholar working in an area of the humanities. We don’t grant a place for poets, artists, or philosophers in debates about issues of consequence. Poets and artists give thought to aesthetics. Philosophers assess the morality of our decisions, but we currently favor technical answers to our ethical questions. From a scientific standpoint, the case for rounding up and remov­ ing wild horses from pubhc land is thin. There are few species that deserve a place in the United States more than the horse. The animal evolved in North America. Fossil records suggests that the process began on the plains of Wyoming, more than 50 milhon years ago. Horses either became extinct or saw their numbers reduced in the last ice age. Paleontologists disagree about the extent, date, and cause of the horse’s decline. Some argue that they were hunted to the brink of oblivion. Others suspect a plague or a shift in the food sources Available to them. We do not know when horses disappeared. We don’t know how or why or even if they went extinct, but we know that the fossil record goes cold with a 7,500 year old set of bones found up in CanadA In any case, the history of the genus equus is well established. None of us can claim this continent as our evolutionary home, but horses can. Because they evolved here, the biological arguments for removing horses do not stand up to scrutiny. Stock growers often complain that horses overgraze the land, but in 2015, the state of Wyoming played host to more than 1.2 milhon cows, and roughly 3,800 mustangs. The situation makes a person wonder, which animals consume more of PILGRIMAGE 65 �the state’s forage? Ironically, horses and cows rarely compete for food. Cattle do not usually range further than a mile from a water source, whereas horses will roam ten miles from a pond or stream. Horses also graze steeper slopes than cows—and at higher elevation. Cattle are more likely to stay where they can find a drink They set up residence beside rivers. In the process, they denude the banks of our waterways. They remove the shade plants from the shore, which raises the temperature of creeks. They stand in the current and relieve themselves. That causes contamination. The presence of cows on a river can change its nature for the worse. A well-known fisheries biologist, Robert Behnke, once cited commercial livestock grazing on public land as the greatest threat to the health of trout streams in the West. Horses rarely spend time in riparian areas, and as a result of their biology, mustangs also graze differently than stock. Critics claim that ’Wild horses trim plants too close to the ground. They possess teeth that work together like scissors. Horses shear off grasses a short dis­ tance from the dirt. On the other hand, cows use molar-like teeth to grab their food. Their teeth work in the manner of a plier. Cattle may grip grasses a greater distance from the ground, but they are forced to pull them free, dislodging roots in the process. The next time you get a haircut, ask yourself, would you rather have your stylist use a scissor or a pair of pliers? Scissor-like teeth leave roots intact so plants can live to grow another day. Horses also replenish their own forage. When they eat grasses they return the plants’ seeds to the soil in the form of manure. Horse apples contain whole seeds—set to grow. In contrast, cattle ruminate their food through four separate stomach compartments. By the time they excrete the seeds of the plants they have eaten, the kernels are often too eroded to reproduce themselves. Are there too many -wild horses? How many mustangs do we need? Like the late -wilderness advocate Bob Marshall, I would answer these questions -with a question: “How many Brahms’ symphonies do we need?” Of course the answer is, “AU of them.” At one time, the western states provided a home for a herd of 6o minion bison. Today, PILGRIMAGE 66 �the BLM currently holds more than 47,000 wild horses in pens that mustang advocates describe as “concentration camps.” If we turned all of the interned horses loose, and then added them to the BLMs estimate of 56,000 free-roaming animals, that would bring the total to 103,000 wild horses. If the grasslands of the West could support 60 million bison, then they can support 103,000 horses. From an ecological standpoint, 103,000 mustangs do not present a threat to the health or state of the North American continent. We do not remove wild horses from public land because of their impact on the prairie, however. We round up and imprison mustangs when we find them eating more food than we allot them, in relation to cows. I spend most of my firee time on the horse herd management areas that make up the Red Desert Complex in Wyoming. On these parcels, the BLM grants 89% of the forage—on land reserved for mustangs—to cattle. Nationally, we allot 97% of the eatable grass on public land to livestock and 3% to wild horses. Consequently, as a nation, we spend more than 70 milhon tax dollars a year, rounding up, confining, and feeding mustangs—so that private herds of cows have enough to eat on public property. You don’t have to count yourself as a wild horse advocate to find this practice objectionable. Our decision to limit the number of horses in the wild represents a choice we made based on the economic interests of a small group of people, as opposed to research in fields like plant or animal biol­ ogy. We apply a veneer of science to our decisions, so as to make our choices palatable, but the question of how we ought to act toward wild horses does not come with a technical solution. It is a wicked problem. From the standpoint of ecology, there is plenty of grass for all of the wild horses on the praine, and all of the ones that we keep locked in storage, too. When wild horse detractors cry, “There are too many mustangs!” it is important to understand that these words are not statements of fact. They are declarations of bias. As the public agency charged with managing the property that we hold in common as a people, the BLM has made an unusual set of PILGRIMAGE 67 �choices with regard to our priorities. Industrial-scale cattle operations are the largest single occupier of our public lands. Across the nation, we allow cows to consume approximately 32 times the food that we allot to mustangs. We allow private herds of livestock to eat far more forage than we reserve for deer and antelope. By the look of things, you would think that the American people value the subsidization of agribusinesses more than hunting, fishing, hiking, camping or bird and wildlife watching. I’m not sure that is true. I am not sure that was ever true, but in this age of urbanization and technology, it seems especially untrue. Today, large numbers of us are searching for a way to balance digital advances with something more essential, primitive, and organic. Americans visit zoos more often than we attend professional sporting or athletic events. We long for something outside of our virtual and economic fives. We search for ways to pull ourselves out of our roles at home and work and into something even just a little bit wild. Here in the twenty-first century, it would appear that we need the chance to see big, beautiful, and untamed creatures running free more than we need additional red meat. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2015 dietary guidelines actually urge us to consume less beef and spend more time engaged in physical activity. I can’t think of a better way to exercise than climbing up a mountain in the West, with the thought of seeing a wild mustang as a prize. The detention of wild horses cannot continue. Even though we have shown that it is technically possible to capture and confine 47,000 mustangs, the practice is unethical. Individuals and groups differ when it comes to what they see as alternatives to roundups and storage, but I have never met anyone who advocates for the ongoing intern­ ment of mustangs. Proposed solutions range from re-opening equine slaughter houses on one hand, through increased private adoptions, to simply returning the horses to freedom. Some of us appreciate these animals. Others would butcher them and then feed them to dogs, but I don’t know anyone who favors the long-term warehousing of the PlLGRIMAdE 68 �American mustang. For too long, we have depended on technical reason to address the wild horse question. We use the “how-to” logic of the engineer. We think, “Hey, we have hehcopters and high-tech mapping software. We can round them up.” I would concede that there is a role for technology in this quandary, but the most promising role for science comes in the form of an anti-fertility drug, Porcine Zona Pellucidaor or PZP. We can administer doses with a dart. Thus, it is possible to treat mares in a natural setting. Chemical sterilization may not offer a final solution to the question of how to control the size of our mustang herds, but it is effective in areas without severe winters or predators—in other words—a natural way to limit population growth. An increasing number of horse advocacy groups see birth control as a good alterna­ tive to concentration camps. When it comes to curbing growth in horse populations, we would do well to use the best science available, but the questions that arise over the mustang problem are ethical. How much food should we allow horses to eat in the pubhc areas that we established as their home? Absent any survey data on the subject, my hunch is that for most us, 11% does not seem like enough. On pubhc land managed for multiple use, how much space and resources do we grant to a single use, such as cattle grazing? I suspect the majority of us would see 89% of a pubhc resource devoted to a single purpose as too much. What do we want to see when we visit our birthright, the pubhc grasslands of the West? Elk? Deer? Badgers? Eagles? Coyotes? Somebody’s cows? Wild mustangs? Native grasses bending in the prairie wind? Lately, we’ve been using a combination of thin science, pohtical power, and economic interests to answer these questions. I would argue that these are not the best means to address moral and cultural dilemmas. We could take additional steps to find out what Americans think about their stake in the pubhc land bequeathed to them by previous generations. More voices would help to understand the nuances of the issue. We should also consult poets and artists. How will future PILdRlMACE 69 �generations judge us if we fail to consider the aesthetic and inspi­ rational qualities of the land that we all possess together? Will they think of us as wise? Will they see us as fools? We should interview philosophers. There is a new branch of philosophy growing in the area of environmental ethics. In determining what is right, it’s probably unrealistic to expect that we could reach a nation-wide consensus as we did in 1971, but at this stage in the wild horse debate, we can no longer afford to put off the search for a solution that is good. ♦ PILGRIMAGE 70 � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Magazine Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Wild Horse Question Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_65 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>Pilgrimage</em>&nbsp;is published by Colorado State University-Pueblo https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/59ab4686a0ed5ee652d26cd1639fbb94.pdf 9a73b7e8e98449431b53df8f8e5d3d1b PDF Text Text Where is My Heart? by Chad Hanson When she felt something, she moved her right hand up toward her heart. Her palm rested on bone and her fingers spread out on top of her breast. Two days after she turned fifty it dawned on her that she could not recall the last time she did that. She traced her condition to the day she said goodbye to Florida. She booked a flight to Orlando. Then she rented a room in Cocoa Beach. In the morning, she walked to the water. She sat her pajamas onto the khaki sand. When the sun began to rise over the Atlantic, she felt her hand moving toward her chest. CHAD HANSON serves as Chairman of the Department of Sociology Q Social Work at Casper College. His creative nonfiction titles include Sv/imming v/ith Trout and Trout Streams of the Heart. His manuscript Patches of Light won the 2013 David Mar­ tinson—Meadowhawk Prize in Poetry, and is forthcoming from Red Dragonfly Press. 1 Photo Credit © David Sim (CC) Flickr � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Magazine Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Where is My Heart? Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_66 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>Wayfarer Magazine</em> is published by Wayfarer Publishing https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/1e5bdc7e44f26bfad1a82a4ef43ead24.pdf 7f1733ff817a5de60d3264db84020fd3 PDF Text Text Readers’ contributions are encouraged for The Quick Fix. It’s 250-500 words on an idea or technique that works. The Why Do I Have to Take This Class? A Lesson in Making the Required Course Relevant Chad M. Hanson Today, students enrolled in required courses are more likely than ever to ask, Why do I have to take this class? I teach required social science courses exclu­ sively, so I face the question a lot. But instead of giv­ ing students a sermon about why they need to take Introduction to Sociology, I use the “why” question as an opportunity to engage students in a round of Socratic dialogue about the relevance and value of general education. In fact, I ask the “why” question myself, if students don’t beat me to it. I ask, “Why is this class required? Why do we bother?” In response, I often receive com­ ments like that of a former student who said. “These classes make us well rounded.” The answer suits me of course, but even when I get good, positive respons­ es like that one I continue turning questions back to the group. In this case I said, “Excellent! I think that’s true,” but I continued, “By the way, what does it mean to be well rounded?” At points like these, depending on how students respond, I make a spur-of-the-moment decision about whether to continue or change the format. If students are responding well, I continue with the entire class. If they are reticent, I form small groups to give them more time to think. Either way, I try to lead people toward ideas found in the literature on the role of social science in general education. For example, I emphasize the idea that social sci­ ence courses are a chance for students to explore how Vol. 50/No. 1 their own thoughts and feelings are determined in part by their society and their place in history. I ask them, “What do you want to become?” After listening to a round of reasonable career choices I ask, “How come no one wants to be a blacksmith?” Faces light up as students begin to see how their own choices are deter­ mined by the structure of opportunities in the United States. I also question them along lines that show how their own personal decisions help maintain the structure of society. I ask, “How many of you came to school by yourself in an automobile?” When everyone raises their hand it is possible to see how individual deci­ sions lie at the base of our broadest social patterns. In my experience, acknowledging the “why do I have to take this class” question in the open has improved students’ morale, improved their perfor­ mance, and had a positive impact on the way they evaluate my classes. If, despite my efforts, students miss the relevance of my course at some point, they know the “why” question is a fair one to ask. Every lime they do, I seize the opportunity. I believe it is my duty to honor students’ doubt and to lead them past asking. Why do I have to take this class? and toward a genuine appreciation of general education. Chad M. Hanson is a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at Casper College, in Casper, Wyoming. 21 � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Journal Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Why Do I Have to Take This Class?: A Lesson in Making the Required Course Relevant Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2002 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_67 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>College Teaching</em> is published by Taylor &amp; Francis Group, LLC