Home on the Range (or Campus)- Longhorns and Mustangs

I'm going to have to agree with Sadia on this one- I never quite saw the longhorn as my animal or even one I wanted to be associated with.  In contradiction to how many feel, especially ones native to the area, I suspect I felt like I wanted to be above it all.  In other words, because I attended school a mere 30-35 miles away where everyone was either an Aggie or a Longhorn with maybe a few Texas Tech mixed in.  From 4th grade on, I was constantly peppered with the question of "which are you?"  I eventually came to the decision that I never wanted to be either.  Of course, that was really a decision more out of spite and a need to be unique than based on reason and actual personal emotion.  As I've started my freshman year, I've come to change my view to one I actually hold within myself, not just for the sake of my classmates.

In other words, I'm beginning to become enamored just the like the rest of us.  I think it is mostly in part that the longhorn is changing from an orange label slapped on everything in Austin to a living breathing animal.  They have traits and personalities and lives just as unique as ours.  I love the characterization given to Sancho during his saga.  I love how he becomes such a unique individual when he "became a kind of chiltipiquin addict.  He would hunt for the peppers." (106)  I can easily imagine this hulking figure with oversized horns carefully sweeping the ground and bushes for his favorite treat.  From there, the stories change to the more wild brethren of Sancho who were outlaws and ladinos.  They strike me as more of the mythology of Texas.  The non-comforists who helped to shape the cowboy myths that any Texan child has had read to them on cool summer nights.  (I know my family own such a collection.)

And that leads me to another important point that I felt should be mentioned.  The excerpts from Learning from Longhorns at first struck me as very silly and childish.  It sounded as if something you would read to a young child as a morality book.  But, I guess I'm not a complete cynic and it hit a soft spot with me on the mention of what nurturing mothers longhorns make.  I had no idea they were devoted and aware enough to draw you away from their calf if they sensed you following.  That shows an awareness and anticipation towards what others are thinking.  That's some pretty complicated thinking in my book!  I still have trouble recognizing whether I say something potentially awkward in a social situation.  I guess I still have a lot to learn from the bovine.

They're not just huge beasts.  They have feeling and distinctive lives- just like us.

from: http://whatwomenwritetx.blogspot.com/2009/11/wild-dogs-and-longhorn-cattle-couldnt.html

As for the other wildlife (for truly, by definition they are wild) that we covered in our reading, I felt myself fall into the romance of the mustang as presented in so many stories and anecdotes.  They are never merely horses or feral work animals that in the vast expanses of grasslands.  They are inseparable from our image of how Texas was in it's "golden age."  Despite that they came with the first Spanish Conquistadores were never native to the area, we hold the as the hallmark to the age of the Indians and Cowboys.  They grace our old movies of the John Wayne variety and are often used in art across the west.  When I first read the quote, "a thing of beauty will never pass into nothingness" (131) I thought the writer to be exceedingly nostalgic.  Couldn't he see that the wild mustangs no longer ran the prairies that are now covered in suburbs and shopping malls?  But I began to think about it, and saw that he didn't mean it in such a literal sense.  He was referring to our collective image and ideal of these magnificent creatures.  Though highways may cut across the open land instead of cattle drives, we still honor our history and theirs.  All the pictures, postcards, stuffed animals, and movies that show the rolling plains and the untamable inhabitants- the mustangs.  That is how we preserve our thing of beauty.

This the the statue on campus which I have admired in passing on the way to the museum.

from: http://www.utexas.edu/maps/main/images/