Paul Marchant

When I was about 7 years old, an old horse trader, of sorts, showed up in our country with a truckload of Shetland ponies.

Last month, I went back to my hometown to attend the funeral of my uncle. It was kind of a surreal experience for several reasons, not the least of which being Uncle Reed was only eight years older than I am, the youngest of eight siblings and the first of those siblings to die.

Some of my earliest memories from growing up are of riding on the front of my dad’s saddle as he rode to and from the hay fields to irrigate.

I have a good friend who is a genuinely good, generous, down-to-earth kind of guy. Like a lot of us, he bounced around a few places at different jobs before he settled in in southern Idaho.

I grew up on a diversified outfit. We didn’t have a whole lot of anything, but we had a little of a lot of things. Besides the herd of a couple hundred beef cows, we – like many of our neighbors – had a little herd of milk cows.

Like any good subculture worth its salt, the buckaroo community of America’s Great Basin has its share of quirks and unique traditions.