A
Change of Season
We don't summer at Chesnim'
these days,
Not since the For' Service shut 'er down;
They took away our permit to graze,
Now we pasture near the edge of town.
We don't fall ride at Cold Springs anymore,
In the teeth of any early winter storm;
Or hitch our boots by the cow camp door,
And play cribbage inside where it's warm.
We no longer winter by the Snake,
On benches carved below the rim;
The land was sold for the public's sake,
To the For' Service and to the BLM.
No, we don't spring calve on Cactus flat,
Since it sold to the State Fish and Game;
They say the Chinook ain't comin' back,
And the cowman must carry the blame.
So, we gather now, at Third and Grand,
A beer garden after the parade;
And here we'll make one final stand,
Until this season begins to fade.
Smoke
Wade
Copyright © 1994
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Trailing the
Herd |
They moved often
then,
From warm winter grounds by the river's mouth;
Where mothers gave birth,
On rocky hillsides facing the sunny south.
Up steep trails, they moved,
Over low saddles bathed in late spring showers;
Through canyons with pine,
To mountain meadows with purple flowers.
By green ponds, they moved,
Past huckleberries on the summit high;
Down old Indian trails,
Across barren land with an endless sky.
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Through dry
hills, they moved,
Down dusty lanes under hot August sun;
To pasture with room,
For mother cows to rest and calves to run.
Behind fences, they moved,
There they fatten with ample time to graze;
No more winter grounds,
It is modern times with different ways.
They moved often then,
Past sumac gullies and high mountain streams;
Before trailing the herd,
Became part of our memories and dreams.
,
Smoke Wade
copyright© 1991 |
I was born the grandson of a cattle
baron on the Oregon side of Hells Canyon. Our family
partnership had a system of six ranches that were
interspersed over a forty mile section of the canyon and
surrounding land to the west. With sixty thousand acres
of deeded land and thirty thousand acres of grazing
permits, the ranch system allowed us to follow the
seasons as we moved cattle from winter grounds to spring
pasture, on to the high country in the summer and closer
to the shipping market in the fall. As the first snow
began to fall, the cattle were trailed back to the
winter ranches. The trails were followed had been used
for thousands of years by those that lived there before
us. From the northern most ranch to the fall cattle
market was about seventy miles. In between, we had high
country cow camps.
In 1975, the U. S. Congress passed the
Hells Canyon National Recreation Act and condemnation of
the ranches began immediately. Now, the old ranches are
headquarters operations for various government entities
and the cow camp cabins have long since burned in
uncontrolled forest fires.
My youth was a wilderness life with
little outside influence.
I attended a one room school house with a student
body of four boys. One year we had seven students.
It was the same school house that my mother attended
as a child. The teacher would be an outsider that
lived in a room in the back of the school. We had a
horse barn as most students rode horseback to
school. (The picture to
the left is the school that Smoke attended.)
On holidays, we would put together school plays for
the area ranchers. We had a hand pump for water and
coal oil lamps for light. Eventually, we would board
out in town during the week for higher education
 and
return to the ranch on weekends, vacations and for
the summer. (To the
right is the home ranch as it looks now that
the Game Department has painted all the
buildings red. Most of the buildings were built by Smoke's
grandfather about 1915.)
Modes of transporatation included rough travel on dirt roads, boat,
horseback and an occasional airplane ride into one
of the remote ranches.
While there is no longer any
private land or cattle along the Oregon side of
Hells Canyon, I still own and operate 160 acres
of the old ranch beyond the boundary of the
National Recreation Area. I served four years in
the U.S, Navy 1964-1968, with three tours to
Vietnam. Soon after, the ranch system began to
crumble.
Having a life long love of
writing, I began recording memories of the
canyon in poems and western nostalgia in the
1980's. By 2000, performing cowboy poetry
became a part of my life, and my love for
the genre has prompted me to become heavily
involved in organizing western entertainment
events as well as writing reports for the
events for publications such as Rope
Burns, Happy Trails,
www.cowboypoetry.com and
www.cowboyentertainer.com
My rewards for my involvement in cowboy poetry
have come in the form of new friendships with other poets and
musicians
from all parts of North America.
(The picture to the right is of Smoke spinning a yarn.)
Recently, I was awarded the 2006 People's Choice Poet Award at
the Lee Earl Gathering, Lewiston, ID, The 2005 Hall of Fame
Award by the Christian Cowboy Balladeers; place second place in
two events at the 2005 Cowboy Poetry Rodeo in Kanab, UT; my CD
"SMOKE WADE, A LEGEND IN HIS OWN MIND" was
nominated in 2005 for the AWA Will Rogers Award and was rated
number one Cowboy Poetry CD for 2005 by KRLC 1350AM Western
Heritage Show; and my poem A Change of Season
earned me the 8 Seconds award in the Cowboy
Poetry Lariat Laureate contest in the summer of 2005 on
www.cowboypoetry.com
All these accomplishments are over shadowed by the friendship
of the family of cowboy poets and western musicians. It is this
friendship that provides my motivation in the genre of cowboy
poetry.
Smoke Wade
Smoke's CD,
SMOKE WADE, A LEGEND IN HIS OWN MIND,
may be purchased for
$15.00 ppd. from:
Smoke Wade
3117 5th St #3
Lewiston, ID 83501
(208) 746-7652
E-mail
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