Perhaps nothing signifies the essence of Americana like cowboys and ranches. And, while that lifestyle seems to have disappeared in the high-tech, fast-paced 21st century, it is very much alive and well in many Western states.
In her debut book titled “A Cowgirl’s Conservation Journey: Stories From the Dugout Ranch,” Heidi Redd communicates the wonderment, tenacity, fulfillment, and so much more that is involved in a rancher’s journey. Her April-released book, published by The Nature Conservancy, is a tribute to that journey, expressed in famous quotes, using stories instead of chapters, and featuring extraordinary photography.
The 82-year-old Utah native was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas, in November 2022. Her autobiographical prose is humbly and candidly shared, as readers are taken to the landscape that Ms. Redd loves, has worked, and helped to preserve.
“For more than a century, I’ve slept next to the Sundial,” her first sentence reads. “I know every facet and angle of that butte.”
What she describes is an extremely steep, vertical rock hill that is the defining natural element of Dugout Ranch. As a senior at Utah State University, Ms. Redd had an adventurous spirit, but she knew nothing about ranching. That was a pursuit of her future husband’s family. Her introduction to the more than 5,000-acre ranch, near Canyonlands National Park, changed her trajectory.
“I drank in the beauty of the canyon, every bend washing over me, filling my senses,” she writes, about when she first entered the ranchlands. “I was held by the place—not just physically—but also deep within my soul. It was the kind of feeling you grasp maybe once or twice in your life when you are moved by something greater than yourself.”
Ms. Redd married the rancher and became a full-time cowgirl, traveling by horseback, sometimes for days, in all types of weather to check on cows being raised for beef. In her book, she provides readers with clear descriptions of the landscape, the tasks necessary to keep herds healthy, the foods prepared on open fires, and the horses she rode and relied on. In the chapter titled “Story Three: Cowboy Kinship,” she aptly chose Winston Churchill’s quote “No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.”
Ms. Redd raised two boys at the ranch. She learned to brand and rope and castrate alongside the hired cowhands. In her estimation, she’s had an ideal life.
“In my mind, we lived in our own desert Camelot. Isolated in the best ways; we rode hard, worked hard, and thrived with a rare kind of freedom in an enchanted realm,” she writes.
However, by the 1980s, the idyllic lifestyle of ranch life was threatened when the Department of Energy expressed an intent to use the land for a nuclear waste repository. One area called Indian Creek Canyon, where the cattle wintered, was supposed to accommodate 700 trucks of waste daily.
In fascinating detail, Ms. Redd offers readers insight into why the Dugout Ranch was not lost to nuclear waste. She chose “Little Women” author Louisa May Alcott’s famous quote “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship” to convey the struggles that she experienced in the 1980s. Other struggles include thrilling accounts of how she survived a sudden snowstorm and how a black bear got caught in a horse trailer.
Toward the end of this coffee-table-style, large-format book, she reveals what she believes her sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren have gleaned most from ranch life. I leave the final legacy chapters for readers to discover.
Ms. Redd’s book is sensory storytelling from someone who has lived a truly American life in a wild and beautiful part of the country. The cowgirl, who still lives at Dugout Ranch and still rides her horse, describes her book as “a love song” to a land she has been “married to for more than half a century.”
