TRAVELING IN STYLE : OF COWPOKES ‘N’ CUTTHROATS

The city of Los Angeles contains 298,000 acres and 3 million people. New Mexico’s Vermejo Park has 392,000 acres and (maximum) 102 people--60 employees and 42 guests. It is also home to about 4,000 cattle, more than 5,000 elk, a herd of bison, deer, bear, mountain lions and, for the fisherman, a lifetime supply of rainbow, brook, brown and cutthroat trout.

The bear tracks entered the water at a shallow point where the river widens and tumbles over small stones before turning abruptly, cutting into the red earth bank and forming a deep pool where the better cutthroat trout hold close to boulders at the bottom.

The shaggy black bear had splashed through deep grass to a narrow ravine that leads up into the coolness of the New Mexico pines. It had been a dry summer, and the bears were down from the mountains, seeking food. There were no signs of cubs, so I fished farther down the river, catching and releasing a number of trout that fought with a tenacity out of all proportion to their size. One can go for hours in this special place without seeing another person, and at this point on the river, the only sign of human existence is the remains of a stagecoach stop, where a century ago those en route to the gold fields enjoyed a brief respite from the rolling and pitching of the carriage. The thick timbers and wide boards hang resolutely in place, framing tiny rooms that provided a haven for those whose fantasies drove them to remote camps that are today disintegrating shards of forgotten ghost towns.

The trout, the bear and the stagecoach stop symbolize to me the joy, the wilderness and the romance of this ranch, Vermejo Park, at the northeastern corner of New Mexico, in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains--a ranch that contains some of the most beautiful land in America not owned by a government agency, and it is virtually unoccupied. The city of Los Angeles, for instance, contains 298,000 acres and is populated by more than 3 million people. Vermejo Park has 392,000 acres and contains (maximum) 102 people--60 employees and 42 guests. It is also home to about 4,000 cattle, more than 5,000 elk, a herd of bison, deer, bear, mountain lions and, for the fisherman, a lifetime supply of rainbow, brook, brown and cutthroat trout.

Vermejo Park is a working cattle ranch that accommodates fishermen in the summer and hunters in the fall and early winter. It is determinedly backcountry. There is no pool. No tennis court. No lounge chairs. No boutiques. The accommodations range from the Spartan to the graceful. Nouvelle cuisine is as welcome as a rattler on the front porch. The food--and there is a lot of it--tends to fried pork chops and well-done steak, with butterscotch pie and tapioca pudding for dessert. The respectable breakfast is a thick omelet, smothered in chili, with spicy sausage on the side.

Starting out at dawn in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, one heads down a well-packed, dirt ranch road--past the rodeo grounds and cattle pens--and heads for the high country (the ranch property ranges from 6,400 to 12,900 feet above sea level). There are cattle and deer along the way. The mountains seem distant, but within an hour and a tortuous climb up a steep, rock-strewn meadow, one can make it to an old timber road that leads to a pristine and rarely fished creek.

At that altitude the sun has a striking intensity, though there is a brittle chill to the air. The creek is fast and shallow, and the brook trout are highly suspicious, frantically darting for cover if any shadow or movement disturbs the water. The fishing is challenging and rewarding, and after a few hours one switches from waders to sneakers and hikes through the trees to an open meadow. Walking just below the tree line, one can see across the deep valley--there are no houses or cars, just brown ribbons of ranch road and silvery ribbons of creek slicing across the verdant fields--to the opposite mountain range. Settling under an aspen whose bark has been chewed away by the elk, one eats lunch from a small cooler and sings the songs of a simple world.

“ As long as there’s a broken heart,

there’ll be a place to go.

Where good old boys meet good old

girls, and the wine and music flow.

Yeah, there’ll always be a honky-tonk

with a jukebox in the corner

and someone crying in their beer,

and one old hanger-on and a lady

looking lonely from a losing

love affair.

Yeah, there’ll always be a honky-tonk

somewhere.

A wall of clouds is now escalating beyond the opposite ridge. Within a few hours the clouds will turn dark and heavy, slipping over the mountains and bringing a summer afternoon thunderstorm to the valley. There is still time to fish and get down the steep meadow before the rain arrives.

Vermejo Park was once the world of the Apache, but around the turn of the century it was acquired by a Chicago grain speculator who improved the property, constructing trout lakes (there are now 20), importing an elk herd and building three large stone mansions and a number of ranch buildings. The ranch passed through a variety of hands after the entrepreneur’s death, and in 1926 the Vermejo Club was organized, whose members included Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Herbert Hoover, F.W. Kellogg, Harvey Firestone, Cecil B. DeMille, Thomas W. Warner and Andrew Mellon. Some of the finest trout this past summer came from a lake with a cabin on the far bank. It is known as Mary’s Cabin, since Mary Pickford enjoyed spending time there.

The club disbanded during the Depression, and the ranch went through a series of hands until it was sold to Pennzoil in 1973. Although the property once contained 495,000 acres, the oil company donated about 100,000 acres in 1982 to the U.S. Forest Service for inclusion in Kit Carson National Forest.

The ranch president says that the property is profitable, with the elk hunting providing a strong income center. Elk hunters pay $5,000 to $7,000 for five days, and 85 percent of them get an elk. For fishermen, the fee is $160 a day, which includes room and board. Guides and four-wheel-drive rentals are available.

The most engaging way to reach Vermejo from Los Angeles is to settle into a compartment on Amtrak, which leaves Union Station about 8 p.m. and reaches Raton, N.M., about 6 p.m. the next day. The scenery is marvelous, as is Amtrak’s service, although the food borders on the mundane. A CARE package from a good deli is suggested.

In Raton, one can rent a car for the one-hour drive into the ranch. The road to the ranch is unmarked, but a Raton gas station can direct you to it. Raton is on Interstate 25, about halfway between Denver and Albuquerque. You can also fly to Albuquerque or Denver and drive to the ranch within five hours.

There’s little to do at the ranch at night. One can drink beer at the bar or drive down to the dump to see a bear or two. But those with energy can leave 45 minutes before dusk and go south on the ranch road toward Cimarron to study elk herds cautiously emerging from the trees for a night of grazing.

One of my joys over the years at Vermejo has been to strike up a friendship with a cowboy named Pat McGrew, a genial and lanky man whose height is accentuated by his worn and stained Resistol 4X Cattleman’s hat. “Hat’s so greasy if I got lost I could scrape it off and live on that for two or three days.”

It is highly unlikely that McGrew would ever get lost or be unable to find a meal in the country. Last winter he ran a string of 28 traps that spanned 100 miles. He covered that route every two days. During an earlier winter he lived in a cabin at 7,000 feet, feeding and caring for about 700 cattle.

“I have an instinct for trapping and hunting,” he says, not with bravado but as simple declaration of fact. Traveling with Pat McGrew is like getting a crash course in horses and cows and bears and mountain lions and life in the mountains.

“I love bears,” he says. “They have real personalities. Bears are nothing to be nervous about. You just have to watch ‘em.”

McGrew is in many ways the personification of the land he honors, and with him one gets a sense of this land--our land, for that matter--in a prior century.

Three summers ago we were fishing in the valley, and he went downriver, out of sight. It was silent on the river, but I suddenly had a sense of being watched. I hoped Pat was within earshot. Turning slowly I saw a dog standing on a nearby knoll, equally curious and alert. And then over the knoll came a cowboy, riding easily on his bay. He was wearing jeans and chaps, a faded shirt with a bandanna at the neck. His hat was bleached by the suns of many summers.

He was a romantic, unexpected figure from the past, and as he rode by, he raised two fingers to the brim of his hat and politely said, “Afternoon,” moving along to check the herd scattered down the valley.

“Pretty dusty out there. How about a soft drink?”

He wheeled the horse around.

“I’d appreciate that.”

He dismounted just as McGrew returned to the Jeep. They talked about the weather, a sick cow, the persistence of the groundhogs, the growing skill of the cowboy’s horse in making swift turns, the precise day the first snow could be expected, the value of a secondhand rifle. They talked in short, clipped sentences that said paragraphs.

After a while, the cowboy got on his horse. He again touched the brim of his hat in a silent gesture of thanks and rode off, the dog at his side.

Like Vermejo, his image spoke to another century, another way of life, a place away from what we call urban America.

Lyrics are from the song, “There’ll Always Be a Honky Tonk Somewhere,” by Johnny Macrae and Steve Clark. Copyright (c) 1987 by Dig-A-Bone Music Inc., Music City Music Inc. and Intersong-USA Inc. International Copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

For information on the ranch, write Vermejo Park Ranch, Drawer E, Raton, N.M. 87740, telephone (505) 445-3097. )