He comes unbeckoned into my brain sometimes, an old man whom I hardly knew, born in the late 1800s and who lived most of his life on his ranch in southern New Mexico. The name Isidore Davila is spoken with quiet reverence in my family; most of us refer to him as Grandpa Davila. When I think of him, he morphs from the old man I remember, even though I was only three years old, to a young vaquero, out gathering his cattle in the mountains. The snow is swirling around him, his head, and the head of his horse, tucked down against the wind as they walk into a blizzard.

He was of the old cowboy ways, the homesteaders and ranchers who had little to sustain them other than the work they were willing to put into their land. It is said they worked an 8 hour day: eight hours before noon and eight hours after. Read more…