The Cathedral of Western Fable

By Nick Nixon

West of the Mississippi, west of the Ozarks and west of the endless prairie flats of Kansas, there lies the mythical mountain land of my imagination where the legends of my childhood once lived and roamed.

Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, Kit Carson, Billy the Kid were some that stand out in my memory. Other long ago legendary outlaws rode out of our central state of Missouri; folks remember their names and some say they still ride today up there in the pine. Every cave in Missouri has been a hideout for the infamous train robbers Frank and Jesse James. Many of the initials scratched on their limestone walls are an alias to confuse the wily Pinkertons.

Tell me what kid kept a dry eye when Johnny Mac Brown rode off into the lonesome sunset. And how many of us scurried all week finding new ways to make the dime entry fee into the Saturday matinee again to see if the Durango Kid survived the explosion while tied up deep inside a mountain.

If I could count them, I’ll bet I yelled “Come back Shane” more times than Tonto said “keem o sabe.” 

Oh, we had the baseball Cardinals and the entertaining Browns every summer at the old Sportsman Park. And the Forest Park Highlands where we spent our hard earned newspaper sales money riding the daring roller coaster known throughout the mid-west as the “Flying Comet.” We practiced our Lou Thesz wrestling holds, as well as our Rocky Marciano fighting stance.        However, the mountains and the mystic hills of the West with huge boulders, high cliffs and creeks shimmering with “there for the taking” gold dust, were a hundred times easier for me to envision through the big picture window of my imagination. As a boy, I wanted to climb right into the radio, jump aboard a black stallion and ride with the Lone Ranger as his other faithful companion, through the  valley of the Cotton-Wood. Make camp on the creek that runs down from the snow-capped mountains. Eat a supper of bacon and beans warmed over a camp fire and go to sleep to the sound of a lone wolf howling mournfully from a high ridge.

I longed to watch a stag elk ease down a point on a frosty morning blowing mushrooms of steam from his nostrils with his huge antlers rolling elegantly along his back.

These thoughts have been with me throughout my long life, and I’ve been there. I’ve seen the great forest in all its pride and glory. I’ve seen mountain streams running clear as the sky after an early snow storm. I’ve seen two Grizzlies play in a high meadow. Yes, I’ve seen it, but sadly through the years, I’ve seen some of it go away. 

I’ve stood on a rock big enough to jump an Indian from if one rode by unexpectedly. I’ve been on cliffs that I could of lain concealed with a spy glass monitoring movements of the outlaw gang what rustled my paw’s cattle.

But the cathedral of western fable lies in America’s southwest, known as the mystifying “Monument Valley” where every pebble is a souvenir of the greatest of all western heroes, John Wayne. If you look at the valley’s picture long enough you can see “the Duke” atop a dusty stage coach picking off painted Indians that came too close to his one-of-a-kind Winchester, or checking the time on his retirement watch lest we forget she wore a yellow ribbon.

You would think actually being there and walking on the same hallowed ground as my legendary idols would’ve dampened my fascination. That’ll be the day.

Somehow it has only fanned the flames of a long burning passion for the great, but fading, American West. My only hope is that it lasts, at least as long as there’s one young person as enchanted with its magic as I have been.