T is for Tumbleweed

Recommended reading for the wild, wild west

When my dad was a toddler, my grandpa took him along while he painted a mural in a bar. When a gunfight broke out, Grandpa simply tucked Dad under a table until the fighting stopped. Tables are famously bulletproof after all.

It was the early 1950s and he did this sort of thing. He was the kind of man who fished with dynamite, turned rattlesnakes into ashtrays, picked fruit, and painted murals in bars. The murals, I’m told, secured him free drinks for life, which he definitely did not need.

These are the kinds of stories that come from my Californian family. On both sides, the lore is filled with ranching, shootouts, and Folsom Prison. On the slightly fancier side, there are vineyards and Pan Am Clippet pilots and Napa Valley estates. But my favourite stories have always been about the more colourful characters that make up my family tree, of which my grandpa is the perfect example.

I think those people might be why I love Westerns so much. There’s something about the feral ruggedness that makes me think of my family and wonder a bit about where things got so mild. How did that beget this? How did they create me? Is this lineage responsible for my romantic notions about tumbleweed and whisky? Do I come by those delusions honestly?

At my job in Toronto, a colleague from a slightly smaller city in Ontario expressed shock that I was from the country. “You just seem like such a city girl.” It stung a little more because I knew it was true. Somewhere along the way, I grew to really enjoy city living and all of its conveniences and flashing lights. Anytime I’m in the wilderness, I think about not leaving. It would be very easy to just stop; to hang tight and live out my Wide Open Spaces dreams and learn how to make ashtrays out of small woodland creatures. But I return to concrete and cars every time, and I imagine my grandpa’s ghost shaking his head in disbelief, while a dead rattlesnake hangs from his hand.

Today’s recommended reading is a celebration and a coping mechanism. Escape for a moment into the Wild West with me.

Recommended Reading

The Heart in Winter is billed as a Western with Irish accents, which sounds a little strange to those who were raised on spaghetti westerns, but it absolutely clicks. It’s heartbreaking and sexy and brilliant and contains one of my favourite passages ever written. When you read it, you’ll either feel deeper gratitude than you ever thought possible for indoor plumbing or the urge to pack up a horse and ride off into the sunset with your star-crossed lover. I’ll let you guess which way I skewed.

Anna North’s Outlawed follows a young woman who has the incredibly bad luck to be both brainy and barren, which means she’s obviously a witch. Featuring a ragtag crew of misfits and outlaws, North weaves a yarn of love around these folks as they attempt the heist of the century.

Both The Heart in Winter and Outlawed brilliantly feature experiences that have traditionally been omitted while leaning into the tragedy that makes the genre so special.

And of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t include the work of Klondike poet Robert Service in a western-themed roundup. The Klondike Gold Rush was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of Yukon in northwestern Canada, between 1896 and 1899. Gold was discovered there by local miners on August 16, 1896; when news reached Seattle and San Francisco the following year, it triggered a stampede of prospectors. Some became wealthy, but the majority went in vain.

Nothing captures the futility of chasing rumours of gold quite like the Cremation of Sam McGee, nor the fickle and pragmatic nature of romance in wild places like the Shooting of Dan McGrew. My grandpa (not the Californian one) used to ask me to recite Sam McGee to him when I was young. I’d stand in the living room with my hands clasped behind my back, not understanding the deep desperation and fatigue of it all. Now, when I think of the ‘strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold,’ I feel the enduring hope and foolishness of it all right to my core. What more could you want from a western?