Somewhere in the New West

It's a brilliant fall day in southern Idaho. True, it's not Alaska, but as an involuntary immigrant facing a protracted stay, it could be worse—just ask Solzhenitsyn. Ahead of me, a good old boy in an enormous Dodge pickup impatiently revs his engine as we wait on an endless stream of pickup trucks crossing the intersection. In a land awash in trucks, his ride stands out. Sure, it has all the usual appurtenances one needs and expects: a CB, gun rack, and a profusion of rodeo stickers on the back glass, nothing remarkable there. Perhaps it's the custom paint job that draws my attention; a glossy, cerulean blue that puts the sky to shame. No doubt it is a beautiful truck; a work of art meant to warm the heart of any red-blooded redneck, like me.

Sitting behind him in my Subaru Forester, I temporarily succumb to an acute case of truck envy. In Idaho, anyone in a Subaru is automatically persona non grata, an invisible entity to be ignored, if not pitied. Even the normal rules of right-of-way seem not to apply as gigantic pickup trucks and SUVs routinely cut the less fortunate off. Oh well, no hard feelings. Once again, before the light changes, I slip a last, admiring glance at the object of my desire. It is only then that I discern a small, though disquieting, detail. As the truck roars off I can't help but notice, through a noxious cloud of diesel exhaust, that the pin stripping across the tailgate has been painted to resemble strands of barbed wire....

Barbed wire! Of all the motifs one might choose to represent The West, barbed wire is definitely the most ironic. I'm sure the truck's owner thinks it looks cool. After all, half the biceps in the state are wrapped in barbed wire tattoos. Still, I find it a curious choice. Particularly so when you consider that, just four generations ago, the great-grandfather of the man in that truck was undoubtedly cursing the day wire was invented. In that long-gone era, barbed wire was widely viewed as the straw that broke the cowboy's back. A final, insurmountable restraint imposed upon what had been an exuberant, if brief, existence.

Now, a sort of western Stockholm syndrome prevails. Through some perverse logic, the invention that ushered out the old way of life has come to represent what remains of the West. And while we may not lament the passing of the Old West as it actually was, we are surely the poorer for the absence of that romantic spirit of possibility that it represents. Settling back in the seat of my station wagon, I amble off into the sunset, just a few miles north of the trail where a generation of emigrants, mad with gold fever, once followed the sun west to their promised land. Maybe the wire hasn't completely killed the spirit of the West. Perhaps, as long as we are free to move about the lonely, wind-swept plains, it never will.