Being a cowboy is as much about place as it is about lifestyle, and for rancher and conservationist Richard Collins the place is the Southern Arizona borderlands, from Mount Wrightson on the west to the Mustangs and Whetstones on the east, from Sonoita to Patagonia and then south into Sonora, Mexico.
“If you don’t know where you are, it is hard to know who you are,” says Collins, paraphrasing Wendell Berry. Raised on a ranch near Phoenix, he has owned and operated ranches in southern Arizona since the 1980s. The chapters of this book began as columns in a local newspaper and expanded into this book-length manuscript upon retirement.
“This book is a rancher’s autobiography, a collection of natural history essays, grass management, and southwestern history thrown in as required to tell the complex story of the modern-day lives of cowboys and ranchers.”