Editorial: A Year After Atlas

MARIA TUSSING, TSLN Assistant Editor

Atlas was the Greek god of weightlifting and heavy burdens. He personified endurance and was credited with holding up the heavens.

Last October, in a storm named after him, Atlas let them slip. For a few thousand people in a couple states that are mostly dark in nighttime satellite photos, the heavens tilted. They are just now beginning to right themselves.

People warn you against looking back. They’ll tell you the only way to move ahead is to look ahead. But behind us lie the things we know are true. They’re the things that shaped us, and only by seeing what has shaped us, can we see what shape we’re in.

We could talk in clichés of the past year. We could speak of watering the earth with tears, of heartbreak, of life springing from death, of the life-giving and the life-sucking nature of water.

Or we could talk of people. We could talk of the people we were, the people we leaned on, the people we became.

Some of us rode horses, chest-deep and floundering through the misplaced blizzard that killed thousands of cows, but left grasshoppers alive. Some of us wrote checks, waved buyer numbers and repeated, “Sell ’er again.” Some of us browned 20 pounds of hamburger to feed soul-starved neighbors the only way we knew how. Some of us baked cookies, whispered prayers, shoveled snow, jotted tag numbers, posted blogs, manned backhoes, stretched wire, donated quarters, shook hands, gave hugs, and slipped, too tired to sleep, into bed. Again and again.

The people tromped on by Atlas took on the characteristics of the storm’s namesake–strength and endurance. We’ve felt like we carried the weight of the heavens for the last year, but we didn’t carry it alone.

We’d like to think that through this we became a little more human. A little more empathetic. A little more willing to understand fragility and to acknowledge our limits. Humility is a hard thing to reconcile with independence. Among the ranching community, independence tends to be prized above most things. But in the last year, we learned that community trumps independence. And when we need it, that community will be there.

We dedicate this issue of the Fall Cattle Journal to the people of that community. To the people who made it through, who helped us through and who continue to do the work that needs to be done.

Live cattle, a welcome sight after the 2013 Atlas blizzard. Photo by Maria Tussing.