No matter what stretch of Southwestern highway you drive, you’ll most likely see a wire fence — mostly of the barbed variety.
Why the fence? Cattle. Sure, other livestock too. Perhaps sheep, as is more common here on the Navajo Reservation. But mainly cattle. More specifically, to keep the cattle out on the range and off the highway.
Fences also keep drivers from four-wheeling wherever they please. And that’s basically it. Separation of cattle from cars, and cars from rangeland.
And so for centuries, for better or for worse, ranching has dominated the West’s open spaces. On these lands where not much grows other than grass, it’s long been one of the few ways to earn a living out here.
I only recently started photographing fences. When you’re out to photograph the beauty of the land, a wire fence is an eyesore, an impediment to nature. And for that reason, I never photographed them. And for that same reason, I now photograph them.
The story of this land is not just its natural beauty, it’s how humans interact with it, attempt to tame it, sometimes desecrate it, often destroy it. If we don’t tell that part of the story, how will we correct our course?
Not to say that barbed wire fences are the ultimate evil, but they sure do cause problems for native wildlife. Mule deer and pronghorn antelope are the biggest losers, as their habitat and migration routes fragment when they can’t navigate over, through, or around the fences.
All so that livestock can over-graze the grasslands, leading to soil erosion and opening the door for invasive plants to swoop in and snuff out the native ones.
And so we see this fence, cutting across one of the most beautiful places on Earth: Monument Valley. Yes, it’s the Navajo’s sovereign land, they can do with it what they want.
But I wonder: had the white man not come to impose capitalism and industrialization and all the other hallmarks of Western society, would the Navajo graze sheep and cattle and erect barbed wire upon these sacred lands?
And as for the the “iconic” tumbleweeds snagged on the fence, that’s an invasive species called Russian thistle (Salsola tragus), brought to the U.S. from the steppes of Russia and Ukraine via contaminated flaxseed shipments in the late 1800s.
So as fun as it may be, the “old west” shtick isn’t the natural way of the land and the people that have lived here for thousands of years. But I suppose neither is the often-destructive tourism industry that dominates the Southwest, of which I’m guilty of participating in just as much as anyone.
There are no easy answers with what is best for the Southwest — we sure can’t change the past — but I sure hope can find a better way forward to live and love on these precious lands.
Sheepishly yours,
-Jake
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