Summer Road Trip 2020 Part 3: Telluride to Columbus TX
Leaving Mesa Verde, the ancestral home of the Puebloan people, we arrived shortly after a drive through the beautiful Dolores River Valley at Telluride, our first visit ever there. By now, the name “Telluride” has grown in fame as did “Aspen” decades ago. Telluride rests at the end of a steep box canyon lined with aspen and spruce, with only one road in and out. With cool summer temperatures, a world-class ski mountain, an historic and lovely Main Street with upscale shops and restaurants, and a constant festival scene, Telluride has seen an influx of residents claiming their share of the good life. While we were there, the pandemic definitely put a major crimp on activities, but there were still musicians playing clubs and busking in the street, restaurants seating patrons with social distancing measures, and shops welcoming customers. Telluride’s future as one of America’s most sought after “it” addresses seems assured.
Our next destination was another popular city of the southwest, known internationally for its extraordinary arts, architecture, and culture. Many people are not aware that La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís - Santa Fe, New Mexico - is the second oldest city in the United States, founded in 1607 by Spanish settlers, less than 100 years after Cortez’s conquest of the Aztec empire. Yet Santa Fe had been settled by indigenous native Pueblo people for many hundreds of years before. As such, Santa Fe is undoubtedly among the longest continually and substantially settled locations in North America.
Located at the very southern extent of the Rocky Mountains, where forested mountains meet vast colorful desert mesas, Santa Fe has been the capital of New Mexico since its founding (it is the oldest state capital in the United States). It is justly famous for its museums, galleries, restaurants, and extraordinary - and mandatory - Pueblo-style adobe architecture, the result of the city’s 1912 adoption of the City Beautiful movement begun during the Progressive era in American politics to improve American cities for all citizens after Gilded and Industrial Age excesses and accompanying urban dilapidation (sound familiar?).
Santa Fe’s economy today is heavily reliant on tourism, and the pandemic is having a severe impact. New Mexico’s governor has put in place very stringent quarantine requirements, in part to help safeguard the health of the state’s significant Native American populations. Those who have been to Santa Fe’s town square know the vibrancy of the Native jewelry displays by vendors seated around the square. When we were there, it was, sadly, empty, and many shops remained closed. Still, we spent five wonderful days camped above the city at Black Canyon, I was able to visit with several clients who maintain homes there, and we had a terrific pancake breakfast at the Tune Up Cafe. Finally, we spent some time at the beautiful Santa Fe National Cemetery, home to 59,000 interments of US veterans.
We crossed the border into Texas at Clovis, New Mexico. Clovis, a town of approximately 40,000 people, is a major agricultural center and home to Cannon Air Force Base. You may know the early Buddy Holly rockabilly song Peggy Sue - it, along with many other hits, was recorded at Norman Petty’s famous studio in Clovis. In the 1920’s archaeological discoveries in the Clovis area led to the conclusion that humans had inhabited the area for approximately 13,000 years, and that the “Clovis culture” that developed there is, literally, the oldest evidence of human civilization in the Americas. Astoundingly, it is estimated that 80% of indigenous North and South Americans are descended from the Clovis culture. Truly, it can be said that the Clovis, New Mexico region is the fountainhead of human civilization in the entire Western Hemisphere.
I was born in Houston, Southeast Texas, many hundreds of miles and a world away from the western high plains region of the state that we had crossed into. I have always had an ambivalent attitude to my state. I love many things about it: its diversity, size, natural beauty, cuisines, friendliness. Other things disappoint me, including the difficulty of finding public lands for camping and recreation. And in the northwestern part of the state we booked our first hotel room late one night after failing to find a suitable campground anywhere in the area. What we did find, however, were vast quantities of wind turbines on the mesas, as far as the eye could see, and in all directions. Texas is the nation’s top producer of wind energy, and driving southeast on US highway 84, and into Sweetwater, we saw the full demonstration of this bounty. As I drove I asked August to look up the average price for one of the massive towers - $1 million to $2 million each, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in clean renewable energy investment in all directions. I began to feel Texas pride again.
In Sweetwater, you can visit the National WASP World War II Museum (one of New Capital’s clients is a committed donor to this museum). The Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) was a civilian women pilots' organization, whose members were United States federal civil service employees. Members of WASP became trained pilots who tested aircraft, ferried aircraft, and trained other pilots. Their purpose was to free male pilots for combat roles during World War II, and training took place at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, after originally beginning at Houston Municipal Airport - now known as Hobby Airport.
Despite various members of the armed forces being involved in the creation of the program, the WASP and its members had no military standing, and these brave women’s contributions would remain relatively unknown for decades, despite the efforts of many, including Senator Barry Goldwater, to both recognize them and accord them status as veterans. On March 10, 2010, the 300 surviving WASPs came to the US Capitol to accept the Congressional Gold Medal from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Congressional leaders.
After skirting the dynamic booming state capital city of Austin, home to my UT MBA alma mater and our business partner Dimensional Fund Advisors, we headed for where we began our trip, our ranch home that we call 2 Creeks, located about ten miles north of Columbus, Texas, in the heart of the ecological region of Texas known as the Post Oak Savannah - sandy soil, dense and brushy woods alternating with open grasslands punctuated with scattered oaks.
2 Creeks functions more as a nature preserve than a ranch. There are no grazing cattle, and the land is maintained for wildlife. In Texas, “wildlife” often means whitetail deer, or some other exotic ungulate usually imported from Africa. But at 2 Creeks, we manage the land for all wildlife, and that includes hated predators like coyote and bobcat (both of which are native species), and even more hated non-native species like feral hogs. We do this because we believe that the land’s ecology is most in balance when there is biodiversity, and because we believe that the native animals deserve refuge from the unrelenting centuries of hunting that have drastically reduced their numbers.
In the wake of the Civil War, the United States turned its attention westward to “complete” the era of Manifest Destiny begun by a few, including Lewis & Clark, in the years prior to the war. What ensued was a massive land grab from Plains and other Native Americans, and, as Dan Flores describes in his fine Coyote America (a book I picked up at Canyonlands National Park), a “war on wild things” that “no one, then or now, has even been able to measure on this vast a scale.” The people of the United States of America made total war on this continent against bison (buffalo), wolves, coyotes, grizzly bears, elk, pronghorn, wild bighorn sheep, deer, and even wild horses, bringing several of those species to the brink of extinction to be replaced with, for the most part, European cattle. While the Plains fauna made easy prey to this killing machine, its flora was not immune either. The wild switchgrass and bluestem grasses that fed the herds of buffalo were torn out and converted to endless fields of wheat, corn, and alfalfa.
It is not for me to judge others in their time. But in my business, diversification is a crucial concept, and it started to become clear decades ago that the Plains economy and composition had become undiversified. Substantial - and controversial - efforts are now underway to “re wild” portions fo the Great Plains, to bring back bison, wolves, and other species that have important roles to play in the vast ecology of this land. I support these efforts, and I hope that one day the nation will enjoy a Great Plains National Park, where Americans can come and see the American Serengeti the way they do the African one.
In 2005, we purchased our first 100 acre tract with the intention that it would be a recreational project for our young family (Abby was only two weeks old when we closed on the purchase). I had gone to summer camp in Minnesota and grown very attached to the natural world, and decided that outdoor opportunities living in Houston were too few. Texas came almost entirely into private hands after the Texas “revolution” against Mexico, and so public lands are relatively sparse in our state. If you want recreational land close by in Texas, odds are you will need to purchase it. And so we did.
What began as a recreational project has in time evolved first into a restoration project (in which I have been clearing overgrown areas and restoring native landscapes); then into a conservation project (in which I have been providing refuge to hunted species); and now also into a spiritual project (in which I provide 2 Creeks for the purposes of spiritual retreats). Our land now encompasses two hundred acres. It may sound like a lot, but it’s not. My neighbors own parcels of 600, 800, 1000, and even 3000 acres in size.
Unknown to most Americans, American ranchers benefit from extraordinary taxpayer-funded subsidies, including massive land, fencing, and pond improvement dollars from USDA, county property tax breaks, state sales tax breaks, and federal tax breaks. Often a landowner, even if they have no particular interest in cattle ranching, eventually enter that activity simply to avail themselves of these breaks. In general, my neighbors, whom I value, maintain high fences which keep their herds theirs, they maintain herds of domestic and “exotic” game and some sell hunting tickets to the public. They also generally eliminate, including with the encouragement and financial assistance of the US Department of Agriculture and paid for by you the taxpayer, predators like coyote and bobcat. I will never forget meeting one of my neighbors for the first time across our shared fence, an extremely friendly and helpful man who I liked immediately. After discussing some fixes to the fence, we had gotten into a discussion of land management, and at some point he pulled out his iPhone and showed me photos of coyote and bobcat that he had trapped with leg snares: their bodies and faces twisted, they had clearly died agonizing deaths. “See this one?” he said, pointing at a dead bobcat, “that one’s a pure killer.” The irony was not lost on me.
But that is not the end of the story. Just up the road and across the highway, one can see the growing buffalo herd maintained by another of my neighbors along Highway 71, whose landholdings and herds are growing as he rapidly acquires more. It is an inspiring sight which says that things are changing for the better as people re-discover our past for the benefit of the future. You, too, can take actions in your own ways - one of my favorite online stores is Native American Seed based in Junction, Texas - check them out and try planting a little bit of native Texas somewhere in your garden.
Challenges to landowners always abound. In 2011, the most extreme drought imaginable killed off our largest trees, old growth stands of eastern red cedar, giant sentinels that resembled redwoods to me when I stood under them. It broke my heart to have them logged away. Currently, our numerous post oaks, especially mature ones, are alarmingly dying off. I simply cannot identify any other potential cause more likely or specific than climate change and its related effects of heat and drought. If there is one thing Texans value more than their oil, it’s their barbecue, and it is post oak that gives Texas barbecue its unique flavor and properties. Hopefully, Texas will soon add solar power farms to its vast wind farms, and our state can join the world in fighting this catastrophic risk before we lose our barbecue heritage too.
Our trip by camper took us 4000 miles across the interior of the United States: Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and back to Texas. We grew as individuals and as a family. We also saw a lot of land: flat land and mountains, green and desert, rivers and man made lakes, cool places and scorching hot ones, populated land and desolate land, land in its “original” state and land which now looks nothing like it once did. Native Americans, and later European and American settlers, all undertook the same effort: to travel through the land, to see the land with their own eyes, and to make conclusions and decisions. Some came to explore and report back; others came to hunt or mine metals and ores; many came with their possessions in wagons, encouraged by their government’s Homestead Acts to put down roots and populate and farm the land; and in this day and age, still others come looking for peace and quiet and beauty and a place to retire to.
It was entirely appropriate and congruent that we ended our journey across this vast land at our own small parcel, which itself has gone through centuries of changing ownership, from Native American to us, the descendants of Jewish Eastern Europeans who came to this land to escape the harsh and often violent discrimination that a caste system imposed upon them. As the current caretakers of this precious land, our family takes seriously the obligations to continue conscientious management of this capital, following in the footsteps of thousands of years of humans. Our land management incorporates an ethos developed by Native Americans in its respect for life, and modern methods and technology developed by European and American pioneers, which help us get the many jobs there done efficiently and productively. I do not think we are unique. Everywhere we went in our travels this summer I observed kind spirits, a desire to live together in peace and harmony, and a desire to learn and even re-learn better ways of doing things. These things together are termed “good will”, and good will is the foundation of a civil society. Our country needs more parks for recreation, and our national forests should be converted from commercial logging and other uses to recreational. Our roads, towns, and other infrastructure need investment. Together, there are many opportunities to work together for a shared future.
Ultimately, investing is about being an optimist. The future is fundamentally uncertain, and if you are pessimistic it should lead you to avoid investing in that future; if you are optimistic, it should lead you to invest in that future, adjusted properly for risks.
I am bullish - maybe I should say bisonish - on America, and on the world, and I hope you are too.
Leonard Golub, CFA
Fiduciary Financial Advisor