Tonight we were back with Tim Holt in "Storm Over Wyoming", another action packed 60 minute Western featuring one of our favorite cowboy stars. I know you love his movies as much as I do, so I bought another set of them, "Volume 3" from the Tim Holt Collection. In this one, Tim and his partner Chito are cowhands looking for a job in Sundown, Wyoming. On the outskirts of town, they come upon a man who is about to be lynched for stealing sheep. He didn't do it, he is part of a cattle ranch himself and would have no reason to steal the less profitable animals. But the sheep rancher has a foreman who is trying to ignite a Range War between the cattlemen and the owner of the sheep ranch. This is a device I have seen many times in these hour long Westerns; the trickery of a middleman who is deviously playing two sides off of one another while he plots to end up with whatever spoils are at stake, such as land ownership or savings bonds, or gold or livestock. These were the stakes that were fought over in the Old West, but what is fun about these movies is the characters and the action. You already know what is coming in a Tim Holt movie - the plot will have to do with a conflict over one of the aforementioned commodities (and you can add Indians and Stagecoach robberies into the mix) - but it's really about the fun the actors are having in their roles and how they transfer that energy to the audience.
It's strictly Good Guy/Bad Guy stuff, but because the studio had a winner in Holt, and in his reliable co-stars, they were able to make about forty of these B-Westerns, and I am now on my second dvd set of them, because they are so well done for what they are. I could watch 'em night after night, haha.
Now, I not only watched the Tim Holt Western, but I also watched the very first episode of a Western TV series called "High Chaparral". This series was on the air from 1967-1971, and for the first year or so I watched it regularly, as a seven year old kid. I never forgot the name of the show, so evocative of terrain, which is central to Western iconography. You have to have a landscape in a Western, and the title "High Chaparral" sets a scene in your mind's eye before the show even begins. I hadn't seen it in over fifty years, so I didn't really have any memory of the characters, but the flavor of the show came back to me as I watched tonight. It is about a ranching family who move to Arizona to claim land in the heart of Apache country. The lieutenant at the local Army outpost tells them to turn back, but patriarch Lief Ericson will hear none of it. He is a hard man, the land is his and he will not be run off it.
Now, as much fun as the Tim Holt movies are, it is safe to say that a show like "High Chaparral" had a bigger budget for a single episode than was spent on "Storm Over Wyoming". The color photography is motion picture quality, the acting first rate, with well developed characters, a large cast who have many interactions with one another. Good use is made of the Arizona landscape, and like my other favorite Western series "Rawhide", this first episode of "High Chaparral" felt like a mini-movie because so much is happening over the 52 minute running time, and it really looks and feels like you are in the time period of the late 19th century.
So yeah, I love Westerns in case ya can't tell. :)
I love 'em because they are so Real Life.
Today was my final day off until the end of May, so I went for a very nice hike out at El Escorpion Park in West Hills. This is the large wilderness area that has the Cave of Munitz. You know it from my photos over the years. The park was badly burned in the fires of last November, so I have been checking it's recovery every couple of months since then, and I am happy to report that El Escorpion was overgrown today with yellow clover. I don't know the actual name of those flowers, but they grow in an unbroken field, solid yellow above your head for acres and acres. Today there were thousands of butterflies gathering pollen, or feeding from the flowers, or doing whatever butterflies do.
I mean they were everywhere. It was awesome to see. Of course, the droning of the bees was in the background, loud as always. But the butterflies were the stars of the show. I walked to the end of the trail a mile and a half in, to the point where the yellow clover was so tall and thick that I could go no further. The butterflies flew in my face and I really felt like I was in their world, watching them do what they do.
I was their guest, it was pretty special, and then I walked back down the trail, stopped at Trader Joe's and went home.
Thank You Lord for the wonderful day.
See you in the morning. Tomorrow I am back at work. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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