A retired professor of Spanish attempts to convert his fantasy of a Burro Ranch into a reality among the descendants of the original Mexican settlers near the pueblo of Bosque, New Mexico. Living in an adobe house on a ranch of about three acres, the professor sets out with the intention of restoring the lowly burro to the dignity and glory of its rightful place in the history of civilization. Neighboring ranchers, however, have a different view of the rightful place of the burro--somewhere out-of-sight and out of earshot. In THE BURRO RANCH the author reflects upon the traditions and patterns of human behavior that still exist in old New Mexico and reflects upon the strains and drawbacks of intruding upon an entrenched culture. He also observes the rare beauty and daily hardships of life in the desert. In the vast desert lands of New Mexico, beauty there is often tinged with danger. There is, of course, the enchantment of vast vistas, the glory of the sunsets beyond the arroyos and mesetas, and the splendor of the moon as it sets the mountains aglow. But it's hard to hear the music in the rattle of a snake and harder still to admire the architecture in the structure of a centipede. Much of the desert land around the burro ranch is the realm of the yucca plant, and to behold its beauty is to understand the hardships and suffering it must endure to rule over its realm: desert winds, blandishments of hail, frost-bit nights, and thunderheads that fail. To love the desert is to see the beauty in thorny things, dried-up streams, and dusty crawling things. Over a period of ten years, the professor comes to realize that this reality of The Burro Ranch is far more precious than his wildest fantasy.
Once I began to spend time at the Burro Ranch, one of my friends tagged me with the name "Wild Bill." I now admit that the Burro Ranch was a wild scheme but from the men I met in Bosque, New Mexico, especially Bonifacio Chavez, and from the traditions that I observed there, I reached an understanding of the continuity of all things--an understanding of the eternal beauty in the natural function of all things.
