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Riding the White Horse Home: A Western Family Album
The daughter and granddaughter of Wyoming ranchers, Teresa Jordan gives us a lyrical and superbly evocative book that is at once a family chronicle and a eulogy for the land her people helped shape and in time were forced to leave. Author readings.
241 pages, Paperback
First published April 6, 1993
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May 19, 2019
"Riding the White Horse Home: A Western Family Album," published in 1993, is part memoir and part family history and it succeeds on both levels. It is an impressionistic account and not a straight chronological narrative, but the pieces all fall into place by the time the reader arrives at the last page. And when that happens, the reader will not only have learned a great deal about four generations of an interesting family, but also much about the joys and frustrations, hardships and rewards, of life on a western ranch.
Teresa Jordan was born and raised on her family ranch located along Chugwater Creek in the Chugwater Valley near the community of Iron Mountain in southeastern Wyoming. The ranch was established by her great-grandfather in 1887 and she and her brother represented the fourth generation to live there. In 1978, after the death of her grandfather, her father sold the ranch. Only she, in her early twenties at the time, and her great-aunt Marie seemed to have been saddened by the sale.
Her father said he sold the ranch because the estate taxes, which were much higher at the time than now, were too great to overcome. There was also the fact that her brother wasn't interested in operating the ranch. He had left it at an early age and had no desire to return.
Reading between the lines, however, it is easy to believe that at age sixty, and after several accidents that had resulted in severe injuries, her father was ready to cash in while he was still able.
Southeastern Wyoming isn't a very hospitable environment in which to live and nobody knows that better than those who live there.
Jordan writes that "[at] an altitude of over six thousand feet, Iron Mountain is a great country for wind. In the winter, it blows for weeks on end with hardly a dip below twenty or thirty miles an hour. Gusts of fifty and sixty miles an hour are common....Somebody who asks if the wind ever quits is likely to be told that it does, long enough to change directions." It is a place where "people tolerate the wind but do not get used to it."
(I was once traveling through the Texas Panhandle and the wind was blowing at a sustained rate of about forty mph with gusts as high as sixty. I stopped at a fast food restaurant west of Amarillo to get off the road for awhile and to have a cup of coffee. As I walked across the parking lot I took off my cap to keep it from being blown into Oklahoma. It was all I could do to open the door and after entering the wind sucked the door closed and almost broke my arm.
I knew the Panhandle had a reputation for wind and had experienced it before, but to make conversation I said to the waitress, "Does the wind here always blow like this?" "Nossir," she said, "Sometimes it blows hard.")
In a chapter titled "Newtime: A Calving Diary" Jordan vividly describes what life is like on a cattle ranch during calving season. Her family was no longer in the ranching business but she wanted to experience what it was like during that critical season. So she called her oldest friend who owned the ranch that had bordered the one where she was raised and asked him if she could join him and his family for the calving season. He said yes, but also wondered why she would want to come at that time since "[i]t's so hectic around here. Everyone is exhausted and bad-tempered."
She wanted to because "[c]alving is the crux point of the year and it is something I have never experienced. By the time I was old enough to be useful, I left for boarding school. I was never home in the spring. I have seen calves born. I have assisted in a few births. But I have never been there for a season, for the grueling week after week of incessant emergency and response."
And that is what she wanted to experience?
There are 800 cows due to drop calves all over the ranch. It is spring, but it is spring in Wyoming, which means that it is often a season in name only and constant surveillance and frequent intervention are required to ensure that cow and calf survive.
In her diary, Jordan often comments on the weather during this crucial period:
"March 29: The windchill dipped below zero this morning...
April 4: A front came in today with high winds. Windchill, I heard on the news, reached 12 below.
April 15: Gusts measured 63 mph at the Air Force Base, and it seemed windier here.
April 20: [W]e had about five inches of snow...Near evening it started snowing again...By the time we got everything in, we had about three inches of snow on the ground...."
The weather finally breaks and the sun comes out, but the glare off the snow is blinding and a dozen cows have sunburnt bags and because of the pain will not allow their calves to nurse. The cows have to be put in chutes and be milked by hand. They are range cows and they don't willingly submit to the process.
Sunday night the temperature dropped to 5 degrees.
"April 28: The weather has finally turned. Yesterday was sunny and 50 degrees."
There is irony involved in this great effort to save the calves and it is one that Jordan recognizes:
"In this business of cattle raising, we exert our will. We take a calf off a poor cow and graft it onto a good one. We hobble a reticent cow until she lets her calf suck. We mid-wife these calves into existence, we care for them, sometimes we even risk our lives for them, and they are ultimately slated for slaughter. In this fact lies the essential irony of our work. No one forgets that a live calf is money in the bank. And yet a reverence remains....our connection to them is more than economic. Day in and day out we confront the messiness of this business of living; if we live with slaughter, we also live with nurture, with seasons and cycles, with birth and with death."
Nobody ever explained it better.
There are many interesting individuals in Jordan's family album. My personal favorite is her great-aunt Marie. Despite owning her own ranch she never forgave her nephew for selling the one that her father had established and the one on which she was born.
Jordan writes how the ranching life was different for boys and girls and men and women. In some ways the life was harder for one gender and in some ways harder for the other. But Jordan indicates that in the final analysis it was a harder lot in life for women than men.
However, Jordan herself is an exception to the rule and so was Aunt Marie. Aunt Marie loved her life on the ranch even more than her husband did. She never had children, but she was a great lover of horses and dogs and mourned the loss of each and every one and her journal indicates that she was subject to grief well after her losses.
I don't want to spoil the significance of the book's title, but I will say this: It is Aunt Marie that rides the white horse home.
Teresa Jordan was born and raised on her family ranch located along Chugwater Creek in the Chugwater Valley near the community of Iron Mountain in southeastern Wyoming. The ranch was established by her great-grandfather in 1887 and she and her brother represented the fourth generation to live there. In 1978, after the death of her grandfather, her father sold the ranch. Only she, in her early twenties at the time, and her great-aunt Marie seemed to have been saddened by the sale.
Her father said he sold the ranch because the estate taxes, which were much higher at the time than now, were too great to overcome. There was also the fact that her brother wasn't interested in operating the ranch. He had left it at an early age and had no desire to return.
Reading between the lines, however, it is easy to believe that at age sixty, and after several accidents that had resulted in severe injuries, her father was ready to cash in while he was still able.
Southeastern Wyoming isn't a very hospitable environment in which to live and nobody knows that better than those who live there.
Jordan writes that "[at] an altitude of over six thousand feet, Iron Mountain is a great country for wind. In the winter, it blows for weeks on end with hardly a dip below twenty or thirty miles an hour. Gusts of fifty and sixty miles an hour are common....Somebody who asks if the wind ever quits is likely to be told that it does, long enough to change directions." It is a place where "people tolerate the wind but do not get used to it."
(I was once traveling through the Texas Panhandle and the wind was blowing at a sustained rate of about forty mph with gusts as high as sixty. I stopped at a fast food restaurant west of Amarillo to get off the road for awhile and to have a cup of coffee. As I walked across the parking lot I took off my cap to keep it from being blown into Oklahoma. It was all I could do to open the door and after entering the wind sucked the door closed and almost broke my arm.
I knew the Panhandle had a reputation for wind and had experienced it before, but to make conversation I said to the waitress, "Does the wind here always blow like this?" "Nossir," she said, "Sometimes it blows hard.")
In a chapter titled "Newtime: A Calving Diary" Jordan vividly describes what life is like on a cattle ranch during calving season. Her family was no longer in the ranching business but she wanted to experience what it was like during that critical season. So she called her oldest friend who owned the ranch that had bordered the one where she was raised and asked him if she could join him and his family for the calving season. He said yes, but also wondered why she would want to come at that time since "[i]t's so hectic around here. Everyone is exhausted and bad-tempered."
She wanted to because "[c]alving is the crux point of the year and it is something I have never experienced. By the time I was old enough to be useful, I left for boarding school. I was never home in the spring. I have seen calves born. I have assisted in a few births. But I have never been there for a season, for the grueling week after week of incessant emergency and response."
And that is what she wanted to experience?
There are 800 cows due to drop calves all over the ranch. It is spring, but it is spring in Wyoming, which means that it is often a season in name only and constant surveillance and frequent intervention are required to ensure that cow and calf survive.
In her diary, Jordan often comments on the weather during this crucial period:
"March 29: The windchill dipped below zero this morning...
April 4: A front came in today with high winds. Windchill, I heard on the news, reached 12 below.
April 15: Gusts measured 63 mph at the Air Force Base, and it seemed windier here.
April 20: [W]e had about five inches of snow...Near evening it started snowing again...By the time we got everything in, we had about three inches of snow on the ground...."
The weather finally breaks and the sun comes out, but the glare off the snow is blinding and a dozen cows have sunburnt bags and because of the pain will not allow their calves to nurse. The cows have to be put in chutes and be milked by hand. They are range cows and they don't willingly submit to the process.
Sunday night the temperature dropped to 5 degrees.
"April 28: The weather has finally turned. Yesterday was sunny and 50 degrees."
There is irony involved in this great effort to save the calves and it is one that Jordan recognizes:
"In this business of cattle raising, we exert our will. We take a calf off a poor cow and graft it onto a good one. We hobble a reticent cow until she lets her calf suck. We mid-wife these calves into existence, we care for them, sometimes we even risk our lives for them, and they are ultimately slated for slaughter. In this fact lies the essential irony of our work. No one forgets that a live calf is money in the bank. And yet a reverence remains....our connection to them is more than economic. Day in and day out we confront the messiness of this business of living; if we live with slaughter, we also live with nurture, with seasons and cycles, with birth and with death."
Nobody ever explained it better.
There are many interesting individuals in Jordan's family album. My personal favorite is her great-aunt Marie. Despite owning her own ranch she never forgave her nephew for selling the one that her father had established and the one on which she was born.
Jordan writes how the ranching life was different for boys and girls and men and women. In some ways the life was harder for one gender and in some ways harder for the other. But Jordan indicates that in the final analysis it was a harder lot in life for women than men.
However, Jordan herself is an exception to the rule and so was Aunt Marie. Aunt Marie loved her life on the ranch even more than her husband did. She never had children, but she was a great lover of horses and dogs and mourned the loss of each and every one and her journal indicates that she was subject to grief well after her losses.
I don't want to spoil the significance of the book's title, but I will say this: It is Aunt Marie that rides the white horse home.
July 29, 2014
Wonderful sense of place intertwined with a family history that was just sublime. No perfect people but strength beyond reckoning. All told by the daughter of these generations who have ranched in SE Wyoming for nearly a century, but now do so no more.
It was not just beautiful in language aspect but poignant in its American historical perspective. Stats for the last 100 years just mind boggling. Something I see constantly in my rural MI too, the thousands and 10,000's of jobs in places of physical labor that no longer exist. Most primarily outside jobs of immense efforts. And their former structures seen only in their ruins.
Her women's histories were as interesting as her wind and ridge country locale was splendid, especially her Grandmother's story. She who never fit, the "witchy" one.
But primarily it was the soul song she sings to her Mother's memory and her Father's endurance that I will remember from this book. Yes, as much as I loved the cow tales and the descriptions of ranching community. The book itself was precise; exactly the right length for what she had to convey too. For me, it was.
I would love to see this author write more about the rural "eyes" as opposed to what elite and educated see. That portion of the book explaining the context to her killing that snake and its aftermath was 6 stars. That's exactly the kind of wisdom that needs to be expressed and precisely as she did it. With kindness, but with forthright honesty to logic and physical reality. This ranching life, much as her Father has lead, it is incredibly hard physically.
Strongly recommend this book. Quite a window into a certain set of American values as living and real.
After a few disappointing non-fiction reads, it is so pleasant to find a little gem.
It was not just beautiful in language aspect but poignant in its American historical perspective. Stats for the last 100 years just mind boggling. Something I see constantly in my rural MI too, the thousands and 10,000's of jobs in places of physical labor that no longer exist. Most primarily outside jobs of immense efforts. And their former structures seen only in their ruins.
Her women's histories were as interesting as her wind and ridge country locale was splendid, especially her Grandmother's story. She who never fit, the "witchy" one.
But primarily it was the soul song she sings to her Mother's memory and her Father's endurance that I will remember from this book. Yes, as much as I loved the cow tales and the descriptions of ranching community. The book itself was precise; exactly the right length for what she had to convey too. For me, it was.
I would love to see this author write more about the rural "eyes" as opposed to what elite and educated see. That portion of the book explaining the context to her killing that snake and its aftermath was 6 stars. That's exactly the kind of wisdom that needs to be expressed and precisely as she did it. With kindness, but with forthright honesty to logic and physical reality. This ranching life, much as her Father has lead, it is incredibly hard physically.
Strongly recommend this book. Quite a window into a certain set of American values as living and real.
After a few disappointing non-fiction reads, it is so pleasant to find a little gem.
May 27, 2019
A story of four generations of Jordans living at Iron Mountain, Wyoming.
This is Teresa's story. Her parents ranched with all the family helping and working together.
Her mother told her, after she fell off a horse. She said" I've been watching you and your getting better everyday". Such a wonderful encouragement. Teresa got back on the horse and was fine..no fears.
When she got older. the ranches were bought up by oil companies. Only a few remained. The culture of today has taught us that a professional life is more respectable than one tied to the land.
A precious gift to her was the diaries of her Great Aunt Marie. Afraid to read them, fear of disappointment . When she finally read them it was no surprise, for her Aunt's written words were just like her in real life.
Loved the story.
This is Teresa's story. Her parents ranched with all the family helping and working together.
Her mother told her, after she fell off a horse. She said" I've been watching you and your getting better everyday". Such a wonderful encouragement. Teresa got back on the horse and was fine..no fears.
When she got older. the ranches were bought up by oil companies. Only a few remained. The culture of today has taught us that a professional life is more respectable than one tied to the land.
A precious gift to her was the diaries of her Great Aunt Marie. Afraid to read them, fear of disappointment . When she finally read them it was no surprise, for her Aunt's written words were just like her in real life.
Loved the story.
August 1, 2019
Anyone who has lived the battle of hanging on to a life in agriculture that often rends families and breaks down bodies and sends whole generations into a widening net of debt and despair will recognize the ring of truth in every aching confession and discovery of this wonderfully personal memoir.
July 22, 2018
Based on the first chapter, I didn’t think I would like this book at all. I decided to hang in there for round two, and I’m glad I did. Things then began to gel for me.
The book felt disjointed and rambling to me initially. I thought it appropriate the author included the word “album” in the title, since it felt as if someone was going through a scrapbook or family photo album and telling me stories based on the contents, and the stories were either based specifically on the contents or on whatever the contents brought to mind. However as I became more familiar with the author’s voice and style, and with her family tree, the pieces fell into place.
I don’t personally have a ranching background but I have horses and have worked with cattle farmers and in an agricultural environment. I could relate with much of the sentiment, work and information Jordan shared about that lifestyle, and enjoyed the framework of her presentation in the end.
A pleasant and insightful read overall which I can definitely recommend.
The book felt disjointed and rambling to me initially. I thought it appropriate the author included the word “album” in the title, since it felt as if someone was going through a scrapbook or family photo album and telling me stories based on the contents, and the stories were either based specifically on the contents or on whatever the contents brought to mind. However as I became more familiar with the author’s voice and style, and with her family tree, the pieces fell into place.
I don’t personally have a ranching background but I have horses and have worked with cattle farmers and in an agricultural environment. I could relate with much of the sentiment, work and information Jordan shared about that lifestyle, and enjoyed the framework of her presentation in the end.
A pleasant and insightful read overall which I can definitely recommend.
April 29, 2020
This is my favorite book I’ve read so far this year. Jordan knows how to write a place and a people and from a deep sense of self. Her descriptions of Wyoming and of women in her family are deeply personal and poignant and honest and raw. An absolutely breathtaking testimony to the complexity present in each of our inner lives, of lives as intermingling stories, and as the gift of all that is gained from a life deeply connected to the land. Still thinking about this book.
December 9, 2016
I loved this book. Not only was it about an area close to where I live, she mentioned people I know. She talked a lot about how she had to deal with understanding he grandmother, her mom, in order to move on. Though I am not a ranch person, I could relate to her thrill of calving and removing herself from the world. She really believes that her ranch upbringing has made her who she is today.
July 10, 2013
How farm and ranch life shape a person, a family, a community. Social commentary on bigness, mechanization, leaving things behind and finding new things about old things.
April 22, 2025
This was an accidental read for me, and a pure gift from the universe.
Leaving our mountain library a couple of weeks ago I stopped to browse the Used Book rack maintained by the Friends of the Library. I remember being captured by the title of this book. Riding the White Horse Home just struck me as pure magic, poetry at its finest. I've no idea why.
So based simply on that, I paid my two dollars and brought it home.
What a find. It is poetry, in the form of paragraphs and sentences and chapters and stories.
Listen to this: at the end of a chapter about her dear great-aunt Marie, who always loved horses, the author tells about Marie's final time of life. As a younger woman, Marie had been with her father as he died, holding his hand. Among his final words were, "Marie, there's a horse for you out in Seven Mile Pasture. It is just for you. I want you to have it." Marie looked and looked for that horse, but never found it.
From first page to last words, this is a story written with love and care and thought and respect. It takes a place on my bookshelf next to other treasures that have touched me in inexplicable ways.
Leaving our mountain library a couple of weeks ago I stopped to browse the Used Book rack maintained by the Friends of the Library. I remember being captured by the title of this book. Riding the White Horse Home just struck me as pure magic, poetry at its finest. I've no idea why.
So based simply on that, I paid my two dollars and brought it home.
What a find. It is poetry, in the form of paragraphs and sentences and chapters and stories.
Listen to this: at the end of a chapter about her dear great-aunt Marie, who always loved horses, the author tells about Marie's final time of life. As a younger woman, Marie had been with her father as he died, holding his hand. Among his final words were, "Marie, there's a horse for you out in Seven Mile Pasture. It is just for you. I want you to have it." Marie looked and looked for that horse, but never found it.
Some part of me suspects that Marie never quit looking for that horse. Marie loved buckskins, but I have always imagined this horse as white or milky grey. It would have to be a ghost horse, glimpsed only in peripheral vision, a flash of a tail disappearing over the rise, an afterimage in a shadow. I imagine she caught fleeting glimpses of it more often as her eyesight failed. And finally, at the end, I imagine Marie peering out from behind her blindness to catch sight of the horse grazing nonchalantly beyond her bed, looking up from time to time to see if she were ready. "Yes," Marie would acknowledge at last with a nod, rising from unconsciousness to catch a grasp of mane and leap up on the great horse's back, even in her flannel nightgown, bounding away from the mortals she loved but trusted would meet up with her later, over the grass and hills that had been her life, over her herds of Herefords, through the grey misty clouds to the glittering meadow where all her dogs and horses, all her family and friends would be waiting for her to come through the gate, riding the white horse home.
From first page to last words, this is a story written with love and care and thought and respect. It takes a place on my bookshelf next to other treasures that have touched me in inexplicable ways.
October 31, 2017
This memoir of growing up on a Wyoming ranch near Chugwater evoked a lot of memories for me. My sister Julie gave me this book, and the author, born in 1955, falls between us in age. Julie now lives in Denver, and we used to drive the famously windy I-25 on our way to see our father in south eastern Montana. We often stopped for a picnic lunch in Chugwater, and I can see in my mind the "breaks" Jordan describes--a badlands geological feature of rock outcroppings and bluffs. My mother, grew up on a ranch in western Montana, and, as a child, I spent time there in the summers, envying my cousins their ranch life (especially the horses). I have enough familiarity with the place and the context to feel many points of resonance in the reading. There is a powerful particularity of place and time in the book. I loved the photos of the people, which also grounded the stories in the life of this family. I loved the descriptions of the land, and of ranching life. One of my favorite chapters was one on calving season. I also appreciated her account of the culture of stoicism, and the process of learning when and how this western virtue was useful for her and when it was not. Although the author also reaches out to connect with other writers and stories, that did not always work for me. For me the least successful chapter was the one about her grandmother, a difficult member of family. In that chapter Jordan tries to figure out her story, but her grandmother eludes her, a lesson in how women can less known, and less recoverable. This book is also about time, and the author's need to come to terms with the changes in the the landscape she loves. Not only did her family sell the ranch to pay estate taxes after her grandfather died during Jordan's senior of college, but the ranching as a way of life for families has undergone major changes since her girlhood. This book is part of her project of making peace with those changes.
April 3, 2023
Living in ranch lands in New Mexico this book really connected with me. I enjoyed the back and forth between family memoir and historical research/cultural touchstones. I think the biggest takeaway for me is the american cultural loss of “history of place”. I hope in my own life, much like the author to not let my higher education isolate me from my own history of place and the history of all the future places I may live. I am very grateful to have spent the last year, and many summers before, living in the rural mountains and plains of New Mexico and connecting with outdoor work and the culture of the area.
I found myself emotional in finishing this book, also knowing I will have to leave New Mexico come August. The last chapter of this book is truly the best one. As the author describes her wedding and the ranch community that rallies around the event, despite how long she had been away, I saw the best humanity has to offer. I so deeply hope to feel similarly surrounded by love, community, and acceptance on my own wedding day.
I found myself emotional in finishing this book, also knowing I will have to leave New Mexico come August. The last chapter of this book is truly the best one. As the author describes her wedding and the ranch community that rallies around the event, despite how long she had been away, I saw the best humanity has to offer. I so deeply hope to feel similarly surrounded by love, community, and acceptance on my own wedding day.
October 22, 2016
I am an East Coast person. After hemming and hawing for several years, I finally "bit the bullet" and flew my two early twenty something sons and myself to visit my second cousin and her family in Jackson Wyoming for a week two months ago. (We had a grand vacation and I do not say that lightly, I am not reluctant to gift myself with travel vacations). I usually read books about where I am going to travel and randomly located this book at Amazon along with a couple of others themed on Wyoming. The Annie Proulx and Gretel Ehrlich books were both chosen because they are authors who I have enjoyed reading in the past. But while their books emphasized the not insignificant loneliness of the place, neither "rang" like this gem by Teresa Jordan. While my Wyoming family have lived there for 40 years they are not ranchers, but have a more than keen appreciation for the grandeur of the place. Teresa Jordan gave me a wonderful appreciation for being attached to this place that is Wyoming both through the land and one's family.
August 23, 2023
A daughter of ranchers reflects on the lives of her mother, father and grandmother and the many cowhands that passed through their ranch as they navigated the ups and downs of raising cattle and they cycles of each season. She reminiscences about her life on the ranch but later as well.
When her mother was very sick and on her deathbed she didn't want to die in the hospital, she wanted to die at home on the ranch. Over weeks she recovered slowly and returned to the ranch. She got stronger and during the summer went all over the place reminicensing, visiting old friends, going to Quarter Horse sales. One day in October she went to town for one last time to visit and came back to the ranch and died.
Now the ranch is leased which is a reflection of the whole area of Montana and Wyoming most by corporations.
When her mother was very sick and on her deathbed she didn't want to die in the hospital, she wanted to die at home on the ranch. Over weeks she recovered slowly and returned to the ranch. She got stronger and during the summer went all over the place reminicensing, visiting old friends, going to Quarter Horse sales. One day in October she went to town for one last time to visit and came back to the ranch and died.
Now the ranch is leased which is a reflection of the whole area of Montana and Wyoming most by corporations.
June 26, 2024
This book was definitely interesting. This is not really a topic I am very interested in, but I still enjoyed it. In the end, when it talked about her grandma and the women in her life, I got really into it. I liked how she realized that she didn't really know her grandma's story and that she was just a mean old lady. She didn't know what her grandma wanted in her life.
"As long as I had only these three stories to guide me, I would remain stuck. I didn't have a story that told me I could be visible and not end up alone." I feel this. I feel like I don't have any role models in my life that I can fully relate to. I can take pieces of other women's stories that I know, but I don't have a blueprint. I just know what I don't want to end up like.
"As long as I had only these three stories to guide me, I would remain stuck. I didn't have a story that told me I could be visible and not end up alone." I feel this. I feel like I don't have any role models in my life that I can fully relate to. I can take pieces of other women's stories that I know, but I don't have a blueprint. I just know what I don't want to end up like.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 21, 2019
"Riding the White Horse Home" is a thoughtful exploration of a way of life that seems to be fading from the West as family-run ranches are sold to oil companies or corporations. Teresa Jordan grew up on one such family ranch, in Wyoming. She recalls in loving detail the men and women who worked there, the seasonal rounds of running cattle, and the sweetness and challenge of life lived close to the land. Her father sold the ranch when she was a young adult, but Teresa has found ways to stay close to it in thought and spirit. This memoir is an insightful retelling of the history of settlement in the West, seen through the lens of the author's personal and family history.
January 2, 2022
many a thought on this that I don’t have the capacity or vocabulary to capture in a review, because it’s one of those topics I could babble on about for days on end. in summary: I could read books in this vein for years straight and never tire of it, never find everything to be said about it, never quite satiate the desire to make something like it of my own. here’s to hoping 2022’s reading scratches some of that itch.
another win from the free book wall!! thank u bizarre bazaar I love u
another win from the free book wall!! thank u bizarre bazaar I love u
March 6, 2020
I like books about the western plains and this was "pretty good." The Terry Tempest Williams blurb helped sell it to me. The author's wedding at the end of the book was an impressive display of community, the bonds of rural life at their best.
August 7, 2024
*3.5
Reminded me a little bit of Sandra Day O'Connors "Lazy B" with the pacing and the vignettes based on people or places. I liked the simplicity, but wish that there was more clear connectedness between stories.
Reminded me a little bit of Sandra Day O'Connors "Lazy B" with the pacing and the vignettes based on people or places. I liked the simplicity, but wish that there was more clear connectedness between stories.
March 16, 2019
Fabulous writing. Reflections on ranch life in Wyoming and the women who shaped Chugwater and Teresa.
May 16, 2020
This was special.
November 12, 2020
This is not a book I would normally read but I am so glad that i did! I really enjoyed the author's view of life on the ranch. ;-)
July 31, 2023
I enjoyed her writing but found this book pervaded by a disconnect between what she wrote and what she lived.
Read
July 21, 2024DNF - too long since ive read it
October 28, 2016
Still as great as the first time around!
October 2, 2014
A Book Review of Riding the White Horse Home By Teresa Jordan (Review by Tammy Dominguez)
Teresa Jordan’s book, Riding the White Horse Home, is a beautiful and tragic portrait of the story of her family and the ranch life they knew for almost one hundred years. The book has the perfect balance of geological facts, animal husbandry, personal journal entries and personal insights.
Jordan painted a picture of the ranchers and their way of life as living on a frontier, being stoic, and as her grandfather Sunny explained, “I kill my own snakes, … and bury my own dead,” (32) . The tragedy of the book is not only the deaths, one by one, of everyone who Jordan loved and was important to her, but also, ultimately, the loss of the ranch. Having recently lost my home of ten years, I especially empathized with her words on page 88, “My sadness over the loss of the homeplace is my dark side, my grief, but it is also the source of my deepest knowledge. Perhaps it is only through this experience of loss that I can value a sense of place, that I can question how thoughtlessly – even how contemptuously – we are taught to cast it aside.”
Her explanation of the rock formations, the hogbacks, and what happened to the land millions of years ago from water that used to cover Wyoming was interesting and informative. She talked of finding arrowheads and other artifacts left by the Indians. Her grandmother almost had an inner magnet to find these items. She said, “It was a matter of looking, … of learning to see,” (5) . The wind is also a huge factor in the landscape of Wyoming. “Someone who asks if the wind ever quits is likely to be told that it does, long enough to change directions,” (8) .
I particularly enjoyed the section of the book in which Jordan spent weeks and weeks assisting with calving season. The irony is that the ranchers risk their lives and suffer immensely during calving season for cows that “are ultimately slated for slaughter,” (108) . Once again, the wind was a key figure during this time. The wind even had “… been picking up small rocks, hurtling them with such for that they break the skin,” (101) . One thing I was surprised to learn is that the milk bags of cows will get sunburnt from the glare of the sun on the bare ground and that “Sunburn is as painful for a cow as for a human – sunburnt cows won’t let their calves suck,” (106) .
My favorite character that Jordan describes, is her Great-aunt Marie. I most related to her and her love of animals, especially dogs. She was brokenhearted at the untimely loss of her dog, Mike. Even weeks after his death, she wrote, “I was so lonesome for my little pardner I just must get used to it I guess I will try,” (146) . Marie’s idea of heaven (as well as my own) would be one “where all her dogs and horses, all her family and friends, would be waiting for her to come through the gates, riding the white horse home, (156) .
I love how Jordan put into words a phenomena I, too, have experienced. She learned that a particular “memory” she recalled, was not, “I have carried it like a memory, but it’s not a memory; it’s a story I have heard, fleshed out by details told down through the years,” (117) .
Like every family, there was one unpleasant person, whose behavior almost defied explanation. But Jordan explored her grandmother, Effie, her life, photographs, and attempted to find the reason for her bitterness and anger. She did a great job at explaining honestly what it was like growing up near such a negative person, but also gave her grandmother dignity and by subtle suggestions, the reader could draw his or her own conclusions as to what was Effie’s heart-issue. Jordan says, “I always had the feeling that Effie was angry at the world for not making her happy; I was angry at Effie for not making herself happy,” (190) . Also in Jordan’s family, at times there existed the disfunction of certain family members not speaking to other family members. I too, have experienced this in my family. My favorite passage above all others in Jordan’s book explains this eloquently, “When we see ourselves or our kin measuring up short of the legends that shape us, our disappointments turn into blame …. Unable to accept our own shortcomings or forgive those of our kin, we orphan ourselves within the solitude of our own hearts,” (37) .
Teresa Jordan’s book, Riding the White Horse Home, is a beautiful and tragic portrait of the story of her family and the ranch life they knew for almost one hundred years. The book has the perfect balance of geological facts, animal husbandry, personal journal entries and personal insights.
Jordan painted a picture of the ranchers and their way of life as living on a frontier, being stoic, and as her grandfather Sunny explained, “I kill my own snakes, … and bury my own dead,” (32) . The tragedy of the book is not only the deaths, one by one, of everyone who Jordan loved and was important to her, but also, ultimately, the loss of the ranch. Having recently lost my home of ten years, I especially empathized with her words on page 88, “My sadness over the loss of the homeplace is my dark side, my grief, but it is also the source of my deepest knowledge. Perhaps it is only through this experience of loss that I can value a sense of place, that I can question how thoughtlessly – even how contemptuously – we are taught to cast it aside.”
Her explanation of the rock formations, the hogbacks, and what happened to the land millions of years ago from water that used to cover Wyoming was interesting and informative. She talked of finding arrowheads and other artifacts left by the Indians. Her grandmother almost had an inner magnet to find these items. She said, “It was a matter of looking, … of learning to see,” (5) . The wind is also a huge factor in the landscape of Wyoming. “Someone who asks if the wind ever quits is likely to be told that it does, long enough to change directions,” (8) .
I particularly enjoyed the section of the book in which Jordan spent weeks and weeks assisting with calving season. The irony is that the ranchers risk their lives and suffer immensely during calving season for cows that “are ultimately slated for slaughter,” (108) . Once again, the wind was a key figure during this time. The wind even had “… been picking up small rocks, hurtling them with such for that they break the skin,” (101) . One thing I was surprised to learn is that the milk bags of cows will get sunburnt from the glare of the sun on the bare ground and that “Sunburn is as painful for a cow as for a human – sunburnt cows won’t let their calves suck,” (106) .
My favorite character that Jordan describes, is her Great-aunt Marie. I most related to her and her love of animals, especially dogs. She was brokenhearted at the untimely loss of her dog, Mike. Even weeks after his death, she wrote, “I was so lonesome for my little pardner I just must get used to it I guess I will try,” (146) . Marie’s idea of heaven (as well as my own) would be one “where all her dogs and horses, all her family and friends, would be waiting for her to come through the gates, riding the white horse home, (156) .
I love how Jordan put into words a phenomena I, too, have experienced. She learned that a particular “memory” she recalled, was not, “I have carried it like a memory, but it’s not a memory; it’s a story I have heard, fleshed out by details told down through the years,” (117) .
Like every family, there was one unpleasant person, whose behavior almost defied explanation. But Jordan explored her grandmother, Effie, her life, photographs, and attempted to find the reason for her bitterness and anger. She did a great job at explaining honestly what it was like growing up near such a negative person, but also gave her grandmother dignity and by subtle suggestions, the reader could draw his or her own conclusions as to what was Effie’s heart-issue. Jordan says, “I always had the feeling that Effie was angry at the world for not making her happy; I was angry at Effie for not making herself happy,” (190) . Also in Jordan’s family, at times there existed the disfunction of certain family members not speaking to other family members. I too, have experienced this in my family. My favorite passage above all others in Jordan’s book explains this eloquently, “When we see ourselves or our kin measuring up short of the legends that shape us, our disappointments turn into blame …. Unable to accept our own shortcomings or forgive those of our kin, we orphan ourselves within the solitude of our own hearts,” (37) .
January 31, 2024
New Rating (in 2024): 3/5
Actual Rating: 4.5/5
Update in 2024:
After blogging about this book in 2017, I finally made time to re-read it this past month. I wish I could say that I loved it as much as I did in 1997, but I didn't. I enjoyed revisiting Jordan's memoir, and I didn't skim the familiar passages, but it didn't strike me as a great book this time around.
Snow doesn't melt, people say, it just wears out. Someone who asked if the wind ever quits is likely to be told that it does, long enough to change directions. I once ran across a list of nearly four hundred winds from around the world and wondered why Wyoming, so dominated by wind, has so few names for its variations. The only one that came to mind was chinook. "I can think of a few more," our neighbor, Wayne Bonham, suggested. "There's the wind, the damned wind, and the goddamned wind."
My Original Notes (1997):
Marvelous! I love this book. Makes me want to write my own memoirs. I identified with so much of the author's views and feelings. Very sad in places - brought tears to my eyes, yet also humorous. Great look at life on a cattle ranch in contemporary time. Insightful. Touching. Spellbinding.
My Current Thoughts:
Yes, I still own a copy of this wonderful memoir and plan to read it again. I read it for my Great Plains Lit class, many years ago, but still remember how much I enjoyed it. Flipping through my copy, I see a lot of underlined passages and notes jotted down on the pages... far too many to share here, but this particular passage caught my eye and I think it speaks to the author's love of the land she grew up on:
When my family tells the story of the ranch, we say we left because we had to--we could not afford to pay the estate taxes after my grandfather's death. This is true, but it is only part of the story. My family left the land because for four generations we had yearned to leave. We had lived in a culture that taught us that a professional life is more respectable than one tied to the land. This attitude shaped the decisions my family made, and it continues to shape the larger political and economic decisions, made by educators and policymakers far removed from the land, that affect the few who still hold on.
My sadness over the loss of the homeplace is my dark side, my grief, but it is also the source of my deepest knowledge. Perhaps it is only through this experience of loss that I can value a sense of place, that I can question how thoughtlessly--even how contemptuously--we are taught to cast it aside.
I'm willing to bet that none of you have heard of Teresa Jordan or this book. If you enjoy memoirs or novels such as A River Runs Through It (Norman Maclean), Dancing at the Rascal Farm (Ivan Doig) or All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy), this is sure to be one you will love. I'm so happy to see that it's still available for purchase.
Actual Rating: 4.5/5
Update in 2024:
After blogging about this book in 2017, I finally made time to re-read it this past month. I wish I could say that I loved it as much as I did in 1997, but I didn't. I enjoyed revisiting Jordan's memoir, and I didn't skim the familiar passages, but it didn't strike me as a great book this time around.
Snow doesn't melt, people say, it just wears out. Someone who asked if the wind ever quits is likely to be told that it does, long enough to change directions. I once ran across a list of nearly four hundred winds from around the world and wondered why Wyoming, so dominated by wind, has so few names for its variations. The only one that came to mind was chinook. "I can think of a few more," our neighbor, Wayne Bonham, suggested. "There's the wind, the damned wind, and the goddamned wind."
My Original Notes (1997):
Marvelous! I love this book. Makes me want to write my own memoirs. I identified with so much of the author's views and feelings. Very sad in places - brought tears to my eyes, yet also humorous. Great look at life on a cattle ranch in contemporary time. Insightful. Touching. Spellbinding.
My Current Thoughts:
Yes, I still own a copy of this wonderful memoir and plan to read it again. I read it for my Great Plains Lit class, many years ago, but still remember how much I enjoyed it. Flipping through my copy, I see a lot of underlined passages and notes jotted down on the pages... far too many to share here, but this particular passage caught my eye and I think it speaks to the author's love of the land she grew up on:
When my family tells the story of the ranch, we say we left because we had to--we could not afford to pay the estate taxes after my grandfather's death. This is true, but it is only part of the story. My family left the land because for four generations we had yearned to leave. We had lived in a culture that taught us that a professional life is more respectable than one tied to the land. This attitude shaped the decisions my family made, and it continues to shape the larger political and economic decisions, made by educators and policymakers far removed from the land, that affect the few who still hold on.
My sadness over the loss of the homeplace is my dark side, my grief, but it is also the source of my deepest knowledge. Perhaps it is only through this experience of loss that I can value a sense of place, that I can question how thoughtlessly--even how contemptuously--we are taught to cast it aside.
I'm willing to bet that none of you have heard of Teresa Jordan or this book. If you enjoy memoirs or novels such as A River Runs Through It (Norman Maclean), Dancing at the Rascal Farm (Ivan Doig) or All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy), this is sure to be one you will love. I'm so happy to see that it's still available for purchase.
June 22, 2024
I am usually a fiction kind of person; I enjoy the weave of plot and character development, unexpected twists and turns, heartache and triumph. You can't get all of that in a memoir. But, I loved the lyrical writing and the images painted by Jordan in "Riding the White Horse Home." I found that it did have drama, and tension, and while it lagged at times, it was an excellent book.
"The bull is on the fight and he paws the ground. His eye are dull and green with sickness, and when he throws his head and bellers, long strands of snot stream from his mouth and fly back across his shoulders, raising a few of the flies that blanket his rump. ... From the fence I watch as he takes my daddy down. The world erupts in dust and blood. The bull is roaring, groaning, grinding, someone is yelling, my father is a tiny spider of flailing arms and legs."
"The bull is on the fight and he paws the ground. His eye are dull and green with sickness, and when he throws his head and bellers, long strands of snot stream from his mouth and fly back across his shoulders, raising a few of the flies that blanket his rump. ... From the fence I watch as he takes my daddy down. The world erupts in dust and blood. The bull is roaring, groaning, grinding, someone is yelling, my father is a tiny spider of flailing arms and legs."
February 13, 2017
This book was gifted to me by Elizabeth Willis Dillow, who reviewed it so well in our 2016 group. To her remarks, I would add that in the narratives of women who came of age in the 1950s-1960s, there were far more hidden figures than those described in the movie of the same name. As women of 2017, reading those stories gives us insight into the roots (and the hardships) others faced that we scarcely understand.
The author's emphasis is on her female relatives, but my favorite part is when, early in the book, she tells a story of a childhood hobo experience. When she sees her father ride up, she expects he will be excited to hear of her adventures. Instead, he is furious. But, her father realizes he made a mistake, returns, with Cokes and patience back in hand. And she forgives him.
Honest and reflective in looking forward and back, Jordan captures a slice of human experience that few have considered.
The author's emphasis is on her female relatives, but my favorite part is when, early in the book, she tells a story of a childhood hobo experience. When she sees her father ride up, she expects he will be excited to hear of her adventures. Instead, he is furious. But, her father realizes he made a mistake, returns, with Cokes and patience back in hand. And she forgives him.
Honest and reflective in looking forward and back, Jordan captures a slice of human experience that few have considered.
October 24, 2011
This book really hit home with me. It captures a part of the west, and the way westerners become their own community, their own family, and their own country separate from the rest of American culture. Dealing with this separate-ness on a daily basis on the ranch can sometimes be a conflict, and this beautifully-written story helped me remember that the way western people feel about their lives, their land, and their job can sometimes be so far from where you are. I'm a westerner too, but I've moved to this community recently, and every community has its own past, just as every person is carrying a weight on their shoulders that another cannot see. It was a beautiful and sad picture of a landscape and a culture that still exist today, and a people who fight every bit as hard as their pioneer ancestors to keep it that way.
February 10, 2017
Interesting Memoir. Almost like separate essays. It didn't flow.
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