Dec 22, 20243 min read

Cowboys and Canyonlands of the Texas Panhandle - A Hackberry Farm Nature Photography Workshop field report

As the sun came up, it was clear that something special was unfolding. A lone cowboy rode across on a dun-colored quarter horse on the ridge before us. As the horizon crept closer to sunrise, the sky came alive with color.

On the evening before, a weak cold front moved through the area, and with it, a low-hanging ceiling of clouds. As the evening moved on, the clouds pushed further east and now hang in the distance like some newly emerged mountain range on the horizon. If you ask people about one of their favorite aspects of living in an area where the number of people is scant, they'll say the sunrises and sunsets.

It's clear why.

Cowboys and Canyonlands of the Texas Panhandle - A Hackberry Farm Nature Photography Workshop field report — Sunrise over the plains.

I lived in this area for 26 years. I moved here fresh out of college in 1993, and in 2019, I moved my family back to a farm about a mile from where I was raised. Therefore, I know the area well and still see its austere beauty from an outsider's point of view.

This year, we had two sessions of the Cowboys and Canyonlands of the Texas Panhandle nature photography workshop. At each session, people from all over the country were interested in the Western lifestyle and eager to get a glimpse at life where the cattle outnumber the people.

Out here, the land is still wild. It's among the last places in the United States to be settled. Many of the towns out here are barely over 130 years old. There's not been a significant rise or stabilization of the population. Sure, there was a time back around 100 years ago, before the agricultural economy burst because of the dual calamities of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, when more people lived here. Since the heyday of the early 1930s, the population's been on a steady decline, but now, it's mostly stable.

All that backstory leads those who travel here to a logical conclusion: the area is mysterious and austere, and its connection to history is so recent that he's riding in a saddle in front of us.

The cowboy culture is one based on tradition. These robust men and women have moved cattle, worked their horses, and looked after the range like their predecessors have for generations. Contemporary media, like television shows, glamorize the lifestyle and tend to make it seem more coarse and cut-throat than what it really is. Sure, there are challenges to life on the range, but those challenges mostly revolve around weather and fickle cattle markets - not frontier violence meted out by angry rivals.

In both sessions of this workshop, we travel to local ranches and meet colorful characters who keep the traditions of the old days alive. We also photograph vast landscapes and scenes that look straight out of a 1950s western. Red rock badlands and canyonlands stretch out as far as we can see. Modern development hasn't made it this far, so the land is still wild and mostly untouched.

Each day, we roam the area in search of inspiring photographs. On the surface, it's an exercise in portfolio building. Deep down, however, it's so much more. This trip is like taking a peek back in time. It's exploring a rural culture that, although in the same nation where we live, has nuances that set it apart from other parts of the country.

This workshop, like others, comes to an end way too fast. There's still much to photograph. In the week-long adventure, we do get a good idea of what life is like in an area where, in many respects, time has stood still.