Word: ranching
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...like a tumbleweed- scatteri ng wind. At dusk one of them rears and paws the air, casting a silhouette that is the very image of freedom. These are mustangs, the legendary wild horses of the American West. Two decades ago, mustangs were headed for extinction. Now, at Mustang Meadows Ranch, a 32,000-acre spread near St. Francis, S. Dak., 1,500 of them have found sanctuary and a managed independence that may help assure their survival...
...first mustangs arrived in August 1988. After being cooped up in corrals anywhere from one month to several years, they needed to readjust psychologically to the comparative freedom of the ranch's open pastures. By gradually approaching the wary mustangs in corrals, Day and his wranglers taught them to become comfortable around people. "They have had so much negative training before they get here, they think they are going to suffer if they see a man on horseback," says Day. "We want to show them that we are not the enemy." Out of the corrals, the mustangs are rotated...
...published, ending a four-year hiatus from long fiction. The New York Times proclaimed it the "best book he has written to date." Almost as sweet is the news that Keep the Change is already the best- selling book of his career. No wonder that McGuane's Raw Deal Ranch has been rechristened Gladstone...
Keep the Change chronicles the cross-country escapades of Joe Starling, a blocked painter who endeavors to "put his old life to an end" by stealing his girlfriend's car and setting out from Florida to reclaim the Montana ranch left to him by his father. As the plot progresses to its ironic denouement, Joe courts his teenage sweetheart, rekindles a love affair with the land and comes to terms with some family ghosts -- both dead and alive. Like most McGuane protagonists, Starling is at a gallop between his past and future, an existential cowboy with good intentions...
Meanwhile, McGuane had used the proceeds from selling the film rights to The Sporting Club to buy a ranch in Paradise Valley, Montana, where he moved with his wife, nee Betty Crockett (a direct descendant of Davy), and his son Thomas IV. The breathtaking scenery and anything-goes ambiance soon attracted a freewheeling constellation of characters that included fellow writer Richard Brautigan, actor Peter Fonda, painter Russell Chatham and director Sam Peckinpah. Before long, stories started coming out of the valley, ribald tales of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll that have become part of the local lore...