Review by Pat Daniel
Outfitting – March 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
Riding West: An Outfitter’s Life
by Jim Greer with Charles Miller
Published in 1999 by University Press of Colorado
ISBN 0-870-81525-3
RIDING WEST: AN OUTFITTER’S LIFE covers eight years in the life of Jim “Doc” Greer, a guide, outfitter and self-styled imitation cowboy on Colorado’s Western Slope. The book is the engaging result of a collaboration between Greer and his long-time friend, Charles Miller, a retired English professor at Western State College in Gunnison.
The two met over lunch some years ago in the faculty lounge after Greer had left outfitting, at least temporarily, to become assistant business manager at the college.
“As soon as I started hearing Jim’s stories,” Miller said, “I wanted to see them in print. Oral tales can fool you — sometimes their effect is due to the appearance or personality of the teller — but when I wrote them down, Jim’s stories came out fine.”
When Miller suggested they write a book about his experiences, Greer was enthusiastic. With his literary background and lively imagination, Greer had already recognized the potential for his life to be turned into literature. In fact, he had tried several times to turn his oral tales into prose but had been dissatisfied with the results.
Miller pointed out that while there are many books on hunting and camping, no contemporary outfitter has told the story of his own adventures. “What we tried to do,” Miller said, “was write a contemporary Western classic that would capture something of the Old West. Jim’s story allowed us to do that.”
Because outfitters deal with horses and people, rather than cattle, Greer said, they should be considered wranglers, not cowboys. But because they try to cash in on the public’s fascination with the cowboy mystique, outfitters often dress and talk and act like cowboys.
Greer regards outfitting as a kind of five-act play which follows the cycle of the seasons. With each change of season, the outfitter modifies his character as he follows a script based on generations of western films and novels, even to the language they use. Clients, in turn, perform roles that seem to have been written for them.
“What we were after,” Greer said, “is what I call a dream of the Old West. All of us had parts to play and acted out a story that was familiar before the curtain went up or the cameras rolled. For me the challenge was to make the play better every year I was in business, and to perfect the role I was playing.”
Originally a big-city, blue-collar boy, Greer made it into the ranks of public-school teachers, and then into the white-collar bureaucracy, before running away to enjoy “a mid-life retirement.”
The business of outfitting he learned by trial and error. He explains that after chasing loose stock in riding boots, he began carrying tennis shoes in his saddle bags to save his feet on the long walk back to the corral. After rescuing lost hunters, he learned never to trust his clients’ sense of direction. When a camp stove blew up in his face, he realized you should never start a fire with gasoline. And he learned never to try to deliver the coup de grace to a wounded bear with a .357 revolver, even at point blank range, because bullets bounce off their thick skulls.
In Riding West, Greer emerges as a complex, sometimes difficult man with a quick temper and a ready wit. A master of the dramatic gesture, he is brash and generous, quick to anger and slow to forgive. A born educator, he became a role model for his clients as well as a stern disciplinarian for the guides and wranglers who worked for him.
A MEMOIR LIBERALLY SPICED with tall tales and literary references, Riding West is by turns poignant and funny, fanciful and sometimes terrifyingly real. Greer tells the story of himself and his clients, of the horses and mules they ride, and speaks first-hand of the beauty and majesty — as well as the dangers — of the high country.
The book is illustrated by pen-and-ink drawings by wildlife artist Scott Yeager, as well as photos supplied by Greer and others.
Be warned, though: some of the language is not for “the ladies of the Baptist Church.” These people are guides and outfitters, cowboys and mountain men. Still, the book makes wonderful reading for anyone who, like Walter Mitty, ever dreams of escaping from civilization to a life in the wilderness, as well as those who want to know what high country outfitting is all about.
Curiously, even after vowing to give up outfitting, Greer still finds himself gripped by the lure of the high country. At last report, he plans to work again this year as head wrangler at a resort on the Taylor River, north of Gunnison.
This originally appeared in the Gunnison Country Times, and is reprinted with permission.
