The Pastures of Beyond: An Old Cowboy Looks Back at the Old West

I've been in love with horses all my life. That love has brought me into contact with many wonderful people, cowboys chief among them. I met my first cowboy at age 15. That was Glenn Burks, founder of the original Willow Tree Farm in Woodside, CA. I rode with Jim Black, over at Skyline Ranch in Oakland back in the 50s and 60s. I knew Harry Conley and the Rose brothers of Hollister, CA. Cowboys (and women) are as different from the shopping crazed, mall crawlers that now dominate our society as astronauts are from marshmallows. Facing down a stud that would just as soon take off your arm does it, as does shepherding a herd of cattle in an impossible situation--and bringing them through. If you don't have cowboys in your life, this book is a good way to bring them into it. Here, you'll begin to understand a world that's slipped away. Courage, humor, fellowship, compassion: Dayton Hyde demonstrates them all in this wonderful memoir that can teach all of us the meaning of integrity.

I read this great book after visiting the wild horse sanctuary in South Dakota, what a blessing! I was traveling back from the Tetons, where my father(74 yrs old) and I had been working for the forestry service riding mustangs. What a great book to read after my experience in the wild. It must have been GREAT living back then. ENJOY the book, great read

A wonderful collection of stories about the life of cowboys and indians during the 1930s, 40s and 50s. The author provides a look back at a period of time in the American West that is now gone.

I don't know if you'd exactly call this a biography or not. It's a series of stories, loosely connected, ordered somewhat in a timeline. And fascinating stories they are. He lived in a time when the west, and indeed the world was changing. Then again, I guess it's always changing. I had dinner last night with a young man that seemed a lot like Hawk Hyde must have been 40 years ago. Forehead white as can be, the rest of his face well tanned. Not a dimestore cowboy. He even made the same comments about rodeos, he competes in the local ranch hand rodeos, but the big money circuit is not for working ranch hands. I guess this is more of a memoir. Tales told by a raconteur of no small skill. These are stories of the west from the thirties to the years after the war, and a bit on the times since. The stories improve over real life. Real life is endlessly riding a horse along a fence line in the cold, the rain, the hot, hour after endless hour. This is the good moments of the west.

If you love the old west, this book is a "must read." It is very well-written, with poignancy, wry observations and reflections on a life full of unforgettable horses, people, and places. Hauntingly beautiful and a reminder of how much we have lost, it was impossible to put down. Dayton Hyde has captured a part of our country's history that is too quickly slipping away.