Note on the text: I used Lonesome Dove as written by Larry McMurtry and published by Simon and Schuster in 2025.
What a great book! This book is epic in just about every way. Itās beautiful book about the lives of a group of ranchers and cowboys as they emigrate from Texas to Montana in the 1870s, and the odyssey that they go on is as epic as any in the history of literature. One of the things I loved most about this book though the world that ānatureā, both in the bigger cosmic sense and in the smaller more intimate sense of human nature, plays in this story. These are people that are intimately aware of how powerful Nature is and each have a unique relationship with it.
Thereās a beautiful scene in the beginning of the book that really sets the stage on how pivotal the role of Nature is to this group of men, including Captain Woodrow Call who āstill liked to go out at night, sniff the breeze and let the country talk. The country talked quiet. One human voice could drown it outā (26). I love that image of letting Nature talk to you, of conversing with it. I love the sense of majesty and power that that sentence contains and how it combines it with the sense that Call doesnāt need to be scared of Nature because itās his home. Heās part of Nature and so of course he can talk to it.
You see something similar later with Newt and Deet when they and the herd are caught up in a thunderstorm. Newt is amazed when he sees that the ācattle seemed to have caught the lightening-little blue balls of it rolled around their hornsā, and itās while he stands there transfixed by what heās seeing that Deet reminds him to not get too close to the cattle while they āgot lightening on their hornsā or else he could get hurt (265-266). You feel their sense of awe and you see it clash up against their sense of āknow howā, that theyāve been through this miraculous event before and know how to get through it. That for as miraculous and all power as Nature is in a cosmic sense, it is still very knowable and you can learn how to live within the its limits if you just pay attention.
Thatās what their cook, Po Campo, says when someone asks him why he walks so slowly: āif I walk too fast I might miss somethingā (371). He is a character who is incredibly observant of the world around him and he reaps the benefit of it many times over throughout the course of the book when heās able to cook delicious meals solely because he paid attention to what was growing around them. They didnāt have to eat the garbage they did before he got there, they just didnāt know how to really look at what was around them and how to take advantage of the wonderful gifts that Nature was trying to offer them.
Death is also very much a part of these peopleās world but instead of seeing death as something taboo that must be avoided at all costs, they see it as something that is a part of the natural order of life, and itās something that they use as motivation to live as fulfilling a life as they can. A good example of this is when Gus gives the eulogy at Sean OāBrienās funeral:
This was a good and brave boy, for we all saw that he conquered his fear of riding. He had a fine tenor voice and weāll all miss that. But he wasnāt used to this part of the world. Thereās accidents in life and he met with a bad one. We may all do the same if we are not careful (286).
Death is not something to be toyed with or taken lightly, but I love how Gus despite also highlights that Sean had a great voice and that he had the courage to not let fear dictate how he was going to live his life. They know better than most just how short life is and how important it is to not waste a moment of it. Gus says that to July when heās trying to convince July not to be consumed by his hatred of the Comanche outlaw Blue Duck who killed all the other members of his party:
Son this is a sad thing. . . . Loss of life always is. But the life [that] is lost is lost for good. Donāt you go attempting vengeance. Youāve got more urgent business. If I ever run into Blue Duck Iāll kill him. If I donāt someone else will. Heās big and mean, but sooner or later heāll run into someone bigger and meaner. Or a snake will bite him, or a horse will fall on him, or heāll get hung, or one of his own renegades will shoot him in the back. Or heāll just get old and die. . . . Donāt be trying to give back pain for pain. . . . You canāt get even measures in a business like this. You best go and find your wife (464).
Living, and living well. is the āmore urgentā business that Gus is saying July has to attend to. Nature itself will take care of the rest.
This book is also beautiful in the way it talks about Nature in the smaller, more intimate sense, and how important it is that we also try to live within the bounds of our āhumanā nature. Woodrow is a solitary person, great in many ways, and great at knowing what his place in the world is. He is a great worker who respects Nature in that bigger, cosmic, sense and knows his place within that system. He is a kind person who doesnāt take anything for granted and is doing his best to lead the fullest life that he can. His Achilles heel though is that he never quite understands his need for human companionship nor does he understand how to give that part of himself to someone else. He has his friends like Gus whom he gets along with well enough, but he struggles to really understand why people would want him in their lives and canāt get himself to admit that he needs other people for reasons that arenāt always utilitarian in nature. His relationship, or lack thereof, with a prostitute named Maggie, therefore represents one of the great tragedies of this magnificent story.
He canāt even admit that he fell in love with her but only that āsomething drew him backā to her (361). Thereās a scene where he talks about how shy he is around her to the point where he canāt even say her name, and yet when she tells him that she would like him to say her name heās confused as to why she should care more about him than any other guy. And that rather than try to give himself the space to see whether a relationship with Maggie was possible, he just arbitrarily decides that heās not good enough to marry her and stops seeing her. And even now, almost 20 years later, for reasons he still canāt understand, and therefore is doomed to repeat over and over again, he says that the memory of Maggie and how he ended things with her is the ābitterest memory of his lifeā (360). Itās a really sad story of a man who could never quite fill the void in himself because he couldnāt figure out how live in tune with his own human nature to the degree that he had learned to live with the version of Nature that lived around him. Itās a tragic element, a fatal flaw, in a character and a story that is just so epic in so many ways. I really loved this book!
