>>2994553From OP's photo we cannot even even tell where this hat stands. There is nothing surrounding the ranch-hand's hat in or to which it might belong--only an out of focus space. There is not even dust from the drive or the cattle-trail sticking to it, which would at least hint at its use. A cowboy's hat and nothing more. And yet--
From the dark emptiness of the shaded underside of the brim the toilsome trot of the worker stares forth. In the stiffly rugged heaviness of the hat there is the accumulated tenacity of his slow ride through the far-spreading and ever-uniform steppes of the prairie swept by a hot wind. On the leather lie the softness and richness of the herdbeast. Under the crown sits the loneliness of the cattle-path as evening falls. In the hat vibrates the silent call of the range, its quiet gift of the burgeoning calf and its unexplained self-refusal in the fallow destitution of the aging heifer. This equipment is pervaded by uncomplaining anxiety as to the certainty of work, the wordless joy of having once more withstood want, the trembling before the impending childbed and shivering at the surrounding menace of death. This equipment belongs to the *range* and it is protected in the *world* of the cowhand. From out of this protected belonging the equipment itself rises to its resting-within-itself.
