On Rituals

Sometimes we talk about archeology or anthropology assigning meanings to structures or observations. They very often tend to assign religious explanations when they can't think of anything else, but we often just don't really know why ancient ancestors did things. If there was a meaning at all, it is unknown and unknowable.

I was thinking about how easily meaning is lost when reading this article: If you're traveling out West and you see an old cowboy boot stuck up on a fence post, what does it mean? These are people who actually participate in the custom or know others who do, and they can't agree on what (if anything) it means.

Jack Farrell was a ranch boss at Sombrero Ranches in Colorado for decades. 

He said there were many a wrangler that worked for him who discarded their old boots by adding to a collection of weatherworn boots already atop fence posts surrounding the ranch property. 

“It’s like throwing bras onstage at a Tom Jones concert. Once one does it, they all have to do it and they don’t really even know why after long,” Farrell said. “I guess it all started with a purpose, but I’ll be danged if anyone ever knew what that was.”...

Most ranchers contacted for this story had either never seen it done or didn’t know the significance behind it. 

“Never heard of it,” said Kelly Lockhart, patriarch of a sixth-generation family cattle ranch based in Jackson, Wyoming....

He assumed... coyotes would associate the smell of the boots with gun-toting ranchers and steer clear....

Footwear at the end of its life simply made for a handy decoration to spruce up the property line. 

But the practicality of covering a fence post makes sense as some claim. A boot placed over a post would keep rain from seeping into the wood and decaying the post prematurely. 

Typically, it is thought boots on a fence are there as a memorial to a favorite horse, a lost member of the family or a beloved ranch worker who passed away. 

Some have speculated boots perched atop of fence post could also serve as communication in days before cellphones, for example. A visitor could instantly tell whether the homeowner was around or not.

A boot with its toe turned toward the main house indicated the rancher or farmer was at home. A boot pointed in any other direction was to show the owner was still at work — the boot pointing to the field he was working in.

How much harder is it to understand a cultural practice from the other side of the world, or an ancient age? 

Human beings don't really like admitting that they don't know something, much less that they can't know it. We like to think we have more knowledge than we do, just as we like to believe we have a lot more control than we do. It may be that there's nothing you can really do about how you're going to die except to hurry it up with very bad decisions; but endless ink is spilled on the alleged benefits of this-or-that diet, or having a glass of wine for your cholesterol, or not having a glass of wine ever at all.

What do we know that we really know? Descartes came up with one item for the list: we experience thinking, and therefore our mind must exist. Everything else is suspect to a greater or lesser degree. 

Pragmatically we have to get along in the world, though. So if you see a old boot on a fencepost, I wouldn't go as far as questioning the existence of the boot or the fencepost. If you can find the guy who put it there, maybe he can even tell you why he did it. Maybe he read this blog post and thought it sounded like a fun idea.