By Peter Vankevich
Pat Garber’s goal as a young girl was to grow up and have lots of stories to tell, and that she has accomplished both from a fascinating life she has led and the opportunity to recount them in her many diverse books.
Raised on a farm in southern Virginia with horses, this childhood led to a lifelong love of animals, both domestic and wild.
For many years, Garber lived on Ocracoke primarily as a writer, director of the Ocracoke Preservation Society and a federally licensed wildlife rehabilitator and a licensed volunteer with North Carolina’s Sea Turtle Stranding Network.
Her two most notable books from living here are “Ocracoke Wild” (1995) and “Ocracoke Odyssey” (1995), both still in print.
She has always had a fascination with the Southwest, which is the subject of her latest book, “Living the Life; ranches, rodeas and rattlesnakes.”
Her great grandparents, Don Alonzo and Lou Sanford, moved to southern Arizona to homestead a ranch raising cattle and sheep, mining and even running a stagecoach stop.
They passed on to their descendants a remarkable collection of 67 diaries, lots of letters and large ledgers that offer a view of what life was like back then. Garber takes excerpts from these documents and offers her insights on their significance.
But the book is more than that. After visiting the state, she decided to move there and be a volunteer at a nature reserve.
By good fortune, became the caretaker to a 1,200-acre ranch outside of Patagonia, almost to the Mexico border, that was adjacent to that of her great-grandfather’s. She writes about ranch life today with its calf-season roundups.
The book shifts between the past and her present, connecting, in her engaging writing style, her experiences and observations and how they all relate.
This is the “Wild West,” with rattlesnakes, cattle rustlers, the wild border with Mexico and rodeas (interchangeably used with rodeos in the diaries), a term used for the demanding work of rounding up livestock on horseback.
There’s also the threat of rattlesnakes and mountain lions while riding through difficult rocky terrain and the desert in search of the cattle and horses.
Not only does she recount how they were managed in the late 19th century, but she had the opportunity to participate in a “rodea” herself.
She recounts her life while living in Patagonia (close to the Mexican border) and making friends with colorful characters that could match those on Ocracoke.
One character, who simply went by Penny, was “a lovely, slender woman who reminded me of a back-to-nature, flower child from the Sixties, and loved to dance and hike,” Garber writes. Penny was obsessed with a diet consisting of vegan, organic raw foods and odd-colored smoothies consisting of organic fruits and veggies.
Only later, as they became close friends, did Garber learn that Penny’s body was consumed with cancer which she was treating with diet rather than chemo and radiation.
Garber’s love of animals is apparent throughout the book. She befriends a cow simply known as “76” and a wild horse named Brown who earns her trust through familiarity and with carrots.
The cow 76 was slowly dying from failing eyesight but managed to get pregnant and Garber provided support to her as she gave birth to her foal, before dying.
The book is a tribute to her ancestors and has many photographs of them along with historical and contemporary images.
This and other of Garber’s books are available in the Ocracoke Preservation Society gift shop, 49 Water Plant Road.
Pat Garber is a prolific writer, author of “Ocracoke Wild; A Naturalist’s Year on an Outer Banks Island,” “Ocracoke Odyssey; A Naturalist’s Reflections on her Home by the Sea” and many other books and articles. She is a long-time contributor to the Ocracoke Observer.