Remembering a cowboy: Stephen Zimmer lived and loved the western way of life

Oct. 15—MIAMI, N.M. — About 5 p.m. on the first Saturday of this month, I was driving north on Interstate 25, about six miles south of Springer, listening to an Ian Tyson CD and soaking in the view.

The rays of the retreating sun added another layer of yellow to the grasslands to the east and west of the freeway, and blue-gray and pale-pink mountain peaks hovered in the gauzy distance.

A landscape doesn't get much more Western than this, I thought. It's no wonder my friend Stephen Zimmer loved northeast New Mexico.

Steve's from a Texas ranching family. He was raised in Amarillo, but fell under the spell of this Colfax County country when he saw the Philmont (Boy) Scout Ranch, where he worked for many years.

I was on my way to a party at Steve's Double Z Bar Ranch in Miami, 12 miles west of Springer. The party started at 5, and I figured I'd get there about 5:20. That'd be good. I didn't want to be the first one there.

First one? When I got there, the ground around Steve's ranch house looked like an airport parking lot on Thanksgiving weekend. It seemed as if everyone in the county was at the party.

Everyone except Steve. My friend died in August.

Riding and writingSteve was born on St. Patrick's Day in 1951. He grew up, like a lot of us in that era, reading about cowboys and Indians, lawmen and desperadoes. Steve got to play out his frontier fantasies on horseback, riding in pursuit of phantom rustlers on his family's ranch in Moore County, Texas.

After graduating from Amarillo High School in 1969, he earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of New Mexico and then a master's in history from UNM.

During summer breaks from college, Steve, an Eagle Scout himself, worked backcountry camps as a staff member at Philmont. Later, he took on duties at the Philmont Museum, serving as museum director for more than 20 years before retiring in 2001.

Steve, his wife, Shari, and their sons, Parker and Marshall, raised quarter horses at the Double Z Bar. Just as he did as a youngster, Steve took pleasure in riding horseback across rangeland, and he looked forward to making a hand during spring and fall work on his neighbors' ranches.

Oh yeah. He wrote a dozen books — nonfiction such as "People of the Cimarron Country" and a history of Philmont, and fiction such as the novel "Parker's Colt." Articles by Steve appeared in Western Horseman, New Mexico Magazine, Cowboy Magazine, Persimmon Hill and The Quarter Horse Journal.

Once, I walked into the visitors' center at Fort Union National Monument and saw Steve's talking head in the history film they show there.

I got to know Steve through a mutual friend, working cowboy and Western sculptor Curtis Fort of Tatum.

I remember visiting Steve at the Philmont Museum when he was still director there, and I quoted him in an August 1999 Albuquerque Tribune story I wrote about cowboy writer and artist Will James. At the time, Steve was president of the Will James Society, an organization he and Fort were instrumental in starting.

"His books affirmed everything I learned growing up," Steve said of James in that article. "All the cowpunchers seemed to read him. He was the quintessential cowboy's cowboy who talked the cowboy language."

I'm pretty sure that was the first time I quoted Steve. The last time was in an article I wrote for the Journal this past June.

Strength and integritySteve called me sometime last spring. He told me Cimarron's Maverick Club would be celebrating the 100th anniversary of its Fourth of July rodeo this year. Steve, a past president of the club, thought that would make a good story for me. I thought so, too.

In the middle of June, Journal photographer Eddie Moore and I met Steve at the Double Z Bar. The three of us got in Steve's specially outfitted van, and I drove the van the 17 miles from Miami to Cimarron.

About that van. Here's where I tell you that Steve contracted polio, possibly at a rodeo he was attending with his family, when he was a very young child. He started walking with crutches when he was 2.

He did his cowboy work horseback and everything else with sheer upper-body strength, indomitable will power and intestinal fortitude.

"We got close for loving the same things — the West, the books, the history," Fort said of Steve. "What I picked up on was how much he loved cowboying. Can you imagine what he could have done if he got around like us? But he could drag calves. And he could write about it."

Rod Taylor, a Philmont Scout Ranch cowboy for more than 34 years, met Steve when Taylor was a 17-year-old Philmont counselor and Steve was a camp director. They became lifelong friends.

"Obviously you think of Steve's strength and determination, given that he had polio," Taylor said. "But also, I think of his character and integrity as a person. He was very intelligent and a great writer. He was a great resource for me. I could ask him almost anything.

"We talked often about history and cowboying and the geography of New Mexico and Texas, but we also talked about philosophy, religion, politics and just whatever."

In 2009, Steve was honored with the Philmont Staff Association's Silver Sage Award in recognition of his contributions to Philmont.

In 2021, the New Mexico Department of Agriculture presented Steve with its Rounders Award. Named after a novel by New Mexico writer Max Evans, the Rounders Award is given to those who "live, promote, and articulate the western way of life."

Men in hatsRod Taylor got in touch to let me know that Steve took ill not long after I met with him in June to work on that Maverick Club Rodeo story. Steve never got to that rodeo. One physical problem piled up on another, and he died in Las Cruces on Aug. 15.

The potluck party at the Double Z Bar earlier this month honored Steve's life. Cowboys and ranching families came, so did present and past Philmont staffers and Maverick Rodeo compadres and at least one UNM friend.

Several long tables were filled with food, not a square inch to spare. Western musician and neighbor RW Hampton sang cowboy songs such as "Cross the Brazos at Waco" and "Little Joe the Wrangler."

The talk was about rodeos, rain, suicidal steers, elk hunting and, of course, Steve.

As I walked to my car to begin my drive back to Corrales, I remember something Steve had once said about enjoying gatherings that brought together men in hats.

He would have liked this party. I wish he could have been there.