When people say they are from Elko County, there’s no sense in waiting on them to tell you which town. The towns are so few, far between and somewhat uninhabited that a locale is seldom expressed that way. Not only that, many of Elko County’s residents might share a zip code with Tuscarora, Spring Creek or Carlin, but they may be situated fifty miles away from the local dance hall out in the middle of a sagebrush ranch. Elko County is big, and it’s rural. I was lamenting one time to my friend Ty Van Norman that we lived 18 miles from the nearest paved road. He told me he lived 15 miles from an oiled dirt road. Mark Dahl gets his mail at Deeth, Nevada, even though he’s actually from Starr Valley, a ranching community in Elko County. Deeth has a population of about twenty, and Starr Valley is punctuated by ranches all over the place. Mark grew up working as a buckaroo, and along with that came the traditions of the vaqueros, primarily beautifully engraved Spanish style bits and spurs. Having ridden for thousands of thousands of miles over the course of a few decades, Mark had always admired the workmanship and engraving on those silver bits and spurs. When the livestock business finally starved him out, he decided he’d give it a shot at building some of those beautiful tools of the buckaroo trade. At the time Mark decided to be a silversmith, he and his wife had five children with one more on the way. Getting a job in the mines would probably have been a wiser choice than chasing a dream. But that’s what dreamers do. They go after the crazy, not the sane. He had no clue how to go about it, but he did know he had some artistic abilities and a lot of desire. Add those to his familiarity with good bits and spurs, and he might have a start, but not a career. The choice was at hand: did he go get a job and move the family, or did he deny that self-preservation and go after something a little more dangerous, but a lot more rewarding? He set up shop on his place and started gathering tools. He had a little bandsaw with which to cut steel for the bits and spurs, but he soon found that it was too small. He needed a bigger saw, but with no income, he couldn’t afford one. With a little Elko County ingenuity, Mark built a bandsaw using bicycle tires. Where many folks would have given up or put the new saw on a credit card, Mark sacrificed hours trying to figure out how to make one on his own. His dies are handmade. His silversmithing is self-taught. His designs are his own, based on historic designs of Spanish-style vaquero bits. He didn’t have the luxury of going off to school. He didn’t have the luxury of apprenticing with another bit and spur maker. He had to sacrifice everything he had to figure out how to do it, and now he’s one of the best in the business. For years, the champions at the Reno Rodeo received Mark Dahl spurs. Buckaroos pride themselves on using his bits. Many of them will wait for years just get one, just like Mark put life on hold to figure out how to make them. I’d say he’s found his niche, although it took some doing. He thought he was a cowboy for a long time, but he had to let go of that to figure out that he was a silversmith, and a bit and spur maker. If we really want to find out who God created us to be, we have to quit trying to be someone else. I look at Mark Dahl, who had spent his whole life riding horses, and how he finally figured out he was supposed to make the bits that those horses would carry. I look at Wilford Brimley, who spent his whole life bent over shoeing horses and how he finally found his sweet spot as an actor after stepping out from under a horse for a bit. Look at all of the people who finally let go of what they’re chasing, and they finally find out who they really are in life. That’s a God thing. Luke 9:24 says, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it." Once we let go of what we think our life is and focus on the one who gave us life, he will open our eyes and our hearts to who we really are, and that’s who we really are. Let go and get out there and TRULY live!
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 05:07:00 +0000
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