A homegrown Josselyn Canyon original, Mike Beck slipped on his well-worn Western wear, climbed into the saddle and followed his own inclinations.
He became a working cowboy and horse trainer.
He strapped on a guitar and picked up a pencil and wrote songs and sang them to audiences.
Now 54, Beck has performed in 16 states and six foreign countries.
And though he's since moved on to Willow Creek, Mont. - "a pretty darn small town with a saloon and café in one and three kids in the senior class" - he never left the influences of his youth lived along the Highway 68 corridor.
"I got a horse in third grade," recalled Beck, in Monterey recently to perform with his band, The Bohemian Saints. "We'd ride past cattle and ponds and canyons. It was absolutely formative."
Beck would ride onto the Work Ranch past cattle and ponds and canyons, up and over the high country, all the way onto the September Ranch in Carmel Valley.
"That whole area was our playground," Beck said.
After Beck graduated from Monterey High School, Class of 1972, he headed to Nevada to cowboy. There, he eventually worked on the 2 million-plus acre Spanish Ranch. His crew branded calves seven days a week. Dusty but elated, they dined off piping fare fried up by a chuckwagon chef.
Pioneering approach
Over the decades, Beck had also heard of Bill and Tom Dorrance and the Dorrance Ranch, not far from his home in Josselyn Canyon, and of their pioneering approach to working with horses.
Their approach was for a rider to try to see a situation more from the horse's viewpoint. That mindset led to a more harmonious and productive relationship between horse and rider.
The horse, in facing a task, then became a more of willing partner. Beck was intrigued.
"I wrote Bill. He invited to me to come to the ranch," he said. "I worked for him and learned. In trade, I got a place to live and I got fed."
The 4,300-acre Dorrance Ranch begins about a mile beyond where Corral de Tierra meets San Benancio Canyon Road.
It rises up Mt. Toro's northern ridge, and its land serves as headwaters for streams on both the Carmel and Salinas sides.
The ranch is home to golden eagles, burrowing owls, the California tiger salamander and other natives.
Bill Dorrance and Beck would immerse themselves in ranch work. They'd check cows that were calving, oil hinges on gates and dig culverts.
In the year he was there, Beck learned many lessons of ranch living, and he learned from the sterling character of Bill Dorrance, with whom he spent the most time.
Bill was a master horseman, ranch roper and rawhide braider. He was deeply engaged in life, a great learner and keen observer.
"A quiet thinker," Beck said. "He was interested in things until the end of his life. Bill had a humor about him, too, and a fun way of doing what he did."
Beck keeps those attributes and values close at hand and applies them to his own life.
"He was such a great role model," Beck said.
Music
Another major influence on Beck was music, which, when he was 13, entered his life in a most powerful way.
"That year we road our bicycles to Monterey to the Pop Festival," he said.
It was 1967, and music, history-making and transforming filled the venue's sea-kissed air.
Beck heard Janis Joplin in all her refined rawness. He tuned in Canned Heat, Jimi Hendrix and Ravi Shankar, whose sitar virtuosity still echoes through the ages.
He heard those explosive sounds live, and the sparks and fire they generated ignited his own musical enthusiasm.
"That and the AM radio," he said. "Those were the days of listening to the Beatles on KNBY [Radio]."
The young Beck began haunting a music store on Alvarado Street in Monterey. Finally, a salesman, annoyed at the constant presence of the boy, made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
"He gave me a cheap Japanese guitar and told me to keep it - if I promised never to come back," Beck said.
Beck now has four albums of original cowboy tunes to his name. KPIG Radio, among others, plays Beck's music.
"I write songs, usually at home in Montana," Beck said.
He writes in his kitchen with dawn's sky turning red and with a cup of fragrant coffee steaming by his side.
Beck's West
A sense of where his music stands comes in a review of one of his albums, "Mariposa Wind," in Dirty Linen Folk Magazine in December of 2002.
"Mike Beck writes about the people, landscapes and emotions of the American West, which he knows intimately as a working cowboy in Montana," the reviewer said.
"Beck's West is not the sometimes overblown caricature of drama, but the quiet intimacy of the mariposa wind of the title track, the sound of leather creaking in a rider's saddle, and the mingling of cultures and languages of 'Mi Caballo Negro Poncho.'"
Though he lives in Montana, Beck loves California.
On the other hand, there's no 5 p.m. rush hour in Willow Creek. There's no line at the post office, and criminal acts seldom get more serious than jaywalking.
In July of 1999, Bill Dorrance died, shortly after publication of his book, "True Horsemanship Through Feel," written with Leslie Desmond.
In March of 2008, the Dorrance family closed a deal with The Nature Conservancy and The Big Sur Land Trust to place the ranch in permanent conservation easement as a way of protecting the land from development.
"That's a wonderful thing," Beck said of the arrangement. "It's quite a piece of ground."
As much as Beck's experiences growing up in the Off 68 corridor, including those days on the Dorrance Ranch, shaped his present, he expects they'll inform his future, too.
"I'm really happy with what's going on in my life right now, and I plan to write more songs," Beck said.
"Continue on with the horses, too. Do both. They sort of feed off each other."
Dave Nordstrand - The Californian (Feb 19, 2009)