rodeo

Last weekend we did our annual Cheyenne Frontier days. Basically, my two sisters and I, our men and brood of offspring all huddle into my dad's hyper-air-conditioned house for the weekend, eat snacks, ribs and lobster tail, watch movies, chit-chat, half-monitor unbridled childhood aggression, and go to the Daddy of 'Em All Rodeo. I love it. I love the chaos of all those people in a small space. I love the unexpected pure grace my dad pours out to us as a host. I love the drive up there and how magically antelope appear as soon as we cross the border into Wyoming. I love imagining for the umpteenth time life as a cowgirl as we drive across the gently rolling plain with cows speckled on hillsides and distant thunderclouds breaking up monotonous blue. I love the rodeo itself. I love the awkward, slightly apologetic allowance and irony of the "Indian Village" as we enter the cowboy domain, drumbeats and ornate headdresses off to the side while a plastic tent of strippers under the pretense of some cheap AMERICAN beer brand is on the other, a sign hanging overhead, "18 and older ONLY". I take the rodeo seriously. I feel humbled by so many people there. Sure, there are the maybelline-clad 19 year-old blond girls in tight shirts being loved over and over by the camera for the side jumbo t.v. screen. There are the the random urbanites scattered here and there observing the whole event like it's some social obligation to better oneself in accepting and witnessing the phenomenon of a rural subculture. There are multitudes of locals who have waited twelve months for this specific SOMETHING to break up the mundane year of vocational drudgery, raising babies and watching sitcoms on weekly nights. But then there are the cowboys. Ranchers. Old men with deep wrinkles from years out on a horse in the sun rounding up cattle. There are people there that really know the difference between each bull and bronc rider and how each placement of stirrup compared to the last. There are people who understand the demeanor and spirit in the eye of the horse that braces itself in the mud as its rider jumps off and scrambles to tie a steer within fifteen seconds. It's beautiful. It's sport to some, it's real-life-gone-entertainment to others, a spectacle of unusual quaintness to more, it's otherworldly to me. It's a slipping reality. I know we won't get this one back. Once a year I get to sit on an aluminum bench, coax my child into paying attention to the man riding the "big cow" in the arena, wish I had a better 'authentic' cowgirl guise, and long for a time and place where I can tap into something as pure, foreign and unbridled as the cowboy cinching a rope around his hand enough to break it, hold on for mercy eight seconds while praying all the while that he won't lose his hat, just to get up again on two unbroken feet an do it all over again.