From Moosappointment to a Cowboy Count

I have dreams of things I’m going to see in new places, but I’ve learned, of course, that the cool things you see are what you’re not expecting. For example, when I was in Alaska and in the Yukon summer before last, I had a lot of moospectations. I mean, there were signs everywhere telling you to watch out for moose. And I did see a few.

They were fabulous. But it wasn’t the quantity of moose I had expected. Thus, my deep-seated moosappointment.

Here in Colorado, I hear there are a few moose, and since we’ve been in isolated spots down by water, I thought we would see them. No.

What I have seen that I’ve been surprised by are actual cowboys, like the kind on horses. With cows. Now, I saw cowboys out in the field checking on cattle in British Columbia, Wyoming, and Montana, but they were all riding Gators (those motorized 4x4s). I guess that’s the standard now. But, only once, and I believe this was in Wyoming, have I seen cowboys on horses, out in the field, working with cattle or mending fences, checking the water troughs, whatever it is cowboys do. And that was glorious.

Here in Colorado, I have seen two separate cowboys, and I’m so excited about it that I now have an official cowboy count. Two!

We’ve seen a lot of cows lately, and I don’t mean “seen them” like driving by them, but “seen them” like suddenly they’re out the kitchen window.

In the four corners area that we’ve been in this summer—Utah, New Mexico, Colorado—there is a lot of BLM land.

And it seems like everybody and their brother has bought grazing rights to have their cows on that BLM land.

There are cattle guards everywhere. But the fences aren’t maintained that well; mostly these are large herds of free range cattle that disregard the fences anyway. And they’re where you don’t expect them. 

Let’s say I’m sitting by a river for a little while because it’s nice and cool, and I hear, suddenly, this big earthquake coming toward me through the woods, and I look behind me, and it’s a cow.

Or, I’m hiking along a waterfall. And I think, oh, my goodness, certainly, black bears. Look out.

Of course not. It’s the infamous bear cow, as my friend Jacqui says.

Because cows are everywhere, I don’t know why I would be surprised that there would be cowboys. Here’s what happened.

I was sitting behind the trailer with Banjo, and I hear something coming down the gravel road behind me. And I’m thinking it’s cows, of course. But Banjo gets super alert. So I look, and By God, I think it’s a horse. I can see through the trees these long, white legs, and it’s trotting.

I yell inside to Tracy who was making lunch: “I think there’s a horse coming!”

And he says, “I bet it’s a cowboy.”

And I think, “No.”

And he says, “Does he have a lasso?”

And here comes this man on a horse trotting along beside the trailer. He’s wearing a cowboy hat. He’s got chaps on, with fringes, and boots and spurs, and he has a lasso.

I say Hi, and he stops and says Hi.

And he is just the most polite thing on the planet.

He apologizes for his cattle and asks if have they been bothering us. And he is just smiling at me with the nicest white teeth and the blondest hair coming out from his cowboy hat. And I’m thinking, I wouldn’t complain about cows to this guy. This guy is basically Robert Redford from 50 years ago, riding up on his white horse, being pleasant to me.

It was amazing.

He rode away, and I couldn’t get a picture, but of course I peeked down the road and tried to see what he was doing. I think he’d hitched his horse up at the trailer of the camp host and was there for a while. My suspicion is they invited him in for lunch. And I thought, this is the coolest thing.

From then on, I started looking for cowboys. So far, I have seen one other cowboy, and it was while we were driving down the road towing the trailer. But, there were cows out in the field in the distance, and there was a cowboy with them. That counts!

I thought, damn, this is almost as exciting as seeing a moose. So now my moosappointment has turned into a cowboy count.

I will report back.