The Romance of the West

A fond memory of my youth is checking into every wagon wheel motel my folks could seem to find. The first time I saw a singing cowboy horseback on the TV was in a sandy little motel in Arizona. We were there for one of my father’s Western art shows, and I remember sitting on the foot of the bed watching the TV, Mom trying to get a sport coat on me while I watched Gene Autry ride into the sunset picking a guitar. Mom muttered something about the “Romance of the West” and “It’s still 40 below back home.” Back home was Montana, calving season, cutting ice and drifting snow.

Everyone sure wants to see the pretty side of the West — spring flowers, a newborn calf and shiny slicked-out horses running through a mountain-clear river. The hard truth is those are the high points — the moments that make all the low ones worth it. Kid Russell’s “The Last of 5000,” better known as “Waiting for a Chinook,” depicts one last starving cow in the midst of a Montana blizzard, soon to be taken by the wolves that are circling. It’s not a pretty painting with green grass, fat cattle and handsome cowboys, but it’s the truth and honesty that honors the West as it is.

I was working for a ranch for fall gather, kicking all the cattle off the top country and shipping calves. We lived on the wagon for most of it, and just when the works were about over, and after all the great weather we had been fortunate to have, it started to rain. We were camped at a good elevation and were socked in with clouds, so much that you couldn’t see from one side of camp to the other, with the range tepees kind of disappearing into the fog. With the visibility so bad, we couldn’t work. You couldn’t see anything, and pushing cattle around on the rims wasn’t going to work until this blew over. It continued to rain and then rain some more. I remember laying in my bedroll, damp, cold rain hitting the canvas, and everything I had was either wet or soggy. There was no sleeping in it, so I pulled on my wet boots and made my way to the cook’s fire to dry out. Here I was, thinking I was alone in my misery, only to get to the fire and have the rest of the crew already there, pouring their boots out and trying to shake off the cold and dampness. We were in it together. Cowboyin’ is hard work, and that title is reserved for those who have earned it.

I’ve been living in Texas for a little while now, but when I see livestock with an ear frozen off or a tail missing, I feel a kindred connection, a nod as if to say, “I know where you come from. I’ve been there, amigo.” That’s the romance.

This article was originally published in the September 2023 issue of Western Horseman.

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