Dispatch 3: This is my first rodeo
Dispatch 3: This is my first rodeo
There’s an event at the rodeo called Mutton Bustin’ in which a metal gate swings open and an armored toddler is immediately thrown off the back of a crazed sheep. In some cases, the small child is already laying catatonic on the ground by the time the gate opens, but the real champions among them hold on for two to three seconds before winding up face down in the dirt like their peers – in either case, the audience shrieks with delight as the inert lump is carried out of the arena by a cowboy. This was effectively the halftime show of my first rodeo, one of the wildest spectacles I’ve ever witnessed, which also included the maiming of a young cowboy named Wyatt. But before I dive into my night in small-town northern Utah, some more updates since Dorothy and I emerged from the desert:
We skipped Death Valley and went straight to the heavens– ‘Hidden Hill,’ a stunning encampment carved into the side of a mountain, looking down from above the clouds. The property is owned by an Iraqi-American man named Mazen whose continual search for a better life led him from Baghdad to southern California to the top of a mountain. Right around the time the U.S. was launching its Holy War against Iraq, Mazen was building his homestead, and by the late aughts – as we turned his home country to rubble – he’d created space on the mountainside for his friends, too. But in 2018, California’s ‘Holy Fire’ – started by an arsonist who blamed ‘the Mexicans’ – ripped through his property and laid waste to his home. But he rebuilt, and after our sojourn in the desert Dorothy and I spent three days camping on the mountain, talking with Mazen, walking the trails and basking in the cool air.
Next we made a beeline to the sea, landing on an empty beach just in time to watch the Tau Herculid meteor shower rain down across the sky. We camped in an avocado orchard and spent a day floating in the Pacific Ocean before beginning the drive up the coast. We arrived in Big Sur, a real postcard of a place, ninety miles of winding cliffside road with ocean on one side and mountains on the other. We camped among the redwoods, wandered the cliffs and remote beaches, and then continued up the coast.
We stopped for lunch in a small town where the cafe owner told me about a secret mailbox hidden underneath a secret bench wedged in the shrubbery at the edge of a secret beach. Inside the mailbox is a collection of journals within which the secret-keepers have been writing their own secrets for many years. She gave me the GPS coordinates and a baguette with butter and prosciutto and sent me off. And so I went there, of course, and I ate the sandwich and read through years worth of secrets – a high schooler cheating on her midterm, a man cheating on his wife, a fisherman who could’ve done more to save a deckhand gone overboard – and then I took a deep breath and wrote down all of my own.
Now much lighter, we cut inland towards Yosemite, but the secret detour threw us off and the sky was dark by the final stretch of the drive. Our campsite was down a long dirt road with a left turn by the dead tree and a right by the small pond and then a right, left, soft left, hard right, left, right, left… and so we became hopelessly lost, in the dark, with no cell phone reception for miles. The road was too narrow to turn around, so when I finally came across a long driveway I followed it to a small cul-de-sac and attempted a three-point turn. On point two, I heard a thud – I’d backed straight into a large planter which toppled over and shattered. I stepped out of the car to assess the damages when a light turned on in the house and the door flew open. A short stocky man with a sleeveless shirt and a silver goatee charged out of the house in my direction, pointing at me, shouting You’d better watch out! and other loud words I couldn’t make out. I called out that it was an accident, I was sorry, but he kept coming. I thought to myself, Wow, we’re really going to fight!, and then I made out the rest of what he was saying: You’re standing in a fire ant nest!
And so I was – an army of large red ants was making its way up my boots, towards my legs. I ran to the hood of my car and ripped off my boots and banged them together as the man walked over to me, laughing. He looked at the broken flower pot and said, Well what the hell’d you do that for?, then he gave me turn-by-turn directions to my campsite and reluctantly accepted some cash. We shook hands, and Dorothy and I were on our way again.
The next day I hiked to the top of Upper Yosemite Falls and then Dorothy and I spent the afternoon laying in a meadow, watching the climbers attempt to scale El Capitan. We watched until they called it a day and set up their hammocks for the night– most climbers take at least three days to reach the top (and they use ropes, too) – but before departing we walked to the base of the 3,000’ wall and looked up. This view is dizzying – nauseating even – but I braved the feeling and attempted to get both hands and both feet off the ground and onto the wall. Just how high I got is for others to debate, but there’s just no denying that for a few brief seconds, I free solo’d El Capitan.
From Yosemite we drove east towards Utah with a stop in Barstow, a town that sits above a doomsday bunker for the ultra-rich. Try as I might, I could not seem to find the entrance, though I did stumble across an abandoned waterpark off the side of the highway in the Mojave Desert. I found the gap in the barbed wire fence and explored the park grounds, the stuff of nightmares, surely home to carny freaks who lurk in the shadows.
We continued on to Zion National Park and set up camp on the Wright Family ranch, 1,200+ acres that have been with the Wright family since 1848 when they, hmm, took over land duties from the Ute Indians. They’ve been cattle driving ever since, and have picked up a hobby along the way, too: today the Wrights stand as the most decorated family in bronc riding history, the rodeo sport in which an angry horse attempts to buck a cowboy into outer space. I met 25-year-old Stuart, the youngest of the thirteen Wright kids, an absolute sweetheart of a guy who’s training to join his six brothers on the pro-rodeo circuit. He saddled me up on a horse named Ghana, a beautiful buckskin named for the country of Stuart’s LDS mission, and we went for a ride through the high desert mesas.
The next morning I found a sitter for Dorothy and trekked the 18-mile “top-down” Zion Narrows route which begins on an upper plateau and snakes along the Virgin River into a deep slot canyon. I spent much of the hike wading through ankle-deep water, but there were at least three stretches in which the water was high enough that I was forced to swim. On one such occasion I slipped down a tiny waterfall and became fully submerged in a pool of water before frantically doggy-paddling back to dry land.
After the Narrows I picked up Dorothy and we found a cool reservoir to spend the rest of the 105 degree day in. We swam, and then Dorothy ran up to Bob and Anne, a sixty-something Alaskan couple who’d recently sold their home for a permanent life on the road. They’d cut out the top of their van and replaced it with what looked like an upside-down boat to create room for their loft bed, and had installed solar panels on the roof to power their kitchen. Dorothy won them over as she tends to do, so they invited me to join them for a drink by the water. Bob, a moose hunter and ‘bear guide,’ walked me through how to stay safe in grizzly country. It started with ‘carry a pistol’ and ended with ‘play dead.’
We camped by the reservoir. At four o’clock in the morning I woke up to Dorothy growling at something outside the tent. I tried to quiet her, but she kept at it and wouldn’t let me sleep, so I grabbed my knife and opened up the tent and we stepped outside to investigate (we were not yet in grizzly country, to be clear). There was nothing there, but when I looked up, I saw the most spectacular night sky I’ve ever seen. We sat in silence and stared up at the Milky Way for what must have been an hour before heading back to sleep. I never figured out what Dorothy was growling at, but she was quiet when we got back in the tent.
On the way out of Zion we passed by Diamond G Ranch, a name which I’d recognized from my ride with Stu Wright – Diamond G is the top breeder of rodeo livestock in the state of Utah, so I made a u-turn and pulled into their driveway. I knocked on the office door and was met by Cyndi Gilbert, the co-proprietor of the ranch along with her husband Steve, who had just flown off the property in his personal helicopter. I told her that I was passing through from New York and wondered if I could see the rodeo bulls, and she graciously pointed me in the right direction while apologizing that she didn’t have the time to show me herself. So I walked as far as I could in the direction she’d pointed until I came to the gates. I saw the animals out in the distance, watched for a moment, and then turned around to head back to my car when a ranch hand pulled up in an ATV. He asked where I was going, and I assured him that Cyndi had told me I could be there, and then he said, But what are you looking for? I told him I wanted to see the bulls, and he said, Get in.
So I hopped in the ATV and we drove back up to the same gate, flipped it open, and then sped towards the animals. It was the bulls alright, and there was no other gate separating them from us. They noticed our presence when we were about fifty feet away, so we stopped. The ranch hand pointed towards the herd – Rodeo bulls, he said, and then he hit the gas again. The herd parted as we got closer, and we drove right into the center of it, ten or fifteen bulls staring us down from just a few feet away. The ranch hand was grinning – he turned to me and said, Scared? Right on cue one of the bulls snorted and stamped its hooves, and we were off again towards the gate.
On the ride back the ranch hand introduced himself as Miguel. He was born in Veracruz, Mexico, but had lived in the states for the past twenty-five years, now just a few miles outside the ranch with his wife of over twenty years. He’d had three children but, like Henry, the mechanic from Junction, had lost one to cancer. The ranch job was the best he’d ever had – I love these animals, he said. He wore a cast on his arm where a bull had kicked him and shattered his wrist just the other week. It’s okay, he said, Steve and Cyndi take good care of me.
I thanked Miguel for the tour and continued the drive east. The plan had been to stay for a night in Bryce, but that quickly changed when I passed a sign for a small-town rodeo that evening in northern Utah. I looked it up – the drive was five hours long, the rodeo was in six.
And so I attended my first rodeo. I bought a corndog on the way in and took my seat just in time for the opening ceremony, a twenty-minute tribute to America and the police with no clear distinction between the two. Cowgirls and young girls in sequined onesies rode horses around the arena waving ‘Thin Blue Line’ flags while the commentator waxed poetic about our heroes and the flag and cowboys and other such things. One of the sequined girls sang the National Anthem while a large horse loudly thrashed against the metal gates of its holding pen. And then the real show began.
The first event was the bareback bronc riding. Coy Montgomery led things off with an incredibly violent ride that ended with him landing hard on the ground like the letter ‘C’– the back of his head hit first, his legs, in the air, folded over the front of his body like a book, his face was pressed into his own crotch. His body bounced off the ground and he finally came to rest on his stomach, writhing, holding his head. I gasped and thought to myself – This man will never walk again – but he was up seconds later, being helped out of the arena by a man in a clown suit. I remembered that I was once laid out for days from a choppy boat ride.
The cruelty towards the animals was undeniable – each event was grounded in rousing the animal into a panic with some instrument or another, and in many cases, then trying to subdue it by force. There were three separate events focused on chasing down calves and pinning them to the ground – one by flying bodyslam from the top of a horse (Steer Wrestling), one by hogtie (Tie Down Roping), and one by a team of cowboys lassoing from all sides (Team Roping). I was disturbed, but I reminded myself that these animals were likely treated more humanely than the sources of much of the food I eat — only in this case I was facing the cruelty head on. Plus there was just so much going on, so much excitement, that it was impossible to wallow in the dark thoughts. Country music was blasting throughout. Bawitdaba was played not once, but twice. The commentator was firing up the crowd – raucous, hooting and hollering for four hours straight. He was also in ongoing banter with the mic’d up rodeo clown (PRCA’s 2017 Rodeo Clown of the Year), who had wife jokes (‘I only got married because I was tired of finishing my own sentences!’), Biden jokes (‘This guy is sweating like Biden at a Trump rally!’), and even a bit in a full mariachi costume (‘I went to Mexico last week, the guy stealing my hubcaps was run over by the guy stealing my car!’). There was a Let’s Go Brandon! chant, and at one point, seemingly out of nowhere, the clown pulled out a rifle and pointed it towards the sky, shouting, You can take this from my cold dead hands! There was the Mutton Bustin’, and then forty feral children were set loose after two panicked calves covered in dollar bills.
I had a friendly neighbor, Spencer, who was excited to explain the ins-and-outs of the rodeo to a New Yorker. At some point in the evening, though, we got into other topics – notably, guns. He was eager to talk to me about guns, to explain himself, much like the Alabama folks who wanted to discuss race. He told me that he had many guns, more than a dozen, and he walked me through the extensive measures he takes to be a responsible gun owner. He did, actually, teach me a thing or two about responsible gun ownership, which is definitely a real thing, and which I have no doubt that he and many others practice. I’m glad to hear all of this, I told him, and I don’t think that you’re going to shoot anyone. But what about the crazies? He shrugged. Freedom, he said, our nation’s most sacred responsibility. We went back to talking about the rodeo.
During the saddle bronc riding segment, things turned dark. A cowboy named Wyatt Hageman was bucked off of his horse, but his boot became caught in the stirrup – as the horse continued bucking and then began galloping, Wyatt was still attached by a foot, hanging upside down, being dragged through the dirt. The mounted ‘pickup men’ chased the horse around, trying to corral it into a corner, but the horse just wouldn’t stop – he was galloping in circles around the edge of the arena, parading the cowboy around for the crowd to see. As this went on the commentator reminded us that Wyatt understood the risks he was taking, that this was part of the sport – but soon he was speaking directly to God, asking him to set the fallen cowboy free. With each lap around the arena Wyatt wore a different expression on his face. First there was a look of intense concentration as he reached up and tried to free himself. This turned to a grimace as he stopped reaching for his foot and began protecting his head and face from the ground and the bronco’s hooves. Then there was a look of resigned terror, and finally he was out cold, his seemingly lifeless body dragged around the arena for what felt like an eternity. Parents covered their children’s eyes. People were upset, the concern for the cowboy was genuine. It just went on and on. Somebody shouted to shoot the horse, I thought it might be a good idea. I was reminded of a scene from Blackfish – an orca clamped its jaws around its trainer’s ankle, repeatedly dragging him underwater and then back to the surface as the horrified audience looked on.
It went on for a shockingly long amount of time, probably three or four minutes. When the horse finally tired out and Wyatt was freed, the cowboy lay motionless on the ground, down to just his underwear, his body contorted and swollen and covered in blood and dirt. Blood leaked from his head and face, and one of his ears seemed to be missing. The paramedics raced into the arena and treated him on the ground while the commentator’s prayers turned to a pep talk – he insisted that Wyatt was conscious (though I saw no evidence of this), and that he could hear our cheers, so Let’s let him hear it! The crowd hardly obliged. Finally Wyatt was put on a stretcher, immobilized, and driven off in an ambulance.
The show went on. The sequined girls came out and put on a breathtaking performance of ‘trick riding.’ When they finished, they made their way into the stands and began collecting donations for Wyatt. The commentator reminded us – That ambulance ride and hospital stay ain’t gonna be cheap. Another display of brazen patriotism.
And then the bulls came out. One by one, cowboys took their turns as ragdolls on the backs of raging two thousand pound animals before being sent airborne or thrown directly to the ground. Unlike the broncos who typically galloped off after bucking their riders, the bulls often attempted to stomp and gore the cowboys once they were on the ground. For the bulls, it seemed to be personal. Once the cowboys escaped, the bulls looked elsewhere — seeing red, if you will — running circles around the ring as a whole team of mounted pickup men and clowns and ‘bullfighters’ to tried to corral them. One bull stopped directly in front of the crowd and stared at us, drooling and heaving. A man behind me shouted, Are you not entertained? The bull was roped by three cowboys and dragged out of sight.
The winning bull rider was interviewed after the event, asked what he was thinking during his ride. Hold on, he said, and watch out for them horns.
That was two nights ago. Yesterday I drove down to La Sal, Utah, and set up camp in the high plains by a teepee and an abandoned school bus. I met the property owner, Danny, a mountain guide, firefighter, EMT and asphalt-hauling truck driver. He invited me to join him and two friends for homemade brownies and ice cream while Dorothy played with his dog, Ringo. The next morning, this morning, he pulled out a map and showed me the off-the-beaten path towns in Colorado to visit. If timing works out, he’s going to pick me up in his Kenworth T900 truck tomorrow and teach me how to build a road.
Now we’re at the present. I am tired. I’m dirty, unshaven, and covered in unexplained cuts and bruises and insect bites. But I don’t want it to end. Each morning I wake up with the sunrise and know that something unexpected will happen, that I’ll wind up somewhere unplanned, meet somebody whose way of life is worlds away from my own. So I’m extending my trip by a few weeks. After Colorado, I’ll go deeper into the Montana wild than I’d originally planned. I’ll probably start heading east after that, but who knows. The best laid plans of mice and men, etc. etc. etc.
UPDATE: After writing this post I called the rodeo grounds to check on Wyatt’s condition and they directed me to this Facebook post. I am very relieved and also shocked beyond belief. These guys are just made of something different, I guess.
