Imaginary Cowgirl: Alive at Uncasville

Live events leave my head spinning.  The roar of the crowd, the music, the announcers, the fireworks, the giant flame throwers blazing heat right by my head, the smell of bulls and dirt, smoke and diesel fuel - these things fill the body and, in my case, chase out pretty much all thought.  I'm a thinking person.  I like to analyze and ponder and I learn by writing and talking and thinking.  But at a bull riding there's no time to think, no time to analyze, and if I did talk, no one would be able to hear me.  A bull runs toward the fence I am standing behind.  There's nothing like a speeding bull to turn a thinker into an action figure.

On television, for me, much of the game is mental.  I study how things happen.  When did the rope come out of the hand?  What does it mean, a cornering bull?  Was it a slap or not?  What were the scores?  In real time, I don't much care about those things.  I am abandoned in the moment.  It takes a confetti explosion to even make me notice a score at all. Suddenly I understand what Mike Lee means when he says "bull riding is not about the brain."  It's not about the brain.  I understand what he means when he says that "bull riding is not about thinking, it's about freedom."  I get it.  I get it as much as I ever will without being on the back of a bull.  Of course I will return to the brain and its thoughts.  But this is better.

It makes me dizzy.  It upsets the applecart of my carefully organized mind.  This is a good thing.  I could use more of this.  Don't get me wrong:  I love the analysis, the numbers, the statistics, the watching, the writing, the thinking.  But when I am here, in the moment, breathing the dust, feet on the dirt, draped on the fence and then stepping away - bull riding doesn't make me think, it makes my blood sing.  Here, I am not a writer or a thinker or a reporter.  I am a fan on the ground, alive in the snap-crackle-pop.

Imaginary Cowgirl: Ain't Got No

So I'm feeling sorry for myself these days because I've got no cows, no bulls, nowhere to put any, and no money to speak of, anyway. I'd like a little ranch somewhere it doesn't snow where I could raise a few head of bucking cattle. I'd pretty soon be collecting bloodlines like some people collect wine. But bloodlines are even better: Mix a little of this with a little of that, wait a few years, put a cowboy on it, see what happens. The thrill of the chase. My only problem, other than the no land and no money, is that I like things to be neat. I've got a feeling that isn't going to be a high priority on the ranch.

On the plus side, after worrying for quite some time now about my ability to assist in calf-birth, I have realized that I would indeed be able to leap to the fore and pull the calf free from the cow. Some things - and I think these include calving - are worse on video than they are in real life. Even bats and spiders are worse on video than they are in real life, and in real life those are two things that I have an unreasonable fear of. Compared with that, I'm not afraid of muck or birth membrane. You do what you have to do. Of course, now that I think about it, I'm sure ranches are full of spiders and bats. That might be an issue.

Imaginary Cowgirl: Far from Texas

For those of you who wonder where I am writing from, here are a few details about where I live and what I live with, and they include no livestock. Except my neighbor had a pig once, and it was very smart.

1. In addition to living on an eight mile peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean, I live on a salt pond that has birdhouses floating in it. On a windy day, there are whitecaps on the pond. In the fog, I can't see the pond at all. At its narrowest this peninsula is 200 yards wide. In a big storm they close the roads.

2. Fog is extreme. On foggy days in the summer, you wear sweaters and sleep with heavy blankets. Five minutes inland, it will be warm. Wind is also extreme. Gusts of 50 miles an hour are commonplace. Occasionally a storm knocks the doors off my old shed. (Note: Must fix doors or get new shed.) Once in a very great while a famous storm comes along and knocks down houses.

4. Birds: osprey and great blue herons, night herons, great horned owls, screech owls, a billion kinds of ducks and itinerant water birds patting down the road with wet feet. No cranes, no magpies, no emu. An abundance of wild turkeys. Wildlife: Coyotes. Infinite rabbits. Fisher cats. The occasional seal. An ermine, once.

5. No baby cows with milky faces. One hound dog. One slitty-eyed cat. Chickens, once upon a time.

6. Every day the ocean is different. Some days there is sea smoke. Some days there are false cities on the horizon.

Yesterday I was at a party and as usual when people asked me what I was writing these days, I said "cowboys and bull riding." Someone said that the heart of cowboy country was Texas. Someone else said Oklahoma. Wherever it is, that's the other place I live, with the milky-faced calves and a different wild sky.

Imaginary Cowgirl: Baptized in dust

I enter my first bull riding event, walking into into a world of food stands and tee shirt stands and stadium seats. But then I am shepherded to the hidden, behind-the-scenes world, an elevator ride away, where the corridors smell like a cow barn and the cement floor has a coating of dust. In the back pens the bulls stand four or five to a pen and mill around in a neighborly way. One of them licks another one's neck. Most of them are from Texas and the big Teague trailer is parked next to the holding pens in the underground loading area.

The Touring Pro riders mill around as well. You can tell which ones are on their way up to or down from the BFTS elite level, because they are less care-worn. But this is not the big leagues and many of the riders have worn chaps and battered boots. They walk in and out with their ropes over their shoulders. They look at the ride list posted on the wall and talk with the stock contractor. Behind the chutes, down on the dirt (which is, if you are wondering, packed really hard), one of the judges surveys the scene. It's workman-like back there. There's a sense of purpose and focus before the riding begins. This isn't a time for chit chat. They get their gear ready. The lights dim and smoke fills the arena. I am standing by the rider out-gate. They saunter by me after the opening ceremony. Cowboys. Now I get it.

Then the riding begins. If you've never been, the adrenaline of an 8 second ride fills the entire stadium. It radiates off the riders and fills every spectator. The rider is pumped. The bull fighters are pumped. The stock contractors are pumped. You are pumped. I go in there determined to try my hand at predicting scores, but I am so distracted by the sights and sounds that I don't notice much about the scoring. There is a 91.5 point ride. There are several in the high 80s. Other than that, I really don't care much about it. I do notice that the judges - there are two of them, perched at the ends of the chutes - seem to be communicating their scores to the announcer with hand signals.

The bulls are younger, I think, and maybe a little less well behaved than some of their big league counterparts. Many of them buck and spin for many seconds after the rider is on the ground. Then they stand there in the middle of the arena, defiant, as if daring someone to try that again. One of them, when lassoed by the horseman, plants his feet and refuses to leave the ring. Everyone cheers for him. There have been times when I have wondered if the bulls really like this whole thing. I don't wonder now. They are amped up and they are royally fierce. They come out the out-gate and into another small run where their rope is taken off, and a lot of them still want to fight . Wondering whether a bucking bull likes to do this is like wondering if a dog likes being a dog. In person, you can feel it. They are warriors. They are born for this and they know it.

As the event wears on and more riders are done with their rides, they sit in small groups of three or five and watch the rest of the action. They hang their vests and ropes and chaps on the fence rails, their gear bags on the ground beneath. And then suddenly it is over, and I am back up in the lobby and out into the heat of the day and the cool of the parking garage and the long ride home.

At home, watching the BFTS event I recorded while I was out, I see the shiny and colorful rails and chutes, and the superstar riders in their shiny chaps being filmed by TV crews even in the locker room. Touring Pro is a different ballgame. The rails and fences are older and battered. The riders, many of them, are younger, and slighter, some of them seem barely more than children. It might not be the big leagues, but even though it's smaller, the stakes are high and the goal is to move up. The top five riders from every Touring Pro region will be invited to compete in the first round of the PBR World Finals in October. And the top two of those will continue through. It's a chance for a guy to make his stand under the bright lights of the big game.

As for me, I wasn't prepared for the way it made me feel. I wasn't prepared for the mystical beauty of cowboys, how old and elemental it all is, and at the same time almost innocent. I didn't know how much all of that would move me, but it did, right to the core. Combine that with the adrenaline, and I spent the rest of the day head in the clouds, dust in my lungs, stunned just about speechless.

Imaginary Cowgirl: A city made of toothpicks

When you are a bull riding fan in my part of the country, and you write about it to boot, you may discover that you do not have a lot of company in your passion. Here's where I stand in that regard.

1. Even my own brother will not watch bull riding.

2. I have two fan friends with whom I can discuss bull riding. We gossip about pulling ropes too tight or which bull is harder to ride. This is such a joy. We are so desperate.

3. A few of my friends are interested even though they aren't interested, if you know what I mean. They are interested because I am interested. Those people, they deserve a special place in heaven, if I have anything to say about it, which of course I don't.

4. I have discovered that when I am in a group of people, sooner or later someone will ask me what I am writing. When I cautiously say that I am writing about cowboys, they nod politely and may offer up a cowboy story or two. If, encouraged by that, I go further out on a limb, and say that I am writing about bull riding, the conversation suddenly turns to...anything but that.

5. There's a commercial about a guy who was unemployed and thought it would be fun to build a city out of toothpicks. Then some museum in France heard about it and bought the whole thing. Maybe something like this will happen to me, but with bull riding, and suddenly I will be surrounded by people who know everything about bull riding and want to talk about it all the time.

It is hard to admit that I have failed to convert ordinary people into fans. So I fall back on hope. Maybe if I can convince them to go to an event with me they will see the light. I hear that this works. My brother will become a fan and one day he will call me and he will want to know what a cornering bull is. And I will tell him and try not to say I told you so.

Imaginary Cowgirl: Once upon a time in the west

A few years a go I headed west, where I rode a horse named Bones and worried about mountain lions. If I'd been further north, I'd have been worrying about grizzly bears. If I'd been in the ocean I'd have worried about sharks. I'm a worrier. Aside from that, I had a great time in the west, though, as I have said here before, it might as well have been the surface of the moon so foreign was its landscape, so long were the distances between places, and so huge was its sense of self.

On the way back to the airport, driving a long, long way down a very straight, flat road, I looked off into the western scrubland and saw there in the distance what appeared to be a long line of very large birds trotting southward. I blinked my eyes and looked again. They were still there, not a mirage, huge birds trotting, all right, close enough to see, but far enough away to hardly see at all. If the west had seemed foreign to me before, now it felt truly hallucinatory.

Back home, I looked all over the western birding information and got nothing. I'd thought maybe they were cranes, having never seen one. I knew cranes were large, but they aren't as large as those guys were. Years later, quite by accident, I found out what they were.  They were emu, on the run from an emu ranch, running along the horizon, kicking up dust, making life more mysterious than it already was.

Imaginary Cowgirl: Envy Strikes

Most of the time I am quite content here in my little house by the Atlantic Ocean. Lately, however, I have noticed that...

1. I have become consumed with the desire to live in Texas.

2. If not Texas, then I wonder if I could have a horse in my backyard, or if I could convince my neighbor to have one for me. He is old and Italian and he hides all kinds of stuff back in his yard: chickens, pigs, sheep, rabbits. He might do it.

3. But I would have nowhere to ride it. Plus there's the problem of the torn rotator cuff, which is killing me.

4. I take perverse comfort in the fact that after having the shoulder fixed, I'll be able to ride the horse I cannot have here, and do not have in Texas.

5. I admire a deep sea-blue cowboy hat with a rounded crown.

6. I would like to find a very tame bull that has been standing in the sun. I would like to put my face to its neck and breathe deeply.

7. I want to be where it's calving season.

The problem with being an imaginary cowgirl is that you miss out on calving season, and your horse is imaginary, too.

Cowgirl Resume

For those of you who really are cowgirls (or cowboys) I realize that the following is a truly pathetic resume, but you have to go with what you've got, and this is the whole nine yards.

1. For Easter, the year I was five, my mother gave me a cowgirl outfit, complete with fringed vest, cowboy hat, and cap gun. It was something I had deeply wanted, and I wore it every day for a good long time.

2. My favorite book when I was eight was about a kid at riding camp who was always getting picked on by the mean, better riders. Until he met a Native American boy who secretly trained him to ride barefoot and bareback. The kid then won the final big race in front of a large crowd. I read that book several times. I read it again recently. Just as good.

3. My grandparents had a farm I spent quite a bit of time on. There was a bull I did not ride, and my brother got kicked by a steer.

4. Our neighbors had a farm I spent some time on. An angry sheep attacked me.

5. I was bucked off a horse the year I was twenty one.

That's it. That's all there is. If this were a job, I wouldn't apply. But I once lived in a place where long lines of white Brahman cattle walked on narrow paths across green, green hills. After seeing that, maybe I get to be a cowgirl forever, if I want to, if only in the imaginary ranges of my east coast mind.