Oregon and Its Cowboys
I grew up in a sea of green, in flat cornfields of the Midwest, but was acquainted with the West through summer after summer of family vacations to Oregon. By a young age, I learned that this place, Oregon, couldn’t be explained away in a few dull words, because while riding in the backseat of whatever family van we owned at the time and used for our cross-country road trips, I would see every type of landscape imaginable: churning, rock-framed Oceanside; snow-capped mountains in the middle of summer; evergreens reaching as tall as the mountains; burly juniper and sage rolling by as the tumbleweed bounced across dusty towns. Oregon had variety, depth, beauty, geographic texture I couldn’t comprehend as such a young person—or even today—as well as something else I never encountered in the East: cowboys.
Once, on one of the many summer vacations, my family and I met up with friends at a small rodeo somewhere in Eastern Oregon. In the ring, I watched figures in cowboy hats chase down and skillfully toss ropes around a calf, flying from their horses with ease and sending dust sparkling in the sun; like any kid looking in on what appears to be just-out-of-reach adventure, I wanted to be a cowboy (or, rather, a cowgirl). But then—still holding a parent’s hand in this foreign country—I knew I was an outsider to this community of hardy people who wore starched jeans and treated their horses as an extension of their livelihood, who were polite but treated us, Easterners, like we were missing out on a great secret.
Years later, after I moved to Central Oregon with an open mind regarding my new surroundings, I still have never become part of the community. I ripped the seat of my city-girl jeans the first time I tried to ride a horse, stepped in animal droppings whenever I was on ranch property, seemed to always ask the wrong question while among Westerners who would direct laughter toward me rather than an answer. I longed to own a pair of cowboy boots like my Powell Butte cousin always wore—a more modern boot, with rounded toes and in bright colors—but knew I wouldn’t have the courage to walk through the doors of a western-ware shop with my Ohio twang betraying my lack of knowledge of all things horses. As a displaced Midwesterner and a young Oregonian (albeit one who now lives in the Willamette Valley), this insecurity still follows me today, and no matter how many moves I’ve made in life, how many times I’ve adapted to whatever situation that is thrown at me, I’ll always seize up in anxiety whenever talk falls on the goings-on of ranch life. But I keep returning, over the mountains while my car blares country music, because these people, a family so different from me, are my source of comfort.
* * *
Those of us living in Western Oregon read news stories in our newspapers about the battles between the leftover ranchers and the environmentalists—how ranchers allow their grazing cattle to trample through streams and disrupt habitats for fish and wildlife, and how environmentalists push for protectionist legislation and disrupt the habitat of the ranching business. We find this tug-of-war formula on too many made-for-TV movies on family-friendly cable channels—the progressives don’t understand this way of life, the insiders don’t want to join reality, and neither really understands, really “gets it.”
Though I claim to be a bleeding-heart liberal with a penchant for left-leaning environmental politics, when I drive through the Cascades, I think of my extended family and friends from Eastern Oregon; both of my adopted grandparents grew up on remote ranches, and all their children and most of their grandchildren were raised around horses and rodeos. Driving to or from a visit, I imagine myself living a slower life than the one I lead: traveling along in a pickup, heading home to a wide porch with rocking chairs and a view of grazing horses. This is an old way of life, a cowboy culture hanging on an edge of a hidden desert canyon, and even if I can’t be a member of this community, I want it to still exist, for the benefit of my family and for my own selfish imaginations that will never amount to more than the scenes that play out in my mind on long drives. So I look at the photos accompanying the news articles published in Willamette Valley newspapers, see the dry hills slinking behind a worn-out man in a cowboy hat, and though I am far removed from the battle, I feel my insides churn when I think of the idea of progress—do I, an outsider but a part of the west-side majority in Oregon, side with those who want to preserve the land or those who want to preserve the culture?
* * *
Since the beginning of civilization and the competition between dueling cultures, the issue of progress is that it puts culture into question; in Eastern Oregon, we see the symbol of the environmentalist progressive pitted against that of the cowboy. I don’t know if the way of life I secretly admire will fade away in Oregon. The wide prairies and plains of sagebrush will always be the perfect place where cattle and sheep can ramble, and there will always need to be people to tend to these animals. Maybe these chosen people will be on horseback and wearing cowboy hats, and when they are not working, maybe they will drive diesel pickups with a mixed-breed dog riding along in the truck bed, and maybe they will starch their shirts and wear obnoxious stamped belt buckles that proclaim their rodeo successes. Maybe they will talk a little slower and smile a little more than the newcomers from urban areas.
Or maybe cowboys will cease to exist, because the outsiders with ill intentions will win. Since unemployment in Eastern Oregon is comparatively high—in the upper teens and into the twenties—I expect many families are contemplating moving from their Western homes to urban areas for work, leaving behind the stories of their past that may soon be forgotten while the land is replaced by SUVs and organic food stores. Maybe these outsiders will overtake the sagebrush with flimsy houses, built to leave only thirty inches between the neighbors, an antithesis of what space means in this country. Maybe the big rodeos found in each town will shrivel and blow away with the tumbleweed, a symbol of the west that could disappear as well.
With both my outside perspective and all I know about Oregon, both its land and its people, I’m anxious that an urgent solution must be found, something to fix the issue of unemployment and the destruction of natural habitat, something that will preserve the cowboy culture of Eastern Oregon, even though the specifics of this solution elude me. Until then, I will ease my concern with travels throughout the natural and cultural treasures of Oregon, just like I did on the vacations from my childhood; I know I will find myself separate from this community and this land, but will feel restored, completely at home.
