Day 15 – Pagosa Springs to Alamosa, Colorado
Saddled up and pedaling in the pre-dawn moisture-laden air, we meander through sleepy Pagosa Springs toward a bright mountain sunrise. We stop on the east side of town to calorie up a bit. Scarfing something down that’s loaded with calories but probably terribly unhealthy, I watch a couple cowboys fuel up their truck and come in to pay.
Of course, I don’t know how much real cowboyin’ these fellas do, but they’re dressed the part, with spurs and the whole shebang. They’re not the first cowboy types we’ve seen along US 160 through southern Colorado, and I find myself wondering about how much the fancy duds are to help the fellas show off and play a part, and how much they really add to the practicality of their day.
I’ve met a couple real cowboys in my life, and I’ve seen an awful lot of fellas who like to dress the part without any real need. Drugstore cowboys we used to call them. The real ones tend to be a lot less flash and sparkle, and tend to carry themselves with a lot more humility. I suppose the real work that cowboyin’ involves helps a fella grow accustomed to the taste of humble pie.
Many years ago, as a young idealist just out of college and pretty sure I knew most of the important stuff, I met an old guy down in southern Arizona who helped me along toward understanding just how little I really knew. His name was Archie, and he was probably one of the last real cowboys around. This was in the mid seventies, and he was probably ninety-plus at the time, so I imagine he was born in the 1870s.
Archie’s home was an old broken-down trailer deep in the southern Arizona desert. I spent a couple weeks camped a couple miles from his trailer, and spent a good deal of time with him, listening to him, learning from him. We’d sit around a campfire in the evening, and Archie would spin yarns about his days working horses and cattle across the Southwest. It was a desolate, hard, dangerous life he’d survived, and his tales often included fellas who weren’t as lucky at the survival sweepstakes as he was. By the time he was 20, he’d learned more about physical pain and discomfort than most folks learn in a lifetime. He became a solitary and self-sufficient man, who wandered from job to job as the wanderlust tickled his fancy. A seeker of adventure far more than a seeker of fortune, Archie had several stories of small fortunes gained and squandered.
Before I met Archie, my stereotype of a cowboy was that of an arrogant and insecure dandy. Archie couldn’t have been further from that. He was soft-spoken, an aura of self-confidence wrapped around everything he did. He didn’t wear spurs that jangled as he walked, choosing instead to let his soft-spoken self-assurance speak with every step. He didn’t wear tight jeans and shiny shirts; instead, letting the tattered and work-ragged jackets and pants speak of hard work and well-earned calluses.
We’ve created quite a mythology around the cowboy, and an awful lot of folks in our culture today like to emulate and worship that mythology. In reality, these guys were probably mostly misfits with an overdeveloped wanderlust and outsized sense of adventure. Most of them dabbled a bit on whichever side of the law was convenient at any given time, always looking for the path most heavily laced with adrenaline.
On the one hand, I find it easy to be quietly critical of the guys today who dress the part of the mythological cowboy. While many or most of them might be honest and hard-working folks, I can’t help but feel that they’re chasing a myth, not the real cowboy. On the other hand, I realize that for the most part, a real cowboy living in today’s world would never survive. They’d end up in jail at an early age, and become institutional criminals.
Is there enough adventure in our world today to support the real cowboy? Can we suffer enough and endure enough discomfort to condition ourselves to the life they lived? I listen to the spurs jingling on the boots of the fella walking back to his truck after paying with a credit card. I suspect he’s a hard-workin’ fella. But would he fit Archie’s definition of a cowboy? I notice as he gets into his truck that his windows are rolled up. The AC in his shiny truck must work just fine.
Here I am dressed in spandex and a bright jersey, with a nice GPS mounted on my handlebars to tell me where I am. I regale myself in the myth and garb of the cyclist in the same way the fella with the spurs regales himself in the myth and garb of the cowboy. We all wrap ourselves in the mythology we want other people to see us in.
