F
Field Ethos
Guest
By Dan Spalinger
My bare left hand moved along the chipped powdercoat rail, the right, gloved in pitch-sticky canvas, was pinned beneath a similarly sticky braided rope. The protective vest and caged helmet I wore, like the glove, were borrowed and had to be given back, in at most, eight more seconds.
As high on ourselves as a young couple gets, we had flitted from among National Parks after bailing on Vegas the moment our feet hit pavement. So turned off by the elephantine buses defecating their camera-toting swine (2003, before ubiquitous cell phones and selfie sticks), one night and 12 hours in the Grand Canyon resulted in headlong flight North, ending up just outside the entrance to Bryce Canyon.
We found a much higher ratio of animals to people there, and exponentially more real people. Hoodoos and hiking trails. Endless wandering in and around a fantasyland of garden gnome rock formations. Vermillion red sandstone scoured into psychedelic shapes clashed with verdant green of pine and juniper. Warm days, cool nights. Few buses or crowds. The campground at Ruby’s Inn was remarkably quiet, cheap, and clean, with its sun-soaked soft earth a wonder to sleep on.
Ruby’s guide services put us on horseback in nearby Kodachrome Basin early one morning. One guide in front, one in rear, and a handful of pale-skins shepherded in the middle. The ride allowed for a chance not only to see the less visited rock pinnacles and Gandalf-hat-like formations up close, but it also facilitated extended talks with those who best knew the area with which we were now so enamored.
“What made you want to guide? Where is your favorite trail? What’s the best place to eat? Where do you go in the offseason? What do you do for fun?”
“We ride bulls for one thing. Tonight. At the Bryce Canyon Rodeo, right across from Ruby’s Inn.”
We had noticed the Rodeo coming in and out of our campsite. Two-story high metal stands, “pressbox,” ticket office, food stalls, and horses, sheep, and bulls milling around in their pens.
At this statement, my wife uttered a series of words more shocking than her response to my marriage proposal: “You don’t ever take volunteers, do you?” Open mouth and not just insert foot, but stuff it in there with all the force ignorance can muster.
The crevassed and tan faced response of a 22-year-old who could pass for decades older comes so fast and unwavering in the seriousness of its delivery that it sets us on our heels “Sure. Show up at Ruby’s, sign the waiver. Your name will be at the ticket office. Meet you there at 6 and you can borrow my and [insert cowboy/guide #2]’s gear for the ride.”
We are quiet as we know we’ve stepped in it. Knowing no one sane would let us put ourselves in such harm’s way, the humorous banter that follows hopes to reveal that our guide was joking about the offer as much as my wife was proposing it. No such luck.
Ride concluded, we make quivering assurances that we will be there on time, retreat to our campsite, and pass the time with a calming half-dozen sticks of inhaled nicotine before heading across the street.
As promised, our names were on the list at the ticket shack. The only names. Expected, greeted, asked to put pen to paper against the likely conclusion of that evening’s farcical adventure and swiftly pointed in the opposite direction of paying attendees. Around the back, through a maze of quiet, gated, empty corals, kicking the straw-dung dirt as inmates shuffle to the gallows.
Our morning’s chaperon greets us with the promised sets of gear, though the phrase “clothes do not make the man” comes to mind given our cladding in sneakers, far-from-Wrangler jeans, and short-sleeve t-shirts just begging to be covered in blood, piss, or manure; maybe all three. No one treats us as jokes though. Given relevant instructions on what to do, “Grip with the knees”, and what not to do, “Don’t let your chin down or you’ll lose teeth when his head comes up”, we try to pick up nuances that will allow us to save ourselves if not our pride.
We are one of the opening acts and are to follow grammar schoolers tasked with roping and tackling some baaaaa-ing sheep. Wrestling fuzzily docile lambs seem more our level. Instead, we sit as a transition between the “smile and see how cute and fun this can be” and “that looks like something only a drunk or idiot would do” events. Still marking our borrowed time, we watch as our given bulls, Kaibab (for the nearby National Forest) and Black 20 (for the color of our bruised tailbones later that evening), were handler led toward the bucking chute. We were pot committed.
Scores of local campers, hikers, farmers, ranchers, tourists, local families, and staff had filled in enough of the stands that the additional pressure of finding ourselves on a lighted stage piled onto impending death and dismemberment. This scrutiny was reinforced via the removal of our sheltering anonymity as the ancient bullhorn strung on telephone pole-cum-light post announced our presence and intent to the crowd.
“We’ve got a special treat for you tonight folks! Hailing all the way from Mass-a-CHEW-sits and in their first time bullriding we have Dan and Wendy Spay-linger on our first two bulls of the night!”
Far too late to produce a lifesaving excuse, I am up and aboard Kaibab with tunnel vision that swirls down to my hands and the voices yelling at me to do … I have no idea what. It would be nice to say I remember the bull’s smell, the noise, the crowd, his hide, or any other details of the moment. I could not then and cannot now. I remember the hand on the rail and the hand under the rope and the fanciful idea that I could hold on and make a respectable showing of myself.
There is no “buzzer” to indicate that the ride is to start. It takes a conscious choice to nod one’s head for that gate to open and to voluntarily enter that maelstrom. I give it. All instructions as to how to move with the bull, not against it, in order to remain aboard are worthless. Finding myself strangely ass down on the soft dirt of the bullring, as if time had skipped over the period between my head bob and the moment, I regain the ability to act. I gather enough of my wits to high tail it for the nearest section of arena fence I can find and climb it. The clowns or bullfighters do the rest and take the true danger upon themselves. No heroes here, and if little Johnny in the stands turned his head to pick his nose, he’s missed my moment in the buzzing, incandescent sun.
My wife follows in the same fashion. Blink and you missed her. Both of us on our backsides, up and over the fence, no major damage done.
The denouement is without fuss or pomp. We shed protective gear, handing it back to our benefactors who have their own bull riding to do, and are quickly forgotten. Wide-eyed and wired, we mill about for several minutes behind the scenes as if we were somehow part of the real performers before finding ourselves as we should be, sidecars once again.
We elicit no recognition or congratulatory slaps on our back as we move through the crowd to watch the rest of the show from the stands and soon enough even that is over, and we are walking back to the campground. Celebratory beers at our picnic table follow with both realizing that we possess places unreasonably sore for what we do not remember having hit or landed on, and my wife has a decent forehead gash from a helmet bite upon her partial lawn dart. Time for the hot tub.
Beers later with an incredulous, and as always, wonderfully polite and flattering Mormon couple joining us in the hot froth, we finally had our egos sufficiently stroked to feel complete. Nothing says “you’re a grand hero” than the innocents of the world mooning up at your barely clothed bodies, as you down cans of beer regaling them with tales of derring-do between drags of Marlboro Lights under the Western stars.
If you want your own version of this? It is still available as I checked out the Ruby’s Inn page, and they have now converted their signup and liability waiver to digital format. No need to go to Barcelona (sorry Outrider) for this one. Note, however, the new language on the signup page “Experienced Riders Only.”
The post The Pride before the Fall appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...
My bare left hand moved along the chipped powdercoat rail, the right, gloved in pitch-sticky canvas, was pinned beneath a similarly sticky braided rope. The protective vest and caged helmet I wore, like the glove, were borrowed and had to be given back, in at most, eight more seconds.
As high on ourselves as a young couple gets, we had flitted from among National Parks after bailing on Vegas the moment our feet hit pavement. So turned off by the elephantine buses defecating their camera-toting swine (2003, before ubiquitous cell phones and selfie sticks), one night and 12 hours in the Grand Canyon resulted in headlong flight North, ending up just outside the entrance to Bryce Canyon.
We found a much higher ratio of animals to people there, and exponentially more real people. Hoodoos and hiking trails. Endless wandering in and around a fantasyland of garden gnome rock formations. Vermillion red sandstone scoured into psychedelic shapes clashed with verdant green of pine and juniper. Warm days, cool nights. Few buses or crowds. The campground at Ruby’s Inn was remarkably quiet, cheap, and clean, with its sun-soaked soft earth a wonder to sleep on.
Ruby’s guide services put us on horseback in nearby Kodachrome Basin early one morning. One guide in front, one in rear, and a handful of pale-skins shepherded in the middle. The ride allowed for a chance not only to see the less visited rock pinnacles and Gandalf-hat-like formations up close, but it also facilitated extended talks with those who best knew the area with which we were now so enamored.
Stepping In It
“What made you want to guide? Where is your favorite trail? What’s the best place to eat? Where do you go in the offseason? What do you do for fun?”
“We ride bulls for one thing. Tonight. At the Bryce Canyon Rodeo, right across from Ruby’s Inn.”
We had noticed the Rodeo coming in and out of our campsite. Two-story high metal stands, “pressbox,” ticket office, food stalls, and horses, sheep, and bulls milling around in their pens.
At this statement, my wife uttered a series of words more shocking than her response to my marriage proposal: “You don’t ever take volunteers, do you?” Open mouth and not just insert foot, but stuff it in there with all the force ignorance can muster.
The crevassed and tan faced response of a 22-year-old who could pass for decades older comes so fast and unwavering in the seriousness of its delivery that it sets us on our heels “Sure. Show up at Ruby’s, sign the waiver. Your name will be at the ticket office. Meet you there at 6 and you can borrow my and [insert cowboy/guide #2]’s gear for the ride.”
We are quiet as we know we’ve stepped in it. Knowing no one sane would let us put ourselves in such harm’s way, the humorous banter that follows hopes to reveal that our guide was joking about the offer as much as my wife was proposing it. No such luck.
Ride concluded, we make quivering assurances that we will be there on time, retreat to our campsite, and pass the time with a calming half-dozen sticks of inhaled nicotine before heading across the street.
Pride Goeth Before the Fall
As promised, our names were on the list at the ticket shack. The only names. Expected, greeted, asked to put pen to paper against the likely conclusion of that evening’s farcical adventure and swiftly pointed in the opposite direction of paying attendees. Around the back, through a maze of quiet, gated, empty corals, kicking the straw-dung dirt as inmates shuffle to the gallows.
Our morning’s chaperon greets us with the promised sets of gear, though the phrase “clothes do not make the man” comes to mind given our cladding in sneakers, far-from-Wrangler jeans, and short-sleeve t-shirts just begging to be covered in blood, piss, or manure; maybe all three. No one treats us as jokes though. Given relevant instructions on what to do, “Grip with the knees”, and what not to do, “Don’t let your chin down or you’ll lose teeth when his head comes up”, we try to pick up nuances that will allow us to save ourselves if not our pride.
We are one of the opening acts and are to follow grammar schoolers tasked with roping and tackling some baaaaa-ing sheep. Wrestling fuzzily docile lambs seem more our level. Instead, we sit as a transition between the “smile and see how cute and fun this can be” and “that looks like something only a drunk or idiot would do” events. Still marking our borrowed time, we watch as our given bulls, Kaibab (for the nearby National Forest) and Black 20 (for the color of our bruised tailbones later that evening), were handler led toward the bucking chute. We were pot committed.
Scores of local campers, hikers, farmers, ranchers, tourists, local families, and staff had filled in enough of the stands that the additional pressure of finding ourselves on a lighted stage piled onto impending death and dismemberment. This scrutiny was reinforced via the removal of our sheltering anonymity as the ancient bullhorn strung on telephone pole-cum-light post announced our presence and intent to the crowd.
“We’ve got a special treat for you tonight folks! Hailing all the way from Mass-a-CHEW-sits and in their first time bullriding we have Dan and Wendy Spay-linger on our first two bulls of the night!”
Far too late to produce a lifesaving excuse, I am up and aboard Kaibab with tunnel vision that swirls down to my hands and the voices yelling at me to do … I have no idea what. It would be nice to say I remember the bull’s smell, the noise, the crowd, his hide, or any other details of the moment. I could not then and cannot now. I remember the hand on the rail and the hand under the rope and the fanciful idea that I could hold on and make a respectable showing of myself.
The Final Reckoning
There is no “buzzer” to indicate that the ride is to start. It takes a conscious choice to nod one’s head for that gate to open and to voluntarily enter that maelstrom. I give it. All instructions as to how to move with the bull, not against it, in order to remain aboard are worthless. Finding myself strangely ass down on the soft dirt of the bullring, as if time had skipped over the period between my head bob and the moment, I regain the ability to act. I gather enough of my wits to high tail it for the nearest section of arena fence I can find and climb it. The clowns or bullfighters do the rest and take the true danger upon themselves. No heroes here, and if little Johnny in the stands turned his head to pick his nose, he’s missed my moment in the buzzing, incandescent sun.
My wife follows in the same fashion. Blink and you missed her. Both of us on our backsides, up and over the fence, no major damage done.
The denouement is without fuss or pomp. We shed protective gear, handing it back to our benefactors who have their own bull riding to do, and are quickly forgotten. Wide-eyed and wired, we mill about for several minutes behind the scenes as if we were somehow part of the real performers before finding ourselves as we should be, sidecars once again.
We elicit no recognition or congratulatory slaps on our back as we move through the crowd to watch the rest of the show from the stands and soon enough even that is over, and we are walking back to the campground. Celebratory beers at our picnic table follow with both realizing that we possess places unreasonably sore for what we do not remember having hit or landed on, and my wife has a decent forehead gash from a helmet bite upon her partial lawn dart. Time for the hot tub.
Beers later with an incredulous, and as always, wonderfully polite and flattering Mormon couple joining us in the hot froth, we finally had our egos sufficiently stroked to feel complete. Nothing says “you’re a grand hero” than the innocents of the world mooning up at your barely clothed bodies, as you down cans of beer regaling them with tales of derring-do between drags of Marlboro Lights under the Western stars.
If you want your own version of this? It is still available as I checked out the Ruby’s Inn page, and they have now converted their signup and liability waiver to digital format. No need to go to Barcelona (sorry Outrider) for this one. Note, however, the new language on the signup page “Experienced Riders Only.”
The post The Pride before the Fall appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...
