Thoughts on Rodeo Culture

Backstory: Sue and I were surprised to learn we were going to be in Sisters at the time of the Rodeo, and after some foreboding and discussion, waffling and wavering, we decided we should open ourselves to a culture we know nothing about. Maybe the brutality was exaggerated. Maybe it wouldn’t be Gladiator 2. I was concerned about animal brutality, but neither of us had anticipated how utterly “white” it would be, how much jingoistic nationalism we would run into, nor how much damage was going to be done to the human bodies of the "cowboys."

After the rodeo: we talked about delusion, our own, and everyone else’s. There are 9 large golf courses in this town of 2,500 people that makes a living on tourism: golf courses that have to be constantly watered. This area is called "high desert," and where it isn't irrigated or next to a river, it is sand, rock, sweet-smelling juniper and sage. It’s an area of cattle ranching: more irrigation. Constant water spraying over the earth, even at the motel where we stayed. No recycling. Plastic straws, plastic bags, styrofoam containers. From their newspaper: “Sisters High School has one of the very few flight sciences programs in the nation, preparing youth for careers in the field of aviation.” The privilege in that. There was noticeable police presence at the rodeo: sheriffs on horseback, armed and flak-jacketed black-uniformed police. We looked at the crowd and did not see any people of color. The rodeo crowd seemed comforted by the police presence. There is some interconnection between privilege, dream, and delusion; between fear, enjoyment, and excess. It’s complicated. 

I think about the obsolescence of this whole way of life: the cowboy, the bucking bronco, the horses, the enormous trucks and RVs and horse trailers, the plastic bags. 

I look into the wide and receptive eyes of children whose parents doff their cowboy hats and put their hands over their hearts to honor the American flag and pray for “freedom,” whose streets and clothes and faces are as clean and tidy as their lawns and expensive houses, people who work hard and do what they think is right. I thought about who they seem to think are their enemies: Muslims, Mexicans. And who I think are their enemies: corporate billionaires and their own excess. Somehow the suffering in Yemen and Venezuela is connected with this profligacy, this material excess, and yet it is as pointless to say that here as to tell a child he has to eat all the food on his plate because of starving Armenians. I see good people, living what they think is a good life, and I see that I’m doing the same thing, but somehow we have lost our way. There is some lack, fear, indirection, emptiness…and into that chasm comes a rodeo, a distraction, nostalgia for an imagined past. 

Main photo is my ice cream (with thanks to Whisky Foxtrot): I asked for a single scoop to go, and I got a full cup of ice cream in a styrofoam container with a plastic spoon, which I've photographed against the snowy mountains, the American flags, and the blue sky. Extras are the Three Sisters shining in the light (view from our motel room), the rodeo parade, and Sue's photo of the Border Patrol station at the rodeo, with a hard-faced woman in blue who appeared to be expecting (Canadian, perhaps?) suicide bombers to arrive at any moment.