Labor Day Weekend, 2009 - The Helmville Rodeo
in Montana had so much going on that we took
1,000 photos between us and had a hard time
choosing just 50 for the website. First thing in the
morning the rodeo horses were all driven from a
distant pasture over to the arena, right past our
campsite. What a magnificent sight as they
thundered effortlessly past us, manes and tails
flying, nostrils flaring and snorting.
A group of kids stopped by our trailer to sell us some bead
jewelry they had made. Their freckles and happy faces were
irresistible. Mark bought a bracelet so he could engage them
in conversation for a little while before they ran off. "Hey, can
you girls stand over there so I can get a photo?" He asked.
A little voice piped up from the back. "I'm not a girl!" Oops.
But so cute!! Several were siblings, and all of them turned up
later in the the 10-and-under barrel race.
Over at the rodeo that afternoon the young cowgirls showed us what
barrel racing is all about. These gals flew past in a blaze of hooves.
The distance wasn't far, but getting around the barrels required
perfect timing and impeccable human-equine communication to slow
down enough to get around in a tight turn without knocking over the
barrel and then accelerate to the next barrel.
The joy of riding at such
speeds lit every girls face,
and was by far my favorite
event. The fastest time
was an electrifying 27
seconds or so.
The kids were up next, and
we rooted for each of our
young friends from around
our campsite. The little
boy whom Mark had
accidentally lumped into
the group of "you girls" did
a stately walk on his horse
around the course. The littlest
girl went at such a leisurely stroll
that she finished with a noble
time of some 1 minute 52
seconds or so. "Don't worry," the
announcer said as her horse
walked down the back stretch,
"We've rented this rodeo space
for the whole afternoon." The
kids store our hearts.
Scanning the stands, our hearts
were stolen again. Donna Lea snapped a photo of a little boy sitting on a
toy steer wearing a large cowboy hat.
Out in the rodeo arena the
announcer got us all chuckling
as we watched the "Mutton
Busters." Here the under-7 set
clung onto the backs of sheep
as they raced across the field,
trying like heck not to slip off.
Eventually each kid wound up
on the ground and the sheep
scampered away, some of them
leaping as they went.
Some kids got plucked off the backs of the sheep by their beltloops
when it looked like they might get trampled under the sheep's
hooves.
One little boy tried riding
his sheep like a horse.
It didn't last long, but he
sure knew how to ham it up
after he fell off.
The kids were the true delight of this rodeo. They were
everywhere, and they seemed to love every bit of it.
Even the cattle pens looked like so much
fun the kids climbed in with them to pet
them.
I don't know if I'd want to get that close. Saying hello
through the bars of the pen was good enough for me.
But there is a professional side to the rodeo business, and
we enjoyed watching the cowboys preparing and resting between events.
It was a world apart for us. For them it's a
profession and involves a lot of hard work, big
kicks and pride.
Seeing them getting tossed
from the bulls seemed like a
rough way to make a living.
There was a category of bull
riding for kids too.
Next up was the steer
wrestling. In this event the
cowboy chases after the calf
on his horse and then slides
off onto the ground, grasping
the steer's head in his arms.
Once on the ground, the
cowboy uses all his might to
twist the steer's strong neck to
thrust it onto it's back.
This was followed by the tie down roping. Here the cowboy roped
the calf by the neck and then relied on his horse to hold the line to
the calf taught while he tied up the calf's legs. The horse
would slowly back up if the line loosened.
Then, to prove that the calf was properly tied, the horse would
walk forward to release the tension on the line slightly. At that
point several calves wriggled free, showing that the cowboy
needed to go home and work on his knots.
The last event was a crazy free-for-all. Pairs of people ran across the
field swinging ropes while a herd of mother cows was released at the
other end. The goal was to rope a cow and get her to stand still while
you got a cup of milk from her. Right! Sure enough, one pair of guys in
front of us pulled it off. As they rushed to the referee with their cup of
milk we saw another pair of guys at the opposite end running to the
referee at the same time, cup of milk held high. It was a tie.
We left the rodeo still chuckling. What a fun celebration of the ranching
lifestyle. Each event represented a ranching technique that is (or was)
used in the daily process of managing cattle in far flung ranges.
We spent days trying to trim our gazillion pictures
down to a manageable number. The air was getting
chilly too, so we turned the trailer south on I-15
through Utah to head to the annual Interbike bicycle
trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada.