The Rodeo (2016)

Eight years ago I crossed the country by car. I do this most every year and that year I thought it might be fun to ask my mother to join me on the return trip, to give her a chance to see more of the country, to experience a road trip. She agreed and my youngest daughter came along as well.

We started in Akron, Ohio, then west in a slow-paced, wandering pattern.

I had by this point been driving across the country for many years and I had seen all of the major routes, done all of the obvious things, and so this was a trip for my Mom, to show her things, to share experiences rather than to seek out wholly new ones. And then we went to the rodeo in Casper, Wyoming.

The percentage of artists who have been to a rodeo is probably a small one—unless they’ve added a rodeo to Burning Man. It was my first.

Now, I’m six feet tall and north of 200 pounds. I’m not a “macho man” true but still, underneath it all I’ve always had there in the background of my mind that I was a man, and that meant something, however unarticulated, however undefined and maybe undefinable.

And then the rodeo.