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 “I kicked that bucker crazy, now I’m laid-back lazy,” the Montanan
writes in his poem “Riding Double-Wild.” He has left the rodeo
circuit behind, but not the poetry, and it turns out lots of cowboys
are just as fond of verse as he is.
Zarzyski is one of scores of writers gathered this week for the
annual Cowboy Poetry Festival in Elko, Nevada, nearly in the middle
of nowhere, which is just how the locals like it.
The ramshackle town with casinos, the Stampede Motel and coffee
shops that play Hank Williams Jr., is sprouting an unusually large
number of raw-boned guys in ten-gallon hats who call women “ma’am.”
Both veteran poets as well as newbie rhymers are welcome at the
festival, which features open mike nights, live music, and workshops
on Western crafts and skills, including silver-smithing, ranch
cooking, and making pulled-wool saddle blankets.
 Doug Groves, who sports a large handle-bar mustache, is teaching a
four-day workshop on rawhide braiding, a beautiful macramé-like
treatment of equine rigging introduced to the West by the Spanish.
Groves learned his skill from fellow cowboys in bunkhouses while
working for area “cow outfits.” Student Bobbie Yokum, who is married
to a one-time team rodeo roper, has traveled to the workshop from
California for the last 12 years.
“My technique improves bit by bit, and I’ve fallen in love with the
countryside,” she said.
But the heroes of the gathering are the poet lariats … er, laureates
… like fifth-generation California cattleman John Dofflemyer who
rides herd in the southern Sierra foothills. He rises at 3 a.m. each
day to write until the sun comes up.
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“It’s something I’ve done all my life. If I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t
be whole,” he said. His poetry is fueled by his love of work
profoundly connected to the land, which he believes is the heart of
the cowboy soul. “The land is me and I am the land. Its health is as
important as my own,” he explained.
The festival ropes in local ranch families as well as city slickers
from hundreds of miles away seeking that Western soul expressed in
poetry.
“The spirit of the West is alive. It comes from the wide open spaces
that still exist out here,” said Zarzyski, who calls the festival
the “cowboy Woodstock.”
John Collett, a local life-insurance salesman and festival
volunteer, agrees. He spent 12 summers as a boy living with an Elko
family working on their ranch and “buckarooing” — rounding up cattle
— on his little black mustang Tramp.
“Those were the best years of my life,” he recalls. “You’ve seen the
land around here, the space and beauty,” he said. “It does something
to people.”
(Reporting by Mary Papenfuss; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Lisa
Shumaker)
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