No Chaps Required

NO CHAPS REQUIRED

words by > Sally Howard

Ranch vacations for girls are springing up across the country, catering to keen city slickers hoping to earn their spurs.

It’s never been easy for chicks to penetrate the cracked sepia earth of cowboy country. In this big-sky land of lawless gunplay and the mastery of man over beast, the fairer sex usually got lumped with the drab tyranny of the frontierswoman bit: spit-roasting great hunks of bovine chow, or looking out beseechingly onto the endless horizon. There were, of course, a few notable exceptions, such as Calamity Jane (who was Wild Bill Hickok’s right-hand woman) or Annie Oakley (who famously wowed the nation with her sharp-shooting skills, even when trussed up in the great tents of 19th-century formal dress). But these outdoorsy dames were, for the most part, a cautionary tale of how not to git yourself a guy. (Calamity, despite Doris Day’s lash-batting portrayal, spent her dotage pining for Wild Bill, who’d long since married a more ladylike mare.)

Recent years, however, have kicked up a dust storm of change down at the corral. Female rough-stock riders are blazing a trail at shows across America. Earlier this year, newcomer Stacy Westfall wupped legendary horse trainer Clinton Anderson at a top Nashville horse show (by the end of the allotted training hours, Westfall was on tiptoes on her colt’s back). Now vacationing city girls are spurred on too. We recently donned our spurs for a day at Lost Valley Ranch, Colorado, one of the many old-time ranches offering to turn certifi ed urbanites into fully fl edged “dudettes.”

Founded in 1883 and located two hours south of Denver, Lost Valley has been hosting would-be city “dudes” since the 1940s, among them Walt Disney, who visited in 1956 and whose burnt “D” brand—along with thousands of others and a few startled moose heads—decorates the paneled wooden interior of the Lost Valley dining room. Even today, the ranch has the resinous reek of a man’s man’s world. There’s nothing girlie spa break about this joint—its women’s ranching breaks are the real deal, a crash course in everything a girl needs to know to become a dudette, from lassoing, to cattle penning, cutting across the hills on horseback and fi ring a deer shooter.

“Today, we’re going to teach you to think like a cow,” promises Ben, the broad-shouldered native Coloradoan wrangler who is showing us the ropes at Lost Valley. “To work the cows, you’ve got to think like a cow.”

First, though, I have to think myself onto horseback, not a simple feat with a beast such as Goldie, a temperamental gelding who’s to be my companion for the day. Goldie snorts out a volley of dust and indignation as I mount him, and Ben fi lls me in on the morning’s adventures. For starters, I have to abandon any sissy notions of riding with hands delicately balancing a bobbing rein. In the Old West, a girl rides one-handed, with one hand free for lassoing, with a horned saddle for “dallying up” her packhorse. The saddle horn— nicknamed, for reasons inscrutable, “the biscuit”—also functions as a steadier for the horseback novice. Next, to be of any use out on the ranch, I have to get a handle on “loping.” “So you’ve got to scoop a ‘c’ with your hips to Goldie’s rhythm,” shouts Ben. “Pretend you’re serving up ice cream.”

Twenty minutes later and I’m scooping, if not like a pro, then at least like a third-rate Salsa dancer. Soon the earth is sliding around Goldie’s hooves like short-crust pastry in the fi ngers of a ravenous pastry chef, and I get time for a long look at my new wild frontier. The Colorado sun smiles down on a vivid peach land that’s as tranquil as a 90-minute yoga DVD.

Back at the ranch, and after a robust wagon– style lunch, it was time to get into the cow psychology: “You’ve got to remember that cows will break through a fence to be with the herd—they’re real herd-bound,” advises Ben. Driving—or the skill of rounding up cattle on horseback and threading them forward through an opened gate—is often likened to playing cow pinball. Evidently in my case, the balls were subject to bizarre alien magnetisms. No sooner had I herded six lumbering beasts together than one would break off, belying the nature of his breed for a stab at independence. Two hours later, I have a beef-ball score of 25% and deep regret at having refused the loan of a “tush cush” from a kindhearted Tennessean lady.

In the corral, the pale, wiry form of Colorado high-school rodeo champ Skyler Smith awaits me. Pro rodeo ropers work as “headers” or “tailers,” and Skyler excels at the former, alighting his whirring ellipsis of rope on to a calf’s head with a lightning-bolt snap before his partner follows up with the hind legs and the unfortunate calf topples to the ground. Skyler teaches me an expert lassoing wrist roll before setting me loose on a plastic bullhead mounted on a haystack.

“I tell you, there’ll be a revolution in this country before they take away my gun,” warns Carlos, with a nuance of menace, as I approach the shooting range a couple of hours later. His bullets slice through the soft air, ricocheting between mountains and scattering spent cartridges around his box-fresh cowboy boots. Jamming the shotgun into my clavicle with an unforgiving force, he tells me to fi rst cast my eyes up the glossy fl ank of the gun, before bending forward from the hip and training my barrel on the “house.” Petrifi ed by the weight of the deer shooter, I suggest that I’ve had enough of this shooting game already and have no need to actually fi re off three whole rounds. Carlos looks at me as if I’ve asked if I can vomit into his Stetson, so I bite my lip and fi re with demented abandon.

That evening, I’m kicking back in the hot tubs (a sole concession to spa-break culture, bearing the imperative “no spurs allowed”). I’ve also blackened my soft city hands at horseshoeing and branding (nitrogen for namby-pamby horses, molten metal for cows). Later, as an inky night outlines the Rockies, resident cowgirl poet Lydia tells us of her yearning for “The glory of horse and saddle/every day without a change/and a desert sun a-blazin’/on a hundred miles of range.” In 48 hours, I’d ridden, I’d roped, and I’d lived the nation’s most cherished male myth and favorite movie genre.

COWGIRLS GET TO CHOOSE…

Lost Valley Ranch Sedalia, Colorado
303-647-2311; www.lostvalleyranch.com Ladies-only breaks, teaching traditional cowgirling skills. Lost Valley arranges pickups from Denver.

Cowgirl-Up Week at the Historic Pines Ranch Westcliffe, Colorado
800-446-9462; www.historicpines.com The Historic Pines Ranch is a great place to ride and relax with friends.

Cowgirl Bootcamp at Alisal Ranch Near Santa Barbara, California
805-688-6411; www.alisal.com Cowgirl Bootcamp is perfect for experienced and novice riders alike.

Colorado Cattle Company New Raymer, Colorado
970-437-5345; www.coloradocattlecompany.com This working cattle ranch offers women-only weeks, river rafting, golf, tennis and more.