So You Wanna Be A Cowgirl

So You Wanna Be a Cowgirl is a personal narrative. I was a forty-year-old divorced woman from Maine, running my own business when I applied for a summer job at Rimrock Dude Ranch in Wapiti Valley, outside of Cody, Wyoming. My horse and I were hired by Glenn Fales, an old-time cowboy and ex-rodeo bronc rider who, with his wife Alice, had owned the ranch for thirty-five years. I worked at Rimrock as a horse wrangler and guide. This is my story. My first experience wrangling horses found me galloping over a headwall and down a steep bluff amidst a herd of 100 horses. After learning to guide with my own horse Razan, meeting a bear, and climbing switchbacks up Table Mountain, we nearly slipped 50 feet down into the Shoshone River.