Home on the Range.
The song, off key and unexpected, sung under the stony gazes of Mount Rushmore’s four presidents, lifted my spirits and I became aware that I was grinning broadly at the singer from my front row, journalist’s perch.
I forgot the pain of a bruised tailbone on a concrete stadium bench as the world’s largest producer of bison performed an acapella rendition of the cowboy classic.
As I listened to Ted Turner in South Dakota’s Black Hills, I was painlessly aware of what a great job I have.
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I was assigned to cover the International Bison Conference in South Dakota July 24-27.
I would ride on horseback with the event’s four-day wagon train through Custer State Park, sleep under the stars and bathe only occasionally. After the wagon train, sessions on bison production and the industry would follow.
I ride other peoples’ horses a few times each year to access stories the Producer might not otherwise obtain and have been lucky, in recent years, to ride some of the best horseflesh around.
This time, Keystone, S.D., breeder Richard Sedlacek came through with a big five-year-old gelding that was perfect for my needs.
With daytime temperatures soaring beyond 100 F and the rouged hills to ride, a good horse was more valuable than I initially realized.
Only two days before Turner’s eccentric sing-along, I had most recently had the ‘best job in the world’ thought.
It came the moment after I dropped a camera strap over each of two saddle horns and in the moment before a hoof smacked me in the ribs followed by another that caught me in the back pocket.
From the ground I looked up as one of the Canon digital cameras ran away on one galloping horse. Another camera, with a monstrous 400 mm lens, rode a bucking horse for about 30 metres before being bucked free and falling to earth.
A Deadwood cowboy came running over to assess my condition as I sat in the dirt, and also checked on the Kansas bison grower and horseman whose panicked mount had caused the wreck.
“It was the best rodeo wreck I’ve ever seen. It was a Remington painting,” he gushed.
I tightened my saddle, cleaned my cameras, ate lunch and went back to work asking questions and taking pictures.
Despite a horseshoe shaped bruise in an awkward spot and few new aches and pains, the best job in the world goes on.
Wagons ho.
