Well, they do. And sometimes on Saturday mornings, when you're dressed in a long sleeved Wrangler shirt (with breast pockets perfect for a can of chew that you don't have) and wearing spurs someone made from old horse shoes, sitting astride a big prancing idiot of a horse who has no business trying to herd cows, trailed by about 5 beginning adults who either know what they're doing or want desperately to get their overweight asses out of a leather saddle, you see the bikers as they pass your small herd of cattle. Actually, it was more common for them to break for a while and stare. You'll quickly contrast your dusty grunge and tense horseflesh to all that neon spandex and plastic straddling an economic display of titanium alloy and wheels. They almost always wave and smile, these bikers - and your heart dips a little in your chest because they remind you of the city and where you come from, not just the person you're being paid to be. They remind you of the kinds of people who work in a physically idle state, and have to persue exercise as a hobby because they'd be worthless lumps of overthinking fat and hair and bones without it. Even you can remember that desperate need for escape into something vast yet navigatable, to feel like you can make your body do things it doesn't want to do, go places it couldn't normally go, just for a few minutes or hours a day until you recage it and re-invest it in mundanity.
Now you're a a 20-something girl on a massive bay gelding came striding onto County Road 40 pushing 20 cattle ahead of her. There's a lot to think about up here - the even pressure of weight in your sturrups, the tension in your reins, pulsing your hands to remind your steed that he needs to listen, listen. Waiting for the last cow to get ahead of you, because rushing in the middle would scatter them. You watch the others and make sure their horses are behaving, making sure they're beside you as you cross the road. Making sure they're not walking their horses through holes or over barbed wire. You're tense, you're not thinking about much else besides your physical actions, the job at hand. But you look up, and that biker waves - that biker that you used to understand really well. You might still understand him, but right now you feel like worlds are colliding. A semi truck stops and idles as you push cows past. The other riders wonder if we're doing something illegal - but no, here, the cows have a right-of-way. You're allowed to stop traffic, to make jaws drop. You have a job to do.
But in the end, you feel oddly homesick as you look at idling drivers in minivans or bikers or even people out walking their dogs. Your life has become some kind of warped version of a western - or a reality show, depending on the day. You wouldn't trade it, really. Every once in a while, though, you wish for the perspective of the biker and not the wrangler, even if just for a minute.
Being clean, being pretty, being eloquent, being well-read - these are not things valued where you are. Half of the contents of your brain are completely useless here. This is a place of reflex, of literal touch-and-go, of sunburn, of manure, of hill and dale. It's a place where the biggest puzzle you have all day is how to match guests ("dudes") with your herd of horses, or the best way to get Scottish Highland cattle off the sides of very tall hills. You've fallen off, you've bruised yourself, you've gotten lost at this point. You've probably lost 10 pounds at least from sheer motion for 14 hours a day, 6 days a week. Your cell phone doesn't work anywhere out here, and you get mailed week-old copies of the New York Times to stay abreast of the world outside. No, looking at that biker on a Sunday morning makes you more than homesick, it makes you envious. Things are easy, fast from that bike.
Things are gritty, painful, sometimes even mindless from this horse. So much of you loves it, and yet so much of you is left behind.
Even now, so far from that place, I wonder which parts of me I'm supposed to leave behind.
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