Don't Fence Me In: The Adventures of a Soccer Mom Turned Cowgirl

DON’T FENCE ME IN:

The Adventures of a Soccer Mom Turned Cowgirl

By

Phyllis Coletta

Copyright © 2012 by Phyllis Coletta

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a narrative memoir. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously with details changed, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental or with the subject’s approval.

Discover other titles by Phyllis Coletta at www.phylliscoletta.com

To Billy, John, and Joe – my boys, the light of my life – who teach me everything worth knowing.

"Cowgirl is an attitude, really. A pioneer spirit, a special American brand of courage. The cowgirl faces life head on, lives by her own lights, and makes no excuses. Cowgirls take stands. They speak up. They defend the things they hold dear. A cowgirl might be a rancher, or a barrel racer, or a bull rider, or an actress. But she's just as likely to be a checker at the local Winn Dixie, a full-time mother, a banker, an attorney, or an astronaut."


- Dale Evans Rogers, Los Angeles, 1992

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter One

EIGHT SECONDS

A cowboy is a regular man squared, a multiple of the usual guy behavior that can drive a woman to distraction in small doses. Stripped of polite constraints and most social skills, a cowboy wants to work hard and have fun and he doesn’t allow anything to get in the way of either. Here’s the recipe: take a long hard look at that man sitting on the couch in his black socks and underwear, eating Doritos and watching football; add boundless energy and subtract any desire to please and you’ve got yourself a cowboy.

There’s a reason women fantasize about cowboys. After my first encounter with one, let me assure women worldwide: everything you dream about cowboys is true. These are men who are sure they are men and that translates into some very powerful stuff. Before you run out West to try one on for size, however, let me warn you that you will ultimately be treated as an equal, expected to carry your own bales, saddle your own horse and not bitch, ever. They’re not exactly known for monogamy and they need lots and lots of space. But if you love the smell of sweat and whiskey and want to find your real sexual self, I suggest you go git one, maybe even one like the cowboy I found, then lost.

Regular guys are just a pain in the ass, making your cowboy the emotional equivalent of shingles or something, some awful bone-wracking malady that lays you up, kills you, or if you’re a glass-half-full kind of gal, makes you stronger. You can’t tell them a darn thing; they’re always right and don’t care if they’re wrong. They do whatever they want, whenever they want and there we are, chasing them like errant steers. Still, for me it was just such a refreshing change from the weenie men I’d met and known on the east coast, all politically correct and worried about their girlfriends’ reaction to Thursday night basketball with the boys because – wink wink – I sure do wanna get laid. A cowboy just doesn’t give a rat’s ass if his woman doesn’t like what he’s doing and if she doesn’t cotton to sex that evening well there’s some wanton hussy somewhere who will. So there.

Not sure why I’ve always been drawn to adventurous living and difficult men, in that order. One seems to breed the other I suppose. Truth is I tried dating nice men and it was like watching grass grow. Sorry, just give me that recalcitrant guy on a horse, looking fine in leather chaps and spitting tobacco while twirling a rope over his head. Yeah, him. Adventurous and difficult, all rolled into one.

But don’t think for one moment that my journey from soccer mom to cowgirl is defined by the gnarly risk-taking guy I met in my late forties when I ventured into the Colorado wilderness. Surely my story is a lot bigger than Cowboy Jake, a lot wider than the endless Rocky Mountain sky, a lot scarier than a thunderstorm in July at 12,000 feet where you really do just curl up in a ball to kiss your ass good-bye. Men have been largely a distraction on my personal and spiritual trek, like a big bar of chocolate that I want but don’t need, crave but loathe at the same time. No, the cowboy portion of this tale is great fun and heartache, as most men provide in equal portions but my story is really about exhilaration and loneliness, bravado and fear, fear, fear. At 57, I still feel like an awestruck little kid and it’s this wonder that drew me West, away from Philly cheese steaks, endless little league, and the excruciating practice of law. Wonder, joy and a general sense of confusion that some find endearing. I’m never quite sure which end is up even now, and the whirlwind of my life continues as I dance through the fifth decade, having kicked off my high heels and donned my own spurs and chaps.

Exactly how does a law abiding mommy of three boys set loose her inner cowgirl? Sort of the same way a rodeo cowboy holds on for eight seconds, I guess. Eight seconds is nothing, right? But while his ass is being bucked all over creation that cowboy’s thinking damn, this will never end. Much of my ride has seemed that way; while I was walking the hall with a sick baby at 2:00 a.m. or listening to the droning voice of an adversary on a summary judgment motion. Painful and long but often crazy fun. This is the story of my ride, so far. Come see for yourself and for God’s sake, hang on.

Chapter Two

REALLY?

Being a cowgirl is a little girl’s dream which, trust me, should be executed while young. Herding cattle for the first time at 50 leaves you walking like a Thanksgiving wishbone, a fact the cowboys love but it makes the simplest task – oh, like closing your legs for instance – painfully impossible. You slide out of the saddle after eight hours running around on Thunder’s big back and you know they’re watching you, the ranch hands and cowboys, and there’s just no way to saunter coolly when your knees are a door width apart.

But hell, I didn’t know I wanted to be a cowgirl; had no clear sense of this destiny when I was hallooing down the streets of the development where I grew up. Sure I mounted that bicycle like a steed and loved the feeling of unchecked speed but back then I was just trying to keep up with my brothers. No, I didn’t sleep with a holster and a cap gun, nor did I sing corny cowboy tunes. For the most part, I just wandered the planet feeling pulled somewhere, to an outside place where it was quiet.

I never understood people who knew exactly what and where they wanted to be from the time they were nine years old, like my goofball brother Tony who was playing surgery at six, dissecting the unfortunate stray rabbit that had the bad grace to die in our backyard. No, I’d heard about people who understood their path before puberty but I wasn’t one of them. All I had was this big heart, always burning to be outside, and a restlessness that drove me like a freight train.

Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong place, in someone else’s skin. Why put a cowgirl’s soul in a Philly girl? Why would my heart sing watching horses gallop on television when the nearest open space was a shopping mall parking lot? My girlfriends in our tiny private Catholic school on the Main Line chastised me relentlessly because I went braless and drove an old Jeep CJ-7 just so I could feel the wind in my hair. The nuns threw their hands up in despair and Sister Mary Alicia was totally distressed by my choice of yearbook quote from Mark Twain:

I reckon I gotta light out for the territory ahead of the rest ‘cause Aunt Sally she’s going adopt me and civilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.

Miss Coletta, she said sternly, You have too much energy and no place to put it.

I hadn’t even had sex yet but I knew what she was saying by the way she tilted her head. Already I felt guilty which I’m sure was part of the plan. Guess I’d have to find some place to put my energy besides men, a lesson that took damn near five decades.

Are you sure you want that quote in the yearbook? Do you think you’ve ever really been civilized?

Now that was a good question right there. I imagine I hadn’t really tasted civilization at the age of 18 but I would eventually, when I left college and got married and put on my wife and mother outfit and tried to be a good girl. Without spoiling the ending let me tell you that sure didn’t work out too well. Like I said, maybe the wrong time, the wrong skin. Another life was waiting for me as I tried to bake cupcakes for my second grader’s Career Day or I took the deposition of some irate witness. Hanging back there, waiting, laughing. Go ahead and marry that nice young man, buy the appropriate number of dinner plates, and show up at baby showers. My unlived life haunted me like a smarmy ghost. Eventually, either you follow the cowgirl call or you take up some really bad habits to quell the loneliness of missing it.

If you chase a baby calf it’ll just run in a frenzy, forgetting where its mom is, forgetting the herd and just pushing away from the pressure of being caught. A scared baby calf will run frantically until it dies of exhaustion and there’s a sense of how I felt as I sat in a dark courtroom, awaiting my turn to be clever and mean. Like that calf, I understand the impulse to run blindly. The energy that so scared Sister Mary Alicia fueled my engine forever and it was frightening, for sure, when I’d wake up in a cold sweat next to a husband who wouldn’t talk to me. That unsettled, edgy intensity kept me one foot out the door in every relationship and job I ever had. Always ready to bolt and find something better, until I came to the Rocky Mountains and felt like I would come home. What a relief, I thought, to find my place on the planet, although it ultimately I’d be wrong about that too. The only place of true refuge is your own heart.

As it turns out, edgy restlessness works real well for a cowgirl, especially in the midst of the monstrous testosterone that is the west. Cowboys like their women feisty. You want to play head games with these guys? They’ll smile, tip the brim of a cowboy hat and head out. Maybe women love cowboys because they call us to our best selves, our cowgirl selves, where we’re powerful and independent, can rope a steer and still cook a mean Christmas dinner. Cowgirls yearn for physical challenge – give me that fence post – and just don’t know the nature of quit. You don’t need to be in the unfettered majesty of the wild mountains to set free your cowgirl spirit, but it helps. I can tell you I always loved a Western, loved the brave raw men who galloped and fought with abandon. They were carefree and bold, unrestrained, strapping and tough. As women of course we also love cowboys for their rangy muscles but before I understood anything about powerful sex this I knew: I wanted to be free, just like them.

So I landed in my spurs and chaps indirectly, via a million summer days swatting gnats on the little league field, through tight lawyer suits soaked sweaty with anxiety. I became a cowgirl accidentally on purpose and though I didn’t have a plan the Universe surely did. Maybe I was born in someone else’s skin but I finally found the clothes that I thought might suit me: wranglers, boots, long sleeve shirt with snaps and a big old hat. The first time I galloped across a meadow on the ranch where I’d come to live with Cowboy Jake I heard a voice in my heart, clear as the Colorado sky, saying I was born to do this. I was 48 years old at the time, living a dream long overdue but what the hell. I’d paid my mommy dues. It was my turn.

On this particular day in Colorado once again my body aches from a cattle drive that lasted thirteen hours with about ten things going wrong from the fence being split up on the Grangley property to the one steer that just wouldn’t cross the highway because the traffic line scared him. Moving 700 head of cattle, we pushed, cajoled, worked hard, ate little, yelled plenty, and got it done but I’m tired now and me, my horse Rocky, and Chopper – my very willing but pretty dumb black lab – are headed back to the barn. I’ll hop off Rocky in the corral, loosen the cinch and slide the saddle off his aching back. They’ll be so much sweat under the saddle pad and blanket that I’ll need to let him cool awhile before I grain him. I’ll rub his hot wet hair and thank him again for his service today. No point in brushing him because as soon as I set him loose in the pasture he’ll gallop and then roll around in the dirt like a gigantic dog. I’ll inhale the smell of sweet grass and rain washed mountain air; listen only to the horses breathing. This is my life now as a cowgirl and it’s a long way from a grade school musical or an endless office meeting in a windowless conference room at 3:30 on a grey afternoon.

As I haul the saddle into the dark barn, my arms stretched around and under its weight I bump into Richard, the new hand.

Hey Richard, what’s up, I smile.

He waits for me to awkwardly hoist the saddle, blanket and pad onto a too high mount on the wall. The blanket drops and the saddle’s crooked because I’m pretty little in this big cowboy world and as I mentioned they don’t really take to women who need help. Richard waits for me to fumble and undo my usual disaster. He lingers in his response to my question regarding his activities, until I’m fully turned around and still smiling. Then he looks at me and shoots a wet wad of tobacco through his teeth. It thunks on the straw floor in front of me, looking like a dead mouse.

Great to see you too, I say as his spurs clank sourly out to the corral.

Cowboys are a tough bunch. The very qualities that make them an asset on a ranch – a penchant for hard solo tasks, a grounded independent spirit – render them pretty lousy socially. Doesn’t seem to bother them. They like to wander and it’s not like they need or want to get married to some woman for God’s sake because they’ll never be monogamous anyway. The only name they want to utter at the end of a hot day’s work is Johnnie Walker. I got used to their surliness. Come to think of it, men back east were mostly miserable too; they just seemed to mask it better but I guess if they could snarl and spit about having to pick the baby up from day care well, surely they would.

Richard doesn’t much like me because I’m a dude – an easterner, not born and bred on a cattle ranch like him and the other cowboys. I came to this gig real late and I know very little, it’s true. Richard has no time for anyone born elsewhere and he sees me as a poseur, a wanna-be, playing the ranch hand game after riding subways all my life. Used to be his scorn hurt my feelings but not so much anymore. It’s the price you pay for leaving the cubicle to be next to the wild heartbeat of the mountains. Folks here are territorial about their land and I don’t blame them. Who doesn’t want to own and protect such beauty? They want to exclude me, to make me be satisfied with suburbs and January White Sales. No can do. I have a little body but an uncontainable spirit and there just came a point when I could no longer bear stinky diesel trucks and cell phone ring tones. I had to go, to a place like this, where I could hike all day in silence every day for the rest of my life and never see the same tree twice.

Chopper and I head out of the corral, careful that all gates are locked, there’s water in the troughs and fresh hay in the feeders. Light’s starting to dim now, that baby blanket pink that wraps the Sangres at twilight. My faithful dog pants heavily beside me as we head to the cabin. We’re both tired, that bone deep satisfying physical fatigue coming on the heels of a day in the saddle, watching cattle, looking them in the eye to see what particular trick they might pull as we impose our will on them. Not even cattle, dumb as they may seem, like to be forced to do anything and that look in a heifer’s eye when I come from behind, slowly, to ask her to move on – that look of disgust and exhaustion – well, I’d seen that look too many times in the eyes of the woman in the Toyota stuck next to me in rush hour traffic. Same exact look.

I’d felt that way myself some days, driving to court while making carpooling arrangements for soccer practice. Consumed with the endless obligations of raising three boys I could hardly come up for air let alone take a walk in the woods. Yet it was motherhood that set me free. Though my kids anchored me to my middle class American soccer mom life conversely they were the rocket fuel for my adventures. They slowed my crazy restlessness – hey, Ma look at this bug! – and clobbered me senseless with their lessons of love. Of course they felt the cowgirl in me long before I did, and worked in unison with the universe to get me out into the wild on the back of a horse loping through an aspen grove after some stray steer. Though motherhood constrained me of necessity it was a Zen Buddhist meditation, nailing me to the seat until critical lessons were learned.

My cowboy boots kick up dust as we pass the tractor which may or may not start tomorrow morning when we’ve got to feed the herd. I remember the day I bought these boots, at the Hamilton Mall in south Jersey in the early 90s. It was one of my antsy-mother afternoons when I felt the walls closing in on me after four solid days of rain with three rammy boys, all in varying stages of illness. Being single and earning a part time low level associate attorney salary I didn’t have money for cowboy boots; I could barely pay the electric bill. But I got this wild hair, decades ago, that on that very day I needed to find me a pair of shit kickers. So I bundled them up, wiped their crusty faces and watery eyes and drove all three to the Mall where I paid too much for a beautiful pair of brown leather boots that fit me perfectly. They felt better than skin. Still do.

Scuffing up the dusty road to my cabin with Chopper next to me I’m awash in that deep sense of satisfaction, true completeness like your heart is set exactly right in your chest. These moments are stellar and blinding in their divinity; they’re the waypoints of my life when I know I am totally right in the mix. It’s like breastfeeding a warm hungry baby at 3 a.m. while singing an old Beatles’ tune and basking in the moonlight. Though my robe is worn and ratty and I’m so tired I can’t keep my head up, I sense in my cells the rightness of the moment. This is the satisfaction I feel in the spring twilight after pushing cattle and working with my horse all day.

After decades of staring at traffic jams and office buildings, cubicles and classrooms I can’t stop gaping at the crazy beauty of the mountains I now call home. It’s still new to me, because I didn’t become a range-riding-outdoor-peeing-two-stepping cowgirl until the ripe old age of 48. Exactly this was calling me all my life though; just this, the wind, the big sky and Rocky, my reluctant gelding. It seemed as if this very life had been beckoning me since I was a tree-climbing six year old, whispering to me through years of a conventional American life , and over the blathering of some boring adversary on a discovery motion. I could hear it above the wailing of a baby sick with an ear infection, echoing after the thwack of a little league bat or the whistle of a soccer coach. All my life, always, the call of the Rocky Mountains. As I carpooled to T-ball games on the Jersey parkway and the boys wrestled in the back seat, I imagined that day when it would be this, just me, my dog, my horse, the mountains. I could be wild, for once, and free.

But there was plenty to learn before I could set out on my adventure. I learned slowly, it seems, and fought way too hard against the forces that wanted to ‘civilize me but it’s all good, the broken road that got me to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, to the tiny hand-built one room cabin I share with Jake. My legs ache with the last few steps up the hill and no hot shower waits because we don’t have running water, or anything other than small solar electric batteries. No indoor plumbing, television, coffee pot, or hair dryer. I’ll strip off my