Right about the time I walked away from my love of horses, a young ranch hand far away in the state of Montana decided to double down on his.
This cowboy had grown up trick roping and riding broncs and starting colts under saddle and he was getting along just fine with all of it, as far as he was concerned.
Then one day he went to see a guy about a job and wound up tracking the ranch boss to a nearby arena where some out-of-towners were teaching a different kind of horsemanship.
The young man walked in prepared to ignore the proceedings, secure in his abilities and focused solely on his prospects for employment.
He was hanging back in the stands, scanning the crowd for the manager, when two strangers came into the arena on a couple of horses and did their thing.
What happened next changed that young cowboy’s life for good.
He saw those two men ride elegant sideways and bending maneuvers he didn’t even know a horse could make.
They got the hardest stops and sharpest turns he’d ever witnessed with no fuss or bother in their horses at all.
He watched one of the men help a troubled colt with a gentleness and efficiency that seemed like magic.
Instead of force or restraint, the man taught the horse a kind of dance, and the colt looked darn happy to be doing it.
By this time the young cowboy had worked his way down to the fence rails, where he stood mesmerized by the horsemen’s every move.
Even up close he could not discern how those strangers were working their particular charms.
Their clothes weren’t fancy, their equipment was standard-issue, and their mounts were unremarkable—these were cowboys alright.
But they were cowboys and then some.
Something else.
On the spot the young man vowed to learn this new way of being with horses.
He attached himself to the project with ferocious determination.
And before long he would dedicate his life to bringing that extraordinary horsemanship from its obscure origins in the American West to the rest of the world including, eventually, me.
Looked at a certain way, that day in Bozeman in 1979 led more or less directly to my getting bucked off a hard-luck mustang in the fall of 2020.
If it wasn’t for that Montana cowboy, and the kind and masterful way of working horses he learned from those legendary out-of-towners, I doubt I ever would’ve bothered to ride a broke horse again, let alone take a chance on raising up that skinny little colt.
But they say the teacher comes when the student is ready.
And friend, by the time I met the master horseman named Buck Brannaman—three long decades after I left my pony on the family farm and pretty much broke my own heart—you better believe I was ready.
I just didn’t know it yet.
Buck Brannaman tells about watching Ray Hunt and Tom Dorrance ride for the first time, and many other stories from his remarkable life, in his book The Faraway Horses.
The New Colt 