Dude Ranch Fantasies

Dude, Where's My Horse?

Wannabe cowboys and a cynical writer seek the captivating myth of the West in a dude-ranch adventure

A horse has never been my first choice of transportation.

Perhaps it has to do with that endurance trail ride on a borrowed horse I took years ago for some besotted reason. Considering the gait of my horse, I would have had a better ride if I had tied myself to a pogo stick and made my way down 20 miles of cobblestone streets.

Yet, here I was, dauntless in the face of three days on a horse as a dude-guest on the Grapevine Canyon Ranch 80 miles southeast of Tucson. I came prepared-hat and boots, notebook and pen, wrapped in a scratchy cloak of citified cynicism.

As ranch wrangler Rusty Atherton would later muse, "Reality is on the other side of that gate. . . . It's a rat race." Yup.

Back in the 1880s, those desperate to escape the cities headed West. Some paid to stay on local ranches. Once back home, people like future president Theodore Roosevelt wrote about their trips-giving birth to the dude-ranch industry.

In 1888, Roosevelt recounted his time on the "seemingly endless plains," where the men were "as hardy and self-reliant as any man who ever breathed."

The vision resonated across the planet in magazines, novels, then movies and television. In return, the travelers of the world came to see for themselves.

Eve and Gerry Searle opened their Grapevine Canyon Ranch to visitors in 1985. They didn't have to create a movie-set-perfect experience for their guests. They already had one.

The ranch stands at true north on the compass of Western history. To the west rises the granite face of the Dragoons, burial place of Cochise. To the south lies the fabled town of Tombstone. To the east stand the craggy Chiricahua Mountains, home to Fort Bowie where Geronimo finally surrendered. After traveling the world, the eastern European-born Eve settled here with her cowboy-rancher husband.

"You can decompress and live life the way you're supposed to," she said of a stay at the ranch.

Many guests arrive "wrapped so tight they're ready to pop," commented Adam Mellott, the ranch's outdoor operations manager-or "barn boss." He matches horses with guests, hoping those guests will be honest about their riding ability.

"They're smart," he said of his horses, which means my horse will have me figured out 15 minutes before I get to the corral—Annie Oakley I'm not.

"Let me clarify," I announced, hoping to head off disaster. "I am one step up from a beginner."

I would soon learn that many of my fellow guests had already climbed the whole equestrian ladder. They rode daily and trained their own horses. We met and managed to talk at dinner that night as we shoveled in a dinner of ribs, baked potatoes, corn on the cob and homemade blueberry cobbler. This is big-sky, big-land and big-food country.

Thomas Fritz, a German businessman whose company makes recreational vehicles, had traveled to the ranch from Munich. On this first trip to the United States, he made a beeline for the West.

“It was a dream for me ever since I was a young guy.”

Fellow German Ulrike Paulus laughed and added, “He wants to be a cowboy.”

Thomas smiled.

A horse trainer by profession, Ulrike made a 26-hour trek from Bremen, Germany. As the four-piece Grapevine Canyon Ranch band played in the ranch’s big living room, she told me she drives a very German Mercedes to work, but a very American Firebird with country music blaring for fun.

As the guitars twanged and the fiddle cried, a group of women from Great Britain joined in the singing while another German, Reinhold Gabel, an equine physical therapist, played the spoons. In this room, we Yanks were in short supply.

“Americans are looking for wide-open spaces,” said Bonnie St. Clair, in charge of ranch reservations and sales. “Europeans come looking for the Old West, cowboys.”

I already knew something about cowboys.

My father cowboy’d awhile in the state of Washington to earn money for his education. When he got off that last horse, he swore he would never get on one again. He knew how bone-breaking hard that work could be, days, weeks, months spent in the saddle.

But, hey, if you wannabe a cowboy, fella, you’re gonna have to ride. At the Grapevine, you get the opportunity.

You ride out after breakfast, again after lunch. You ride all day, camp, then ride some more. To rest up, you can use your own legs to hike the nearby mountains, drive to a historic site or soak or swim in the ranch’s small pool. But from Milwaukee to Mongolia, most people come here to sit on a horse.

I managed to make my amateur ranking obvious the moment I mounted. I used the horn to hoist me up and over, a cowboy no-no. Who knew? As it turned out, not too many of the guests.

These true equestrians might make a splendid showing riding over manicured hill and mowed dale, but most rode English-style-on saddles that look like dollops of leather licorice, with stirrups hitched short and reins held taut. Now they had to cope with our big-horned working saddles, long stirrups, loosely held reins and the ever so trail-savvy horses.

“Relaxed,” Thomas happily pronounced of his first experience with the Western style and the nature of the horses.

Yes, and that word certainly applied to the one I was assigned. Dakota, a quarter horse gelding as shiny as a new penny, moseyed along like the last horse behind a herd on its way to market. Now, why would this be a good match? He seemed, frankly, stubborn. He certainly left an impression.

Muscles I never knew I possessed made a horrific premier performance on the dawn of my second day. Ride? Could I walk?

“Don’t talk to me about pain . . .” muttered Bob Redman as I began recounting my travail of agony.

Residents of London, Bob, Suzanne and their daughter, Samantha, had come to the ranch for their second visit, impelled by Samantha’s love of riding, Suzanne’s interest in Western history and Bob’s desire to get out of a car after driving down from the Grand Canyon.

He compared his first ride to that of “straddling three chairs at a time.” Still, in the best Western tradition, he rode again.

We went out in small groups, some heading up to high grass country, others down into a canyon. Another group broke into a long, loping ribbon along a ranch