Happy October! Dallas is having unseasonably warm weather that looks like it’s going to continue as far as the forecast can see, so I’m bracing myself for another sweaty long run this weekend.

It is still cooler than it was most of the summer, though, and I’m glad to report that I’ve been able to start cranking up the mileage for my regular daily runs a bit as a result. Hopefully I’ll be getting back into the swing of really solid fall training soon and maybe commit to giving a half marathon PR attempt a shot in December.

For now, though, I’d like to introduce you to some cowboys I met on the road.

Photos

I’m going to be honest. I’ve lived in Texas for more years than I care to admit to at this point, but I’ve never seen a real working cowboy outside of time I’ve spent in Fort Worth. When we saw these folks moving their herd along the highway in Wyoming, I could not get my camera turned on quickly enough. I wanted these pictures.

These were all edited pretty similarly, and since I took them all within the span of a few minutes, I want to address them as a group rather than individually as I usually do.

When I think of cowboys, I think of endless plains and dinners around campfires. I know that’s outmoded and nothing close to what modern farming actually looks like, but that’s what I’ve grown up seeing in media. Seeing these people in an environment so different was part of the allure of these images for me.

I wanted to create some images that challenged those media representations when I had the chance. In the first picture, the rider is looking at his phone while he’s leading the herd down the highway. In the second image, the rider is staring at you through very obviously modern sunglasses. Within the framework of The Cowboy in my mind, these are anachronisms. That’s precisely what I wanted to surface.

I thought it was also important to make sure there was some of the road present in each of these images. Obviously, it was nearly inevitable, given that I was taking these photos from inside a car. But instead of trying to hide it, I thought it was an important element to highlight in each image for so many reasons.

Thinking of the horses as automobiles. Thinking of the cows as traffic. The juxtaposition of the free-riding cowboy—home on the range—with the highway that permeates the existence of every city-dweller and suburbanite alike. The little strips of asphalt added so much to me.

Editing-wise, I tried to stay true to what I saw. The first two images were taken through tinted glass, so I corrected for that, but otherwise, I just wanted to show what happened and avoid making the editing the subject.

Originals:

Links

1. When Gamification Goes Awry by Justin Cox

I want to close my rings every day. I want to write every day. I want to take pictures every day. I want to do all of these things because the apps are really good at instilling that desire. But, honestly, who has the time for all of this?

I have just hit 63 days of a streak on Duolingo and have to admit that there are a lot of days when the streak is the only thing that made me open the app to expend a minimal amount of effort on a single lesson. That’s good to some extent! I do want to make sure I do a little bit of German practice every day. And one single streak isn’t too hard to sustain. But when I stack three or four or more streaks, they stop being useful tools to motivate me to develop and maintain habits and become chores that I dread.

2. What Danielle Prescod Wears to Ride Her Horse by

This idea of the “horse girl” is trending this fall. What does horse girl style mean to you? What do you make of the trend? 

I don’t believe in “trends” as a principle. I think that once you do, your life becomes about costuming and it becomes harder and harder to find your personal style. You’re either a horse girl or you aren’t and girls who are horse girls, at least the ones I know, are not wearing their barn clothes to make a fashion statement. If you see me in a Barbour jacket and boots, I likely am either coming from or going to see my horse. 

I loved this interview so much. To crib from my comment on the piece: in a world where so much of fashion is cosplay (southern public school grad with a closet full of LL Bean and “ivy style” garb here, guilty as charged) it’s really neat to see people dressing in a trendy way because it suits their life, not because it’s trendy.

3. This hella cool video of a helicopter dropping off supplies after Helene

Click through and watch it. It’s so awesome. The US military is primarily a logistics organization and it shows here.