The Tenderfoot Chronicles

I'm a dude, and I’m still trying to figure out whether that’s a good thing. One of my hosts, Justin Fosha, assures me that there’s nothing pejorative about the term, in the modern Colorado guest ranch context. Meanwhile, my privates are being mashed between the union of man and horse. Besides being a dude I am, as Justin’s father, Ken Fosha, describes it, an "Oh, my gosh" rider. That is, I have the tendency to sit back so that the saddle leather slaps me hard with each loping stride. "Guys will talk in higher voices," he says, explaining the origins of the term. I think that he’d excuse, if not endorse, the padded cycling shorts underneath my jeans. I am, after all, a dude.

It’s my second day at the Drowsy Water Ranch outside Granby, Colorado, and I’ve come to accept that I’m no cowboy. I am just now able to say "howdy" without feeling like a complete tool. But no one seems all that fixated on what you say around here; it’s really about the riding. As we clop our way up the trail on our afternoon ride, I can see why some of the other guests filing ahead of me-seasoned riders from Kentucky, Florida, Massachusetts-come back year after year. Sage slopes studded with purple lupine and yellow heart-leaf arnica give way to stands of Rocky Mountain pine and lime-green trembling aspen with chalk-white trunks. At over 8,000 feet, the June air is fresh and crisp. The snow-covered peaks of the Continental Divide provide an appropriately rugged backdrop to this 640-acre spread. Despite my bellyaching about a raw tuckus, I’m living the dream I’ve had since growing up on a diet rich in Louis L’Amour western novels. I even finally have the excuse to wear the weathered boots I bought off a down-on-his-luck cowboy in Montana 15 years ago. None of which makes me any less a dude.

Dude ranches have been around since the late 1800s, but they experienced a real boom in the 1920s when the original owner of the Drowsy Water established this ranch. Europeans and Easterners would come out to hunt or indulge their cowboy fantasies for a week or a season. By then the word "dude" had become synonymous among some lifelong ranchers with city slickers, greenhorns who can’t ride a lick. Pitiable refugees from urban life.
The other seasonal visitors to the ranch are the posse of guys and girls, perky 20-somethings summering from college, who act as our wranglers, housekeepers and kitchen staff. Doubtless the cast of their own reality show when out of sight, they put in long days caring for the 100-plus horses and up to 50 guests.

While they toil, we retire to our log cabins for truly peaceful slumber. Any accumulated worries are carried away by the Drowsy Water Creek (pronounced "crick") nearby. No TV, no telephones, no locks and thus no key to carry around. Everything here has been designed to purge us of city stress. Days are filled with hayrides and bingo, cookouts and country dancing. While the little buckaroos are busy with rodeo practice and obstacle courses, grownups might soak a line in the Colorado River, casting flies for trophy trout. Or soak themselves on a raft trip. Bikes, boots and four-wheelers provide drier ways to explore the area.

This morning, a hummingbird buzzes me as I ease into my muddy boots to head toward the main lodge. A duck greets me next. Then one of the sheepdogs, Duke. Peyton, a too-cute-for-words blond two-year-old (the newest addition to the Fosha family), is also making the rounds, followed closely by her mother, Justin’s wife Gretta, a former engineer who now runs the ranch office. The bright-eyed family matriarch, Randy Sue, is there to oversee our breakfast chuck. In a far-off previous life she was an X-ray tech. Ken was an engineer at a local ski hill before they acquired the ranch and topped his moustache with a cowboy hat. Justin is also an engineer and an MBA and his younger brother, Ryan, studies commercial aviation and civil engineering in the off-season.

Yet despite running this ranch for over three decades, the Fosha clan were themselves once dudes-a fact I take great comfort in. It means they know us. They know what we need. And they feel our pain. wl