“Stories and stories- a storyteller has all kinds of stories going at one time out of which he hopes he can find one story he can tell at one time. ”

— NORMAN MACLEAN- YOUNG MEN AND FIRE

Just getting bucked off certainly doesn’t qualify as a wreck. But that buckskin wasn’t done with me. Although he had about 150,000 acres to choose where to run, he chose to make a 100-yard circle and come right back at the stunned cowboy standing there hatless, surrounded by remnants of a Walkman and a Marshall Tucker tape.

Southern Oregon’s ZX Ranch operates on over a million acres and is an outfit every cowboy wants to work for at least once.

When we arrived, we were greeted by a fresh bear claw mark down the logs of the wall that held the door. Talk about welcoming! There was no plumbing and no electricity.

When I rolled up to Binion's in 1975 with no more than a week's riding lessons to prepare me for a summer cowboying, Wade was the first cowboy's hand I shook as I got out of my parent's station wagon. I was twelve and he was 24, fresh out of Vietnam.