I am sitting outside the coffee shop that opens at seven and closes at five. These hours of operation mean I will never get to actually come here. I wonder if the inside is nice?

Outside, happy tourist families stroll by in their khaki shorts and athletic shoes. Everything they wear is so clean. I am reminded of my tourist-expedition childhood. It’s like a different world, these chipper, exploring people, arguing about where to eat tonight, and what well-organized activity will happen tomorrow. Bright lights be-spangle the hotel across from me, and the one up the street, and the one next to that. The mountains in the background are a hazy blue. Actually, it’s all a lot like Disney World. And nothing whatsoever like the place I will be sleeping in in just a few hours.

It’s a little pocket of… what? I don’t know how to describe it. Out here– this is the city, picked up and transplanted smack in the middle of the Rockies. There are a million ice cream stores (“there are not a million ice cream stores”), and nice cars, and happy beaches at the lake, and all the right groceries stores, and all the right restaurants… for only a few dollars more! It’s all so. Manufactured. But also, enticingly… okay. I don’t know. The people out here in Disney World pretend to be nice. Their clothes are clean. Their teeth are brushed. Their language is somewhat spotless (probably to do with the kids they all seem to proudly display).

Back over there, on the island among manure, in the bachelor pad to end all bachelor pads, at the house of horses… it’s dirty. Grimy. Vulgar. Sexist. Racist. Homophobic. Tough. And somehow, full of weird honor. It is very, very much like being on the boat last year (well, they were not as racist or homophobic). But to have this little society inset in this Disney World society, which itself is inset, literally, deep in the dangerous, wild, volitile Rockies, inset again– well, it just goes around and around. But to have them this close together? Well basically it’s freaking me out. It’s bizarre. Sometimes I think, who the heck are these weirdos buying ice cream across the street? (There really is a lot of ice cream.) Or the nice family in color coordinated outfits with their little stroller and Rockies baseball caps? Who are these strange city-like folk, and what are they doing around my ranch?

And then sometimes I look at them and think, my god, there they are, my people, so close. They, at least– the one with the faux hawk and the emo belt, and his girlfriend swaying to his citystyle beat, or the guy who looks just like my dad, but in a jungle explorer’s outfit– they understand! They won’t hate me! Which is assuming a lot, I know.

But it’s weird.

I am tired. Sore. Not like I thought I would be. Mostly my quads. From mounting and dismounting, I think. I’m really foolish at that. I’m too short! But I’ve gotten really good at spotting where on the trail I can use a rock, or a stump, or the uphill slope of grass, for a little mounting block. Today I practically lept onto my dratted guide horse Champ. My quads are getting theirs.

Champ. Champ is a pain. He and I had a serious discussion today. Today I rode another four hours (the first two on a different horse, a pretty sorrel who also caused me a lot of trouble… which all just amounts to the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing yet, and really I’m probably causing THEM a lot of trouble). The second ride, I led. Me and Champ, out front. It was all swell until Mr. Champ decided he wanted to run a lot. But I was supposed to keep the line really, REALLY slow so that no one got even a little behind. I had another guide, Andy, with me, and he kept yelling to “Slow up!” But Champ did not want to slow up. Eventually we worked things out, but there was some definite alpha negotiation occurring.

I painted a sign today that read, “No Alcohol Please”. Apparently Josh– he’s the boss out here, probably only 30ish, looks like 20 something– was worried some customer would get drunk and fall on the grill.

Did I mention we cook meals here? We do a cowboy breakfast (pancakes, sausage, eggs) every morning, and a steak dinner if we have people signed up for it. For breakfast, people eat up and head out on a two hour ride. For dinner, they do the ride first. They always eat way better after the ride than before it (at 7:30 am, I think, is when that starts). Anyway, tonight I had my second steak dinner in a row. And I mean, this is a steak dinner. Really, really good steak. I don’t know how to get over that.

Right now, as I’m typing this, and on the walk over before, everything looks, smells, and sounds like horses. A group of kids tugging each other across the street is one of our big Shires clopping slowly along. The man opening his hotel door is the knock of an impatient hoof. My bag is a horse’s head, staring at me with its big brown eye. I’m ready for it to turn so I can catch it: do I need to put a halter on? A bridal? Undo either of those? Tie the halter line up?

The morning starts again at 5:30 tomorrow. So I’ll be up at five. I wish we had tea or something to drink in the morning. Maybe I’ll buy some hot chocolate or something. That would be nice. All there is now is burnt coffee.

We’ll halter and saddle horses in the morning, trying to get it right for once. Send them out into the first pen with grainbags, and into the second without. They’ll chill out there, in the main pen, and we’ll pull the ones we need to the rail, and wait for the customers to come. But among that is all the cinching and checking and adjusting and cinching and uncinching and tying and untying. That is the most of it.

Well, my computer tells me it’s about 9. I’m exhausted and I need sleep. Tomorrow will be another long day. I don’t know if I will get a day off any time soon. It doesn’t matter. What would I do? Hang out in Disney World?

Tomorrow, maybe I’ll tell you about Laundry Boy.