Why I Love Westerns

So I'm sitting here in a community park, filling up to the brim with high mountain air, watching my husband and daughter try to outwit the fish.

Listening to the distant blaring of the pop music of a rib cook-off blending with the strong ceaseless rush of the river. The bubbling – not babbling, but bubbling – undertone of water on stone. Watching the sunlight toss sparkles across the rippling water and reach down to caress the river bed. Being surprised by the quick flight of wood ducks and a swallowtail. Wondering where the fish are.

Pushing through (thankfully thornless!) mountain roses and willows on the bank to get DD's hook out from where it's embedded in a snag and keeping a watchful eye on swinging rods.

Analyzing between all these thoughts why I love westerns so much.

(Momentary distraction cause we moved upriver and Daddy caught a fish! 🥳 Ok, now he's heading back to the car to stow the fish and DD and I are back to talking to the worms and listening to the river.)

But the love of westerns...

First the land. I love and appreciate other places, but I'm a Western girl. And it's the land itself. The land that gets in my bones, that feels like a second skin. The land that brings piercing joy and tears. And that's not just artistic license. It's such an intensity of emotions it's hard to write about sometimes. It has to be felt and breathed. Comfortable and familiar and wild and terrifying and thrilling… sometimes all at once.

(Sidenote: they've started biting -- three rainbow trout down at this point ! One, caught by DD, is a whopper – caught on a Teenage Mutant Ninjas pole.)

But westerns as a genre…

It's such a fertile medium for good storytelling. Things can easily be so raw and real.

And it lends itself so well to distilled character study. There can be a constant play between strength, courage and fear, cowardice, honor, fragility and frailty – sometimes within a single character.

Wisdom easily lives and grows in this air. Along with renewal and fresh life.

Plain speaking is prized.

I'll try to stop using the word distilled, but the characters can be pared back. And it's not just that men are men and women are women in some cliche sense. I've realized my favorite stories and characters in the genre often highlight the ability for men and women to stand together in strength, shoulder to shoulder, while (ultimately) able and unafraid to see each other's vulnerabilities at the same time, and to still respect each other.

So there are some of my thoughts on westerns today! I know it's technically after hours for the party this week, but since so much of this came out of my ruminations on it in the past few days, I'll go ahead and add in this post for posterity.

Hope you all have a lovely and safe long weekend.

(And we definitely found the local fishing hole here… Current count 8! I had to jump in on the action and got #7. 😅)