I’ve only got a little over a week left in Wyoming, but the time to come will mostly be spent outdoors, in the wilderness, as I am more akin to. Today, though, we were still in the wild, just a different version: a wild rodeo. Thematically, of course, rodeos are mostly a display of man’s glory over animals; his taming, or control, of the wild. So, while the bulls and broncos still have a kick to them, the whole show is about conquering it. Ironically, then, while this event was very human in nature, it was the most foreign to me. I’ve seen horse shows, some with bucking horses, but always saddled; never bareback, and never a bull.

To me, as well, I’ve never seen a show with so much animal harm. No deaths, thankfully (as is intended), but a lot of the shows, especially the cattle roping, looked rough on the animals’ part. The horses, too, while clearly trained for their tasks, were either worked hard and rarely given pats (as I saw with many of the horses actually broken in for riding) or were in a panicked state and had bucking straps on to further irritate them (as did the bulls). I’d never been confronted with such a show, and at face level, I would’ve assumed I would have hated it. Why do that to an animal? Why cause it so much pain?

And yet, as I watched, I was enamored. I was cheering along with the crowds. I was recording and taking pictures and admiring the skill of the animals and the people. What I thought would be me having to focus hard on being open-minded turned into me being sucked right in. I do, I will admit, have some background in farming: my father grew up on a farm with some livestock, and I got to hang around the farm when I was younger. But I never grew up on one myself; I never saw cattle be herded or roped or tackled to the ground; I certainly have no background in more western-style ranching. Yet still, I found myself appreciating the show and its homage to the American West. It gave praise to good cattle ranchers by showing off elite skill in roping cattle and calves, and in tackling cattle to the ground. It showed off good horsemanship through herding practices (sometimes done by accompanying cowboys who would guide livestock that the other cowboy would interact with, as is the relationship between the hazer [the guide] and the bulldogger [the tackler] in steer wrestling).

It all just sucked you in, seeing men and women (mostly men) fighting hard in their sports, holding tight atop angered animals or throwing lassos with jaw-dropping precision. Even the smaller shows, ones which took place between main attractions, like the foal race (where baby horses race a small distance to reunite with their mothers), never ceased to hold my attention (though they were so fast-paced – the action never stopping – that sometimes the true difficulty was keeping up).

And so, as I left the rodeo, finally left to my own thoughts again, I returned to where I had started. Did I really just cheer as steers were roped harshly by the horns and knocked swiftly to the ground by an accompanying lasso around their back legs? Did I really give praise while men on horses caught calves by the neck and flipped them to the ground at seemingly breakneck speeds? Did I really react in those ways, to those things, that I had always assumed alien and too harsh to be acceptable? I had.

I think this is why, in all honesty, I don’t think anything else on this trip will top the rodeo. It was an event so against my own beliefs and yet so enjoyable at the same time, and looking back, I realized why. While the rodeo definitely symbolized man’s domination over animals, it also symbolized years of harmony. Those calves that were slammed into the dust always got back up; always trotted away afterwards. In ranching, that process of roping and then releasing is used to brand/tag cattle to mark them as part of the herd. It was never meant to hurt them. Steer wrestling followed a similar idea. Bucking broncos were a homage to when men had to break wild horses to be ranching/riding horses, and even the ones in the show were either bred to buck or were horses that showed a liking to bucking in the first place (so, to a degree, they were doing what they “liked” to do). It all, as said before, came with history – human and animal history, which was being celebrated. Most of the brutality, then, was just nature, just as a wolf hunting a rabbit can be brutal but is still also natural.

I do still think they were a little rough at times, and while the bucking bulls are fun to watch, there isn’t much purpose beyond entertainment. I’ve learned, though, that a lot of “animal harm” isn’t that black-and-white. I joined this program as a civil engineering major dead set on making sure I wouldn’t be the type to, I don’t know, deforest a whole area with endangered species just to build a pointless parking garage or something of the like. I wanted to make sure I put nature at the top of my list. Rodeos, though, taught me it’s more than that. It’s about coexistence. The cowboy may be rough on the cattle, but he also protects them. The wolf may eat the rabbit, but it is to survive or to feed its pups. Nature is complex, and while I came here expecting nature to mean wilderness – to mean forests, streams, wild animals, and lush mountains – I’ve learned it means people, too. I’ve learned that moving forward in my degree, some harm is okay; that I have to understand that people are still part of nature, while still letting myself care about how much harm, especially if it is unnecessary, is being done. Truly, I don’t know quite where that line lies, and I think it changes by situation. The rodeo taught me to open up to answers beyond the extremes, to possibilities in the middle. It taught me to learn others’ perspectives, to learn human history alongside animal history, to weigh human needs with animal needs. It taught me to try to find that line, and to explore how it might not quite be where I first expected it. As a civil engineer, then, I want to get better at finding this line, at weighing human to animal needs and trying to find solutions that cater to both while still understanding that, to a degree, harm is inevitable, and human-caused harm, within limits, is just another part of life; another part of nature.