This weekend we celebrate the western heritage of Cortez in a traditional way: at the Ute Mountain Roundup Rodeo.

For 70 years, this rodeo has been a summer highlight, and now, in the year 2000, it’s as popular as ever. Locals still get dressed up in their rodeo clothes and come out by the hundreds, some to compete, some to watch, and the younger ones to take advantage of the carnival. It’s a good place to meet people you haven’t seen for a long time and catch up on what’s been happening.

It’s also a good time to get back to our rural roots. Rodeos were originally conceived as a way for cowboys and stockmen to compete in the skills that earned them their living: riding, roping, herding. Now most of us neither run cattle nor travel the rodeo circuit, but we still know those who do, and we still admire the skills

Rodeos don’t show us the Old West so much as they give us a glimpse of the real West, where ranching is still a way of life and where horses and cattle are more a part of the daily routine than are computers and drive-through windows. That’s a rich heritage, and it’s not one we should turn our backs on.

Rodeo, of course, showcases the most exciting parts of it. Other tasks are decidedly less glamorous: baling hay, directing irrigation water, repairing machinery (often the same machinery, over and over again), going to the bank for a loan, figuring out how to repay that money, mending the coveralls, and looking out the window, waiting for the rain and snow to fall. It seems as though there ought to be a rodeo competition for getting the stains out of the clothes worn during spectacular falls from bulls and broncs and equally spectacular skids through the dirt of the arena.