Page 147 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

Tommy Jones from the feed store is already somehow holding a corndog before ten in the morning, which feels morally informative.

Carl Benson is talking too loudly near the bleachers. Margaret O’Hara is pretending not to listen while absolutely listening.

Riley from the Silver Bit is leaning on a rail looking like he’s personally responsible for at least three bad decisions in this town.

I grin behind the camera. Because this is the town.

I catch Dakota near one of the vendor rows, one hand on the slight curve of her stomach when she thinks no one’s looking, smile soft and luminous in a way that still makes me weirdly emotional.

Sawyer is with her, and Clint stands half a step too close in the way men do when they adore something and think maybe if they hover hard enough the universe can’t take it back.

I take the shot.

Then another.

Then one where Dakota glances up and spots me, laughs, and points the tiniest accusing finger because she knows exactly what I’m doing.

Good.

Perfect.

The first competition events start with the usual explosion of noise. Announcer voice booming, crowd rising and settling, the rhythmic metallic clink of gates, chutes, and things much larger than people deciding whether or not to cooperate.

I move toward the fence line and photograph until my wrists ache.

Dust and adrenaline.

Boots and blood where a rider catches his knuckles wrong and shakes it off because pride is apparently a medically recognized painkiller around here.

Wranglers hauling gates.

A bull throwing his entire existence at six seconds of human bad judgment.

Faces in the stands, children, old ranchers, tourists, women with careful lipstick and dangerous eyes, all lit with the same hungry focus.

Colter Creek comes alive at the rodeo and I don’t feel like I’m standing at the edge of it looking in through glass.

I’m in it. Moving through it. Working inside the pulse instead of around the outside.

The realization hits me unexpectedly hard.

I’ve spent weeks feeling observed here. Measured, circled, treated like either a complication or a curiosity depending on the room.

But now, weaving through the grounds with my camera and my bag and my boots coated in dust, people greet me like I belong in the frame.

“Annie, over here!”

“Did you get that one?”

“You taking shots for the ranch competition too?”

“Tell me you got Sammy yelling at the portable fence guy because that was art.”

I laugh more than I mean to, I say yes where I can, I promise copies where it makes sense. I work, and for a few precious hours, being here doesn’t feel like trespassing, it feels earned.

By midday the ranch competition starts drawing a bigger crowd, and I make my way closer to the lineup because of course the Harlans are riding.

Of course they are.