Cowboy poets find home to roam

     Associated Press
      ELKO -- Motel rooms may be tough to find, but what the heck. There's little time for sleep when buckaroos, bards, ranchers and curious city folks show up by the thousands in this remote Nevada town for the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering.
      People cram into daytime sessions featuring cowboy songs, poems, fiddle-playing and humor. There are still other workshops on leather-working, blacksmithing, and what to do with the ranch if the younger generation isn't interested.
      When the day's over, people head for bars and hotels around town for dances and impromptu jam sessions that run far into the night. There's plenty of food and drink -- including a 5-pound hamburger on the menu at one restaurant that's free if you can eat it all in half an hour. If not, it's $18.
      In all, about 8,000 people made their way to Elko, population 20,000, for the 14th annual gathering -- including drovers, bards and fiddlers from Ireland and Wales whose storytelling and music traditions are the highlight this year.
      The Irish and Welsh presence created an odd mix of brogues and drawls, tweed caps and cowboy hats. But after a couple of days at the weeklong event, ending Sunday, the visitors from the other side of the Atlantic fit right in.
      "I feel perfectly at home here," said storyteller and farmer John Campbell, of Mullaghbawn in Northern Ireland. "This is a country town. You can see the mountains from here."
      Dublin folklorist Tom Munnelly, who helped to organize the Irish delegation, added, "As the week goes on, we find we have so much in common. People get together and an American song will remind us of an Irish song and an Irish song will remind an American of another song -- and it goes on like that all through the night."
      Irish balladeer Frank Harte adds, "It's a whole new thing, and I must say it's delightfully light. There's not a preponderance of academics talking down to an audience -- I don't think this audience would allow itself to be talked down to anyway."
      Wallace McRae of Forsyth, Mont., one of the best-known cowboy poets, says the Irish and Welsh fit in easily because "a lot of our musical and poetic roots came from the British Isles. There's a similar style of poetry that we write and recite -- a lot of country poets."
      "There is a connection -- although I don't think they do very well on horseback," he said, laughing.
      Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx of Wyoming, who joined McRae and others in a session on Western writing, added, "Country people are very much the same the world over -- conservative, hard-working, honest, square people whose word is their bond, and who move at a slower, more relaxed pace, knowing the worst waste of time is to hurry."
      Hal Cannon, one of the event organizers, says the common thread is "being grounded to the land and to animals, and to have a chance to be with people who are still rooted in that kind of life. I can just see people getting their souls nurtured here in a way that they can't get by watching the news or television."
      "Aspects of this may seem corny to some people, but not very much in my view," Cannon adds. "Most of the people who perform here feel deeply about what they're talking about."
      Cannon's point was made clear in a few lines sung by Colin Morris of Crickhowell, Wales:
      "The mountains of my homeland give so much joy to me.
      Where the cuckoo sings in springtime, and newborn lambs run free.
      The mountains of my homeland, where clear, cold streams do flow
      Snow-capped peaks in winter, where purple heather grows."
      But there's plenty of room for humorous songs and poems, recited and sung by ranch folks you'd expect to see on the back of a horse rather than at a podium.
      A good example is a limerick by Gwen Petersen of Big Timber, Mont.:
      "A cowboy hat's made with great pains
      To guard him from sunshine and rains,
      With a wide band for sweat
      So his eyes don't get wet,
      And a crown that's too big for his brains."