Lassoing Authenticity in the Wyoming High Country

The delicious rain had ended by morning. It had been replaced by fog. The drought had gone on so long, that I had forgotten what fog was like. It had become almost exotic.

Out of that fog rode a man on horseback. He cut quite an impressive figure. Playing a hunch I said "only one dog today," in Spanish. He understood. But my Spanish has weakened over the years since I have stopped going to Mexico in my RV.

Indeed he was a pastor, a shepherd, and was from Peru. He was here for cinco meses, five months. A previous summer he had worked near Elko, Nevada. But he wasn't just visiting me on a social call. He pulled out several batteries that needed recharging.

How ironic! This hombre lived in a tent for those five months, rather primitively, in a manner reminiscent of the 1800s; perhaps as primitive as the pioneers who traveled the valley a few miles from this ridge, on their way to Oregon or California. Yet he had two Samsung smartphones that needed recharging. He also had a small solar panel at his tent, but the rain had rendered it useless for a day or two.

How could he feel at ease talking to someone who spoke broken Spanish? Ahhah, this might work: I got a chair out of the van and made him a cup of Cafe Bustelo (from Cuba). As his batteries charged we struggled to converse. A person's brain can get so tired with a language barrier! First he asked about mi esposa and my ninos.  He must have thought a man who had none was a real loser. But he smiled when hearing about my novia: my dog, Coffee Girl.

Senor O from Peru. Much more Indigenous-looking than Spanish, wouldn't you say?

Those smartphones were such a comfort to him. They worked on Trac Fone service. He talked frequently to his wife and children. I think there were three children. He said the youngest one, a little girl, cried when she talked to her papa. 

I tried to connect as one human being to another by saying, "Pobre chica," to that, with all the intonation I could. Intonation is very helpful when trying to communicate over a language barrier. As with pantomine, we fall back on intoned grunts, hmms, and ahhs as if they are universally understood. Why would a horizontal twist of the head be universally understood as the negative, and an up-and-down motion of the head be affirmative? Why would raising the pitch of our voice at the end of a sentence be a universally understood clue  for a question?

How universal is the shrug of the shoulders or a laugh, with the laugh breaking into different meanings? It is difficult to imagine the evolution of language amongst human beings. 

He said that only that one dog was his friend, his companero. (Gotta learn to make an n tilde on a windows keyboard.) His dog, Toby, had a sore ankle. I gave "Senor O" a roll of Vet-Wrap for the dog's ankle.

My Spanish was coming back during our conversation, in part because I had an offline translation app on my phone!

For some reason he wanted me to notice the lasso resting on the pommel of the saddle. Normally you think of that as a tool for a vaquero of cattle, not for a shepherd of sheep, los borregos. He ate some of his sheep.

Finally the batteries were charged up and he put everything back in the saddlebags of the horse.  What a wonderful travel experience this had been! If only it happened more often. It surprised me how he just took off without saying anything, so I offered an "Hasta Luego," which he returned in kind. 

But I'm not sure there will be a 'Later', because I never learned where his tent was. I really wanted to visit him there and learn about his food and accommodations.  It looked like I would just have to settle for watching him ride off silently, back into the fog of the high Wyoming ridgeline whence he came.