When I was in my 20's I moved from Wisconsin to Salt Lake City. Back then there was a caravan of non-Mormons who would drive to Evanston, WY for liquor runs and stock up due to the draconian laws for liquor at that time in Utah.

Our very first trip we were driving through town looking for a liquor store and realized we were hungry, pulled into a Pizza Hut restaurant and went in, ate and left. As we walked out, right across the parking lot was a small, dilapidated building surrounded by a dirt lot. Like the parking lot ended and wilderness began and here was this building. It looked like a shed. And outside the door was a cowboy, and I mean a genuine cowboy standing with his back against the store next to the door, one boot up sole against the wall and thumbs in his belt loop. He looked about 70 and his skin looked like sandblasted leather. I swear there was sand in the creases of his face.

So we walk to our car and are jumping in when the cowboy's eye catches mine. I nodded slightly and he tipped the brim of his cowboy hat at us. I thought it was some sort of LARP thing it was so cliche.

Anyway we drive off and find a liquor store in the same plaza, and while we were there I asked about the "cowboy" at that shed. Apparently he was no LARPer. The guy was some sort of local legend and was almost 100 years old. The shed he was by was the last vestige of his family's ranch that had been there since the mid 1800's and he still did farrier work out of it. They said he was just like a picturebook cowboy and he loved and lived that life and everyone looked at him like a living legend, a fairy tale.

I wish I could remember his name. He was one of the coolest motherfuckers I had ever seen and it's been 30+ years and I STILL want to be that cowboy. Not the cowboy part, but the being all of one piece part, picking a path and loving it and embracing it fully.