On Horses and Meadowlarks

Cowboy Vacation Ideas

By Terri Mason

Sound and scent are human’s two predominant memory triggers. Scientists discovered that new mothers, while blindfolded, could distinguish their child out of a group of babies—just by sniffing the top of their head. We all know certain sounds trigger memories. This is why your wedding song floods your brain with images, and it’s also the reason why advertisers employ catchy jingles. Hum a fast-food tune and next thing you know, you’re pulling into the drive-through.

To me, one of the best scents in the world wafts from the tiny gland on a horse’s nose. (Whoever figures out how to bottle that will be a bazillionaire.) My favourite sound is the clear warbling notes of a meadowlark. Both these sounds and scents evoke memories of prairie days, horses I’ve known on pack trips and wagon trains, hawks wheeling under blue skies, the scent of warm canvas and laughing with friends as we splash across bubbling creeks.

Last summer I travelled quite a bit—on horseback, in wagons, pick up trucks and knuckle-whitening airplanes, crisscrossing the West for new and wonderful experiences. This coming summer I’ll be back at it again, attending pow wows at heritage sites like Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump (I love that place!) and hiking the boulders-as-big-as-a-house sarcophagus surrounding the Frank Slide Centre in the Crowsnest Pass. I’ll stop and listen in on some cowboy tales and take in the chore horse competition at the Bar U Ranch (some day I’ll enter) and go for a wagon tour at the Remington Carriage Center. I’m hoping a couple of pack trips are on the agenda, stays at a few guest ranches, lodges and perhaps, a teepee.

My fabulous sister Deb and I are planning a gold panning trip in B.C., digging for dinosaurs on an archeological site and fossil hunting in the badlands and somewhere in there, I’m going back to Saskatchewan to attend Cowboy U—again.

This year, pick one, pick ‘em all or pick something completely different for your summer adventure. There is a reason why people wing in from exotic lands to play and experience the West, there is no place—or people—friendlier than Westerners. So go ahead, ride a new trail, and I wish for you the clean scent of horses and the sweet song of the meadowlark on your Cowboy Country Vacation.

If the western lifestyle is your lifestyle, subscribe now to Canadian Cowboy Country magazine. www.canadiancowboy.ca or phone toll free: 1-800-943-7336.