This month's festival pick...

National Cowboy Poetry Gathering

By Patrick Totty

In Deep Winter, In the “Great Empty,” Elko’s Cowboys Versify

The February 2001 issue of National Geographic Adventure featured a cover story called “Exploring Empty America – the strange land beyond the end of the road.” In it, two young men set out to find the most remote areas left in the Lower 48 United States. They weren’t looking for official wildernesses, though some of the areas they visited had such areas at their core. What they sought were places where roads, people and any sort of government presence, such as ranger stations, were so scarce that even the most experienced hikers and four wheelers would have serious doubts about traversing them.

In the end, they found several chunks of “wide open,” including a cluster of three contiguous desert areas in southwestern Oregon and northwestern Nevada that covers 45,000 square miles. In this area, the size of Pennsylvania, the biggest town is Elko, Nevada, a Great Basin settlement 0f 35,000 halfway between Reno and Salt Lake City.

Even that population figure is almost brand spanking new: Elko experienced a mining boom in the 1990s that swelled its population and pushed its county population close to 60,000.

But outside of Elko and its neighboring townships, there’s not much. There’s some miners, some Basque sheepherders, some hermits and those 45,000 square miles of Big Empty.

And then there are the cowboys. They range over some of the roughest high desert on the continent, driving tough, skinny cattle that are far cries from the contented critters marketers feature in TV milk ads. Cowboys there spend most of their lives outdoors, following cattle and the seasons. The only season where they can really slack off a little is winter. So it is no surprise that in late January, the depth of winter, the region’s cowboys trek into Elko and put on one of the most famous poetry exhibitions in the world, the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering.

The Gathering started in 1985, and as the sweetly improbable idea of cowboy poetry took hold, it soon gained national and worldwide renown. So, in its 18^th edition, from Jan. 26 through Feb. 2, 2002, a cast of cowboys, cowpoke wannabes, townspeople and folks from hundreds and thousands of miles away will come together in a small, cold, isolated, desert town to light up the winter with poetry. Held at venues all over Elko, the Gathering will feature poetry readings, story telling, dinner theater performances, musical jamborees and even appearances by cowboy poets from other countries.

There will also a full slate of workshops, with topics ranging from poetry writing and introduction to swing dance and survival strategies for women ranchers. 

Because Elko is the biggest burg along the 500-mile stretch between Salt Lake City and Reno, it has plenty of accommodations, including ones attached to casinos. There’s regular air service from Reno, Salt Lake City and Boise.

Visiting the Gathering is not a stock vacation. Elko isn’t Florence, the Great Basin isn’t Provence and January is no picnic. But it would be hard to find a more out-of-the-ordinary, all-American cultural event to take home someday and share with your grandchildren.