I had a pleasant morning. The kind I dream of. Waking up easy. Morning coffee. A little movement. Some meditation. Writing. I’m watching my grandma’s dog. He slept in very late for his little doggy lifestyle. He’s up now, rubbing his face into the couch. He knows no personal space. He likes to walk right on my belly after I sit on Grandma’s recliner. Just a cowboy of a chihuahua, really.

There’s so much to write about, I’m a bit lost. Where’s the most juice for the squeeze?

The cowboy hat shop

I’m still working part-time at the cowboy hat shop. It’s only my second week. The owners have left to return to Italy, where the bulk of their manufacturing operation is for the hats. I actually really like the job and the company. And I’m holding down the fort while they’re gone. There might be opportunities for me to sell hats wholesale on the road. Imagine me: a traveling hat salesman. I mean, come on. That’s just too good.

It’s been a good kind of structure for my days. Keeps me in working mode, which I tend to avoid if I’m left totally to my own devices. I’m learning a lot about the businesses I’d like to have myself: retail, wholesale, and manufacturing. About how people buy and what they care about. And maybe most surprisingly, I’m learning about the Western world. The real one. Not the movie version.

I spent yesterday looking up all the Rodeos in a 9-hour radius. It’s pretty incredible how many there are. I grew up outside D.C.—we had heard of rodeos, but they felt like some fringe, novelty event. I had no idea they were alive and well and absolutely beloved across the country.

Rodeos are one of the last remaining sacred rites of land-based life in America. That’s not an exaggeration. They’re not just about bucking broncos and bulls. They’re celebrations of skill, grit, animal connection, and the work of real hands. Ranching isn’t glamorous. It’s not a startup pitch. It sure as hell is not crypto. It’s sweat. It’s discipline. It’s communion with the land. Rodeos are the place to gather and honor that.

They’re a way for rural communities to celebrate what they actually do. You don’t win a rodeo with a slick pitch deck or an inflated title. You win it with time in the saddle. With calloused hands and a calm center. You win it because your relationship to the land, to your animal, and to your craft has been earned.

And—this part really matters—it’s done in the name of God. Many rodeos open with a prayer. With flags held high. With a reverence for something greater than ourselves. Not in some performative, dogmatic way. But in the kind of way that comes from spending a life working with animals and dirt and weather and death and new life. You have to believe in something bigger out here. You can’t fake your way through it.

What do cities have that’s like this?

You could say sports, maybe. But there’s a spectacle to modern sports that’s... different. It’s more entertainment than embodiment. There’s less reverence. More profit than process. Big lights and shit talking.

The only thing I can think of that resembles rodeos in city life is... award ceremonies. And that makes me want to literally throw up. You know, the kind where people give speeches for crashing the housing market just slightly less than the other guy. Or for winning an innovation grant for a tech tool that makes people lonelier. It’s all so disconnected. The awards aren’t for real skill. They’re for strategy. Positioning. Who you know. Who you sucked up to.

There’s not much in cities that’s rooted in land, in God, in honest work. Rodeos remind me that some people are still living lives where those things matter. Where they’re the point. Where you fall off and get back up—not because someone’s watching, but because that’s just what you do.

There’s a quiet kind of pride in the rodeo circuit. A knowing. These are people who wake up with the sun and go to bed with the sore muscles to show for it. They raise animals, they raise families, and they raise the flag. And once a year, or a few times a season, they gather to celebrate all of that. To cheer each other on. To show the kids what perseverance looks like. It’s an old-school I think we should make new-school. And that’s beautiful.

We spend so much time talking about what’s new. What’s next when you live in the city, work in vaporware, and build your life around your high-rise apartment. Cities are machines for momentum. You’re never still. You’re always optimizing, iterating, reaching. But for what?

When my dad was here in Montana, she made some comment like, I can’t believe there’s any water left. Referencing something about global warming.

It wasn’t sarcastic. It was genuine disbelief.

And I thought to myself: God, you really gotta get out of the city.

Because that’s what happens in those concrete ecosystems: your sense of reality gets warped. Your timeline gets hijacked. You start to believe the headlines more than your own senses. You read another climate doom article, and you assume the world is already burning. That there’s no more water, no more hope, no more time.

But out here? The rivers are still running. The rain is still falling. The snow still comes and goes in its ancient rhythm. Trees are growing. Calves are being born. The land is doing what it’s always done. Yes, the planet is changing, but it’s not gone. Not out here, anyway.

The doomsday you’re bracing for in the city doesn’t even have a place to land out here.

And that’s the problem with the way we’ve built city life—it doesn’t just disconnect you from the land, it disconnects you from reality. From faith. From the things that hold when everything else changes.

Out in the country, you see life and death. You feel the seasons. You work with your hands. You get close to animals and people and food, and consequences. And rodeos are one of the few remaining celebrations of that. They remind us what matters. What lasts. What doesn’t age.

Not your iOS version. Not your job title. Not your newest tattoo or Botox routine.

A good life.

Good land.

And God.

That stuff that stays steady. That’s what I’m learning. That’s what I’m building my life around. Not vaporware. Not vibes. But real things. True things. Things that ground you—not just in a place, but in yourself.

Love,
Val