A Saturday in Bastrop – Cowboy Poetry

There aren’t many events left where the main attractions are folding chairs, acoustic guitars, and people who know how to coil a rope properly.

So naturally, I drove to Bastrop.

It was the first year of the Lone Star Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Bastrop, scheduled back-to-back with a similar gathering in Alpine, Texas — as if the organizers were quietly daring the faithful to make the long drive twice. They probably did.

The event was spread across town — the Convention Center, the Historical Museum, even the library and it felt like the kind of thing that hasn’t quite been “discovered” yet. The hip Austin crowd hadn’t arrived in curated boots and ironic hats. Not yet.

That will come.

For now, it belonged to the people who showed up because they meant to be there.

Volunteers smiled like they’d been waiting all year for this weekend. Which, in truth, they probably had.

I arrived before lunch and wandered into the first session, held in a venue that included a movie theater, bowling alley, game room, and a small showroom reminiscent of Zanies Comedy Clubs. The entrance fee was ten dollars, lunch required. Nothing fancy.

The session offered a blend of cowboy poetry and music, presented without elaborate lighting or special effects — just a performer in a white hat, jeans, and well-worn boots, planted firmly on a modest stage with a guitar. The guitar shone under lights that had probably illuminated high school graduations and city council meetings before this. A banjo leaned nearby, waiting its turn.

Two poets sat respectfully in folding chairs, hands folded, waiting for their chance.

The first poet didn’t rush.

That struck me.

In a world that seems to operate at double speed, this room operated at horse pace.

The microphone crackled a little.

The poems weren’t complicated. They were about rope burns and missed cattle, about weather that doesn’t cooperate and neighbors who do. They were funny in that dry way that sneaks up on you — the kind where you don’t laugh immediately because you’re still deciding if it’s true.

And then you laugh because it is.

Between sessions I studied the program — “Cowboy Humor,” “Making a Hand,” “Rattlin’ Rocks,” “Spurs That Jingle.” Titles that feel like chapter headings in a life most of us only brush against. Four sessions a day, each about ninety minutes, rotating music and verse.

What struck me most wasn’t nostalgia.

It was continuity.

These weren’t museum pieces reciting lines from a vanished West. They were working storytellers. Some younger than I expected. Some older. All carrying forward a rhythm of language that belongs to open land and long drives.

Bastrop felt like the right place for it — close enough to Austin to borrow its energy, far enough away to keep its own pace. The Colorado River sliding through town. Brick storefronts. Pickup trucks backed into angled parking spots. A Buc-ee’s next door, just in case you needed brisket jerky and gasoline at the same time.

At one point I looked around the room and noticed something simple: no one was checking their phone.

That alone might have been worth the trip.

I left in the late afternoon light with that steady guitar still echoing somewhere in my head. Not because it was flashy. Because it was honest.

There’s something grounding about sitting in a room where words still matter — where a story has to stand on its own legs without a screen behind it.

It reminded me why I like writing in the first place.

Sometimes the long road between things isn’t measured in miles.

Sometimes it’s measured in stories.

Trapper Sets the Record Straight

By Annie MacKenzie

One of the highlights of the afternoon was Annie MacKenzie — young, composed, and already carrying herself like someone who understands the tradition she’s stepping into.

Cowboy poetry has its staples: horses, weather, stubborn cattle, and dogs. Especially dogs. So when Annie began a story about her dog, Trapper, it felt comfortably familiar — roping practice, a calf that wouldn’t cooperate, dust in the air, and a human convinced the problem was everything but herself.

The audience settled in.

She described the dog working, working the rope, trying to ease a calf into the pen, confidence slightly outpacing results. Heads nodded. A few knowing chuckles rippled through the room. Most of us have attempted something that looked easier in someone else’s hands.

And then she did something that made every writer in the room sit up a little straighter.

Midway through, she shifted perspective.

Suddenly Trapper was telling the story.

From the dog’s point of view, Annie’s roping strategy was… open for discussion. The calf wasn’t the issue. The rope wasn’t defective. The human at the end of it? That required review.

The humor landed cleanly. No slapstick. No exaggeration. Just the calm authority of a dog who clearly believed he could manage the operation better if given the rope.

It was clever — but more than that, it was crafted. The turn felt natural yet surprising, breathing new life into a scene that could have stayed safely traditional.

Here was a young poet who honors the cowboy tradition — steady delivery, unhurried pacing, respect for the room — yet isn’t afraid to bend the structure just enough to make it her own.

By the end, Trapper had not only narrated the roping fiasco but gently exposed a universal truth: sometimes the rope isn’t what needs adjusting.

The room laughed.

And nodded.

Because we all know which end of that rope we’ve been holding.