Divided #12 – Day 77
Before leaving Oregon, we met Ernie Rios, an 78 old ranch hand, who could neither write nor read. He was a truly hard working man, that started to work on a ranch before completing school. He had worked on the same ranch for over 50 years, didn’t have any vacations nor much free days. No free Thanksgivings or Christmas days. Only once in his life he had taken a short vacation. After driving for 200 miles he got lost, so he asked somebody how to get back to his hometown. He confessed to us, that this had been the furthest he had ever been away from his town.
Shortly after meeting Ernie, we crossed into Idaho, a bit sad leaving Oregon behind us, a state that had been as good to us as few before: Fascinating people, great portraits and spectacular landscapes. But soon enough we found out, that Idaho had as much to offer as its neighboring state.
16 years ago, when we did the project “About Americans”, we had photographed the smokejumpers in McCall, Idaho. It’s a group of elite firefighters that jumps with parachutes out of planes to fight wildfires. We try to stay away from portraits we had done in our previous US project in our previous work. The one exception was the smokejumpers. As we did back then, we just knocked at their door and told them that we would love to shoot a portrait of a few of them. What was rather easy back then proved to be a bit more tricky this time. Smokejumpers are employed by the Forest Service and are therefore government employees. The base commander was slightly uncomfortable about us showing up unannounced and wanted to get clearance from his supervisors in Washington DC. But there was a reason why we just showed up. While working on this project we found out, that a lot of officials are rather nervous about working with media and decline a request that would have been aproved without a problem back in 2003. It is our believe that this has a lot to do with the current political situation and a very polarized atmosphere in the States.
In the end our plan worked out. The smokejumpers themselves were all for our project and since the base commander couldn’t get a hold of anybody in DC, he preferred to look the other way. It also helped that one of the guys we had photographed 16 years ago, was still working there and was even on duty the day we showed up.
Another reminder of our passed road trip came in Dillon, Montana. Back then, we had stayed in that small town in Western Montana and for dinner we had burgers in a small nondescript restaurant in its center. Ever since then Monika had claimed that this was the best burger she ever had. A claim that was contested by Mathias who gave that seal of approval to the burgers at Diners in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. To our own surprise, we found the restaurant again, Papa T’s. After another burger dinner, Mathias had to concede: These really were the best burgers!
After enjoying a beautiful 4th of July fireworks at historic Virginia City, we were on our way to Yellowstone Park. We spent 2 days there and while we very much enjoyed the spectacular beauty of America’s first National Park, we also had to admit that going there on the 4th of July weekend was probably not the best idea. There are few places where we have ever seen more tourists. There must have been a thousand tourists for every buffalo in the park. But not only Americans who were enjoying their national holiday. There were also whole armies of Chinese and Indians equipped with countless cameras to shoot selfies from every conceivable angle. A development which has even led to a new type of accident in Yellowstone. The selfie animal attack. Selfie enthusiasts who turn their back towards an animal and walk backwards towards it to get a better picture, until they get attacked.
But we didn’t only see tourists, we were lucky enough to see 5 bears, one of them crossing the highway right in front of our car early in the morning.
But we weren’t too sad to leave Yellowstone behind us after 2 days, to arrive in the real Wyoming, America’s cowboy state. And a cowboy state it is indeed! We got a real taste of it at the Cody Rodeo. Cody, the city founded by Buffalo Bill at the end of the 19th century, is a real frontier town that prides itself to be the world’s most famous rodeo.
We were welcomed with open arms at the rodeo grounds and became part of the rodeo family for 24 hours. We were well impressed by the skillfulness of these cowboys and cowgirls. Their horses were extraordinarily well trained and it seemed they were one with their animals, when they were chasing steers with ropes or did barrel racing in the arena. But what impressed us even more were the bronc and bull riders. These were highly trained athletes who had to be very skillful to stay for 8 seconds on a bucking horse or steer. While we were working at the rodeo, shooting portraits and video material, Elias befriended the son of one of the rodeo cowboys. As a result we have now a little cowboy travelling with us who is sporting not only cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, but also a toy revolver.
