Nicky Demitry '26
Production Editor
To the new 1Ls who are not from here, welcome to Virginia! We are entering the best time of the year for pretty much anything outdoors. And while the vineyards, breweries, and scenic hiking trails are excellent places to spend time as the weather cools down, autumn also happens to be the tail end of rodeo season in Virginia. And if you haven’t been to a rodeo, it might be a good time to do so. You never know if someone is going to ask if this is your first rodeo, to which you must be able to confidently reply, “Actually, no, I have been to exactly one (1) rodeo, thank you very much.”
The 2024 Rockfish River Rodeo kicked off at Blue Toad Hard Cider this past Saturday, which is about forty-five minutes outside of Charlottesville in the heart of local vineyard and distillery territory. Blue Toad itself is nestled in Rockfish Gap, which is a wind gap set in the Blue Ridge Mountains, also called Afton Mountain. And if you’re wondering what a wind gap is, it’s a gap where there used to be a river (or some other form of waterway) but that is now dry due to stream capture. Another notable local wind gap is the OG Virginia and Tennessee Railroad crossing out in Bedford County. It is absolutely not worth visiting unless you want to buy meth. Look at us learning!
Rockfish River Rodeo is on the smaller side, which is a relief for me and makes it an ideal first-timer rodeo, as the upcoming Max Meadows Pro Rodeo and the Orange County Rodeo[1] put on in part by the Bureau of Land Management are massive events and can be overwhelming. I have also personally found that smaller rodeos center the well-being of the animals involved appropriately, which is something that can often be missing at bigger commercial rodeos. My favorite part of this year’s rodeo was the absolute unbothered nature of the bulls tasked with bucking off their various cowboys and cowgirls. Immediately upon unseating their rider, every single bull immediately stopped bucking, did the cow equivalent of yawning, and then walked itself back into the chute with quite literally no urging from the folks tasked with bull guidance/rider safety.
The two cowboys on horseback waiting with lassos eventually ended up lasso-ing a bull already headed back inside, just because it was near the end of the event and they seemed to be like, “We should do this, right? Kinda feels weird if we don’t.”
The bull who got lasso’d truly seemed mystified as he paused his walk back to the chute, looked at the rope, looked at the cowboy, and then continued to walk off. And for the mini bull riding portion, where kids try their hand at bull riding, at least two of the bulls just stood there nonplussed as rodeo staff performed an energetic interpretive dance in an effort to induce bucking. There is something delightful about a tiny figure in boots and a cowboy hat sitting firmly atop an equally small cow, both stock-still, while everyone around them hoots and hollers before throwing up their hands and giving up.
This may not be what the rodeo planners necessarily wanted out of the bull riding portion of the event, but it does mean that the bulls were not being induced to buck with any of the coercive or cruel tactics employed at other types of animal shows. If there’s one thing farm people can agree on, it’s that horses, cows, and all other forms of livestock are going to do what they’re going to do, and that frequently means doing the opposite of what you might be asking them to do. While I don’t miss the endless manual labor of living on a farm, I do miss ornery, opinionated animals and the unhinged ways in which we form co-existent relationships (“Go change, you can’t wear those coveralls around Tug, he hates the yellow and he’ll bite.”) that are based on mutual symbiosis and loving irritation rather than subservience. And hey, if we wanted mindless servitude, we’d just go into a profession that wholeheartedly endorses working 80-hour (or more) weeks as peons for enormous faceless multinational corporations!
This particular rodeo is put on by Ashton Beebe, owner of Indian Summer Guide Service,[2] who I met during a particularly fun day spent gallivanting around local vineyards on horseback, which is another off-the-beaten-path activity here in Virginia I highly recommend. You don’t need horse experience, and it’s such a fun and unique way to learn about Virginia's history, wine, and also some of the more relevant environmental and agricultural conversations currently happening in Virginia. It is my firm belief that we as law students really need to touch grass every once in a while, and there’s no better way to touch grass than in the company of grass’s number one aficionados (horses, it’s a horse joke, idk).
So if you ever wanted to drink a Coors Banquet whilst watching events such as Mutton Busting (children riding/wrestling/engaging in tactical warfare with sheep), bull riding, and cattle roping, it may be time to put a rodeo on your schedule before we head into the dark times of winter and finals.
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ncd8kt@virginia.edu