A little bit country, a little bit "destroy every gun"

Inside me there are two wolves: one that wants to get a nose ring and show up to the US Capitol with a picket sign and the other that yearns for a hoedown.

I grew up in a town of “I seens” and holsteins, where the farm dogs bay until 2 am and the lights come on at 4. It’s a town where chasing chickens through the cornfield was our idea of fun, a town where driving to and through Salt Lake City is spoken about like one of the trials of Job. If you don’t like country music, you’re going to have a hell of a time in the girls camp carpool, and if you aren’t a conservative, you’re going to have a hell of a time in church. It was a town I loved to live in as a kid and a town I loved to leave.

Most of the adults in my ward were kind to my parents, and by virtue of me being too shy to cause a ruckus, they were kind to me, too, but it sometimes felt like my siblings and I were fighting for our lives to feel included. None of us were particularly popular. None of us were farmers or ranchers or hunters, though my cousins were. None of us played organized sports like the other kids except my sister. Had that been qualifying, the fact that she tried out for the boy’s lacrosse team and made it, to the horror of every booster club mom in a 15-mile radius, wasn’t. There were in groups, and there were outliers, and we never quite made it in. I think sometimes, when I tell people I’m from Logan, it’s not just because it’s more recognizable. I think it’s because I felt belonging there, and I never fully felt that in my own town.

I’ve been in Salt Lake City for six years now, and it suits me. I love having trails five minutes away from downtown. I love being equidistance from three Trader Joe’s’ (Joes’?). I love that so many people in my community care about the things I care about. I love making myself sick on cream soda and peanut M&Ms at The Broadway while watching the whackiest independent film I’ve ever seen, and I love having access to every library in the county. As a kid, the best we had was the weekly visit from the Bookmobile. It rumbled slowly into the church parking lot every Thursday night around 6 pm, and I felt compelled to chase it like a dog after the mailman when it left. I always wanted a hometown library I could visit any day of the week. Now I have, like, 15.

Salt Lake has been kind to me. It’s held me through some hard shit, been a place to disappear into to figure stuff out. Lately, though, instead of moving deeper into urban spaces and further away from my roots, I’ve felt myself reaching back at them.

I recently splurged on a pair of Serious cowboy boots, relishing the pop of the leather as my feet slipped into the toe boxes. I made the mistake of confessing to several people without ears to hear that I’ve developed an appreciation for the scent of cow manure because it makes me feel like I’m home (we do not judge, we LISTEN). I decided that I might want to own a few chickens in the future, though that might have been spurned largely by anxiety, tbqh. I’ve listened to “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” at least 45 times in the past three months. Sometimes the radio in my car comes on and country music is playing and I don’t immediately change the station. Most damningly, I’ve had the strangest hankering to go to a Honky Tonk, which I consider a shattering development since I decided country dancing was forever ruined for me after an ex took me dancing just to leave me to rot against the wall while he danced with other girls all night because my dancing wasn’t that good.

I think I’ve warmed up to the fact that I grew up a country girl. Nostalgia has softened me towards many parts of it, even though a tiny part of me feels like I’m donning a costume every time I play country songs or yeehaw at a rodeo. I didn’t fit into that world as a kid and it was certainly hard to fit into it when the ranchers, cowboys, and farmers I grew up with took to Facebook every time I opened my trap to compare my “ilk” to Satan during Trump’s first presidency. I certainly don’t have boots and blue jeans politics if you consider boots and blue jeans politics to come with a certain red hat and a love of guns.

Then again, the rebel in me relishes the idea of claiming country culture for myself, enmeshing it with the person I am now and reshaping it however the hell I’d like to. How could it not in the era of Cowboy Carter and Midwest Princess snapback camo print hats? Powerful women claiming both their identities and their roots when they may not have felt accepted in the culture at large?

The country in me is as much a part of my identity as the woman who loves the sounds and smells of the city. I love the curve of a horse’s saddle and I love the feel of a bike saddle. I love watching the Walker Center tower blink red before a snowstorm and I love the cut of lightning over a field of summer wheat. I feel comforted by the sounds of frogs and crickets and I feel comforted (weirdly) by the sound of sirens bouncing off city walls. I love traversing crowds at the fair, and I love being among crowds at a protest. I call myself a bit of a granola, but I love a good rodeo.

Boot scootin’ sue me.