Spring, this year at least, is for cowboys and cowgirls.
This month alone, the country star Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time hit No. 1 on Billboard for the 19th time, breaking the record for most weeks at the top for a country album (a feat previously held by Garth Brooks’s 1991 classic Ropin’ the Wind), and Beyoncé’s Texas Hold ’Em topped the Hot Country Songs chart (making the Cowboy Carter crooner the first Black woman to do so).
Frontier fantasies are also front and center in fashion and art. The third collection from Louis Vuitton Men's Creative Director Pharrell Williams, Beyoncé’s longtime collaborator, updated the American western wardrobe with stetson hats done with saddle embossing, parfleche motifs hand-painted by artists from the Dakota and Lakota nations, and vaquero-inspired prints “aged as if eroded by the prairie sun.”
Bucking “long-held assumptions about the cowboy’s relationship to land” is also the principal thrust of two recent art shows: Cowboy, a sprawling exhibition of works by Rafa Esparza, Stephanie Syjuco and Gregg Deal on view at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, and a solo show of Richard Prince’s pioneering cowboy photographs at the Gagosian in New York.
A growing spotlight is also being cast on the real, lived experiences of rancheros around the world. In Colombia, Parque Nacional Natural Serranía de Manacacías, a new national park along the Manacacías River, made headlines for conservationists teaming up with the traditional ranchers who have long roamed the region’s grassy hills and forests of Mauritius palms. In April, the top wranglers in the Philippines will descend on the island province of Masbate to test their bull-riding bravado at the annual Rodeo Masbateño, a sporting event that doubles as a riotous celebration of the country’s biggest and baddest buckaroos.
So, saddle up. Here are 10 novel ways to vacation on the range, from a new social club on a ranch in Big Sky to hoseback tapas in Andalucia to a modernist homestead in New Zealand high country.
Montana
These days, people may associate Big Sky with Yellowstone, the hit series about a defiant ranch family patriarch played by actor Kevin Costner who hopes to prevent cold-blooded East-Coast developers from ruining the bucolic character of Montana. But to a growing legion of cross-country cowboys and rural romantics, it is best known for Lone Mountain Ranch. With guided access to Yellowstone and some 45 miles of packed and groomed trails, the ranch offers some of the finest skiing, hillside log houses and blue skies in the country.
Set against a breathtaking mountain backdrop, the ranch’s good ol’ fashioned Montana cookouts, horse corrals and weekly on-property rodeo shows send a clear message: Respecting the land and preserving the old ways are both enviable and exclusive acts. This past December, the property’s current stewards, the hospitality group Auric Road, launched Auric Room 1915, a social club for on-ranch guests like Kate Bostworth and Noah Kahan. In addition to being a no-iPhone zone (“allowing members to step back in time before the distraction of cellphones to engage,” according to the ranch's website), the club’s 40 “liquor lockers” can be leased as storage for rare whiskeys, antique scotches and bottles of vintage.
