PaulGerhart Illustration:Maya Ichikawa

IT'S BEEN A LONG DAY, but the work's done, and now it's campfire and supper and a bit of entertainment before sleep and the next day's cattle drive. It's miles to the closest settlement; and the nearest MP3 player, television, or even radio is still further away; decades into the future, so the entertainment is all live and right here.

Maybe some tall tales or other stories are told. Then someone sings a ballad to a harmonica accompaniment that manages to sound like it's coming from way off on the horizon, rather than just a couple of feet away.

Or it's 2008 and you're at a cowboy poetry gathering. Cowboy poetry? Well, in one sense the title captures it-poetry about the old west. However it goes beyond that. "Cowboy poetry," says Anne Stevick, one of the organizers for the Pincher Creek Cowboy Poetry Gathering in June, "is basically a way of continuing the cowboy culture that has been passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation." And, according to the Alberta Cowboy Association's website, "Cowboy poetry comes straight from the heart. It is an honest expression of western life as experienced by the men and women who write it."

For the full story pick up the current issue of Lethbridge living Magazine