The original cowboy poet

Bill Lowman says there are two kinds of cowboy poets.

There are those who love the life, but don’t have an opportunity to live it.

“We call (them) the wannabes. They’ll write the perfect cowboy poem every time to prove that they belong,” Lowman says.

The other ones live the cowboy life. Their routines are all too common.

“We don’t think it’s worth writing about unless something unusual happens, then it’s worth recording,” Lowman says.

Anyone who knows Lowman considers him North Dakota’s original cowboy poet. That’s quite a feat for a man who struggled with severe dyslexia his entire life without a diagnosis until he was in his 40s.

“I started writing poetry to record stuff and to do something constructive with the mind, you know, and just for family,” he says.

One of his poems, “Ma’s Christmas Tree,” was written to record an event in Lowman family lore. Lowman and Badger Gray, a family horse, went to retrieve a Christmas tree in a section of cedar breaks on their Wanagan Creek Ranch, served by Goldenwest Electric Cooperative, 20 miles northeast of Sentinel Butte in the Badlands. Lowman went for quite a ride after the rope got caught in the horse’s tail, and by the time the ordeal was over, ma’s tree was nothin’ but a twig!

Bill’s wife, JoAnn, got such a kick out of the poem, she submitted it to the family section editor of North Dakota Living, Jo Ann Winistorfer, who published it in the magazine in the mid-1980s. Soon after, that poem was discovered by the state’s folklorist, and Bill received an invite to represent North Dakota at the inaugural National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev.

While Bill was inspired by his time in Nevada with fellow cowboy poets from across the country, one press reporter from Chicago said there were “Montana cowboy poets” and “North Dakota plowboy poets.”

“That put a burr under my saddle. It’s a cheap limerick,” he says. “You know, we had more cowboy bronc riders and cowboys in North and South Dakota than all of Montana put together.”

That comment was all the fuel Bill needed. He determined to show the rest of the country cowboy poetry was alive and well in his corner of the world, and the Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering was born.

This year marks the 40th annual Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering. It takes place May 23-24 at the Medora Community Center.

Each year, the event features 30 to 50 poets and singers. The daytime events are free. Two shows at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday are the premiere events and the primary source of revenue to cover the gathering’s expenses.

It has been a labor of love for both Bill and JoAnn, who have continued this legacy for 40 years to preserve cowboy art and the cowboy tradition.

“It’s an oral tradition, and a lot of the others took it to their grave with them. It didn’t get wrote down, and that’s why we’re doing this,” Bill says.

“Extraordinary events and ranch life need recording,” he says.

It’s as simple as that for Bill, who was inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2013. It’s about preserving the heritage of his family’s ranch – and the others who choose the same way of life.

“I just love the ranch. It’s my dad, and we put it together and worked hard by hand. And I’m full of broken bones and arthritis, and we love our animals and the solitude of it. It’s wild here,” he says.

Spoken like a true cowboy poet.

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Cally Peterson is signing off as editor of North Dakota Living. Thank you for reading!

Ma’s Christmas Tree

It’s all a part of Christmas
Fetchin’ Ma’s tree in the cold
I could have took ol’ Wrangler
But he’s getting kinda old

So I caught up little Badger Gray
And pulled down my old scotch hat
When things ain’t right around him
He turns inside out, quick as a cat

My stomach was getting empty
It was almost dinner time
I had Gray rode down pretty good
We’d been through a mighty climb

Over in the cedar breaks
Quite a ways from home
The snow was crusted ‘most knee high
Over the dusty loam

I was draggin’ Ma’s tree with a rope
When the rope went under his tail
He gathered all four and went to the sky
You could say we really set sail

Every time we came back down
His rump that axe handle would hit
I’d better pull all the leather I can 
For danged sure he ain’t gonna quit

Thought I was done for a couple of times
But managed to gather back in
You’re just gonna have to forgive me, Lord
If cussin’s considered a sin

He paused for a second when he lit 
next to a creek bank trail
It was then I saw my chance had come
And jerked it free from his tail

We’re both sweatin’ and tremblin’ now 
And hurtin’ bad from fatigue
I looked over my shoulder
Ma’s tree ain’t nothin’ but a twig