Cowboys and an “Indian?”
The Three Bars Ranch, Canada
“No Cell Service for the Next 250 Miles”
Despite a sunny start to the day, it had been raining for the last hour of our journey and the tension in the car was about as thick as the grey clouds overhead. My friend and I were silent as we passed endless fields with dilapidated huts and broken-down trucks dotted about every few miles. Have you ever had a supposedly amazing idea, only to get there and think, ‘What have I done?’ That was my only thought as we drove through the middle of nowhere.
The ranch had been my idea. Idealistic thoughts of a sunny, wholesome country experience riding horses amongst pine forests, had convinced me to fly thousands of miles and part with hundreds of pounds. And I, being the excellent friend that I am, had convinced my friend to do the same. They called them ‘dude ranches’ or more formally ‘guest ranches.’ People from all over the world could pay to spend a week at a fully functioning cattle ranch, run by real cowboys and experience the cowboy lifestyle for themselves. Promised daily activities included horse rides, bike rides, hikes, white water rafting and clay pigeon (or ‘skeet’) shooting. But as we manoeuvred our little rental car down the uneven dirt track, it felt anything but sunny or wholesome.
The cheery owner of the ranch greeted us and reassured us that the rain wouldn’t last long. She gave us a run-down of the week and pointed us in the direction of our log cabin. “Oh, by the way,” she called out to us as an afterthought, “You won’t get much cell service out here on the ranch. We do have WiFi but the logs used to build the cabins are so thick that the signal doesn’t really get through.” Great.
If I thought tensions in the car had been high, they were only amplified in the small dark cabin that was to be our home for the next week. Log cabins seem cute and romantic but the truth is, the inside of a tree is dark. Really dark.
“This is not my idea of fun Aizzah,” my friend began, “Forced fun with a bunch of strangers and nowhere else to go. I’m not going to enjoy myself. I’m just going to stay in this cabin as much as possible and wait until this week is over.” She was feeling claustrophobic and I got it, I really did.
“I think I’m too brown and too Muslim to be here,” I replied weakly.
My friend and I had grown up with somewhat parallel lives. We’d both been raised in small villages in Kent, close to but not quite inside a slightly rundown town. Our families had enough money for us growing up but certainly not the excessive amounts of the rich, privately educated children we found ourselves around at university. We’d both been fortunate enough to end up in a grammar school where the education was still free but of a slightly better standard than the local comprehensives. A factor which probably helped to land us in one of the best medical schools in the country. The only major difference between us being that I’m brown and she’s white.
Did it matter, this glaringly obvious difference? We both felt somewhat out of place in a ranch in the middle of Canada, but as I thought this, there was a small voice in my head telling me, “Both of you might feel out of place, but only you look out of place.” It was true, I was the only person of colour at the ranch that week and would probably be the only one for many weeks. So, why was I there? The honest answer was that I had become obsessed with a TV programme about a family living on a ranch and wanted to experience it for myself. For some people this would be a ridiculous answer and for others it would make perfect sense. But as I thought about the question, another, better question came to mind; why were there no other people of colour there on this ranch? It was not the only time I had felt uncomfortable or out of place in the countryside, the feeling was the same whether I was in the UK or in Canada. So, what was it about this environment that wasn’t attractive to people from minority ethnic backgrounds?
It took me to researching the topic and I found there was surprisingly little information out there. Most theories were around improving access. The idea being that people from minority ethnic backgrounds tend to live in urban areas and therefore have limited access to the countryside. But this just didn’t resonate with me, it sounded like an over simplification of a more complex issue. So, I came up with a few theories of my own.
The first was to do with representation. When I watched my idealistic, cowboy TV show, there were no characters represented by people of colour. But if there had been, would more people of colour have shown up on the ranch that summer? Given that it was the only reason I was there, I can’t help but think so. Growing up in Kent, we were never far from the countryside. No-one could call us an outdoorsy family but we definitely enjoyed a walk and a family picnic. I wonder whether this was not a more frequent occurrence simply because we didn’t feel welcome there, because we didn’t see or meet anyone who looked like us.
Perhaps it was more than just representation though. As part of a stand-up act, comedian Trevor Noah jokes about the parallels between camping and his life in South Africa, living in relative poverty. This is not an uncommon opinion held by people from ethnic minorities. There is a distinct feeling that people of colour associate being outdoors with poverty. In contrast, in most western cultures the countryside is associated with affluence. I can’t help but wonder whether this is manifestation of the historical context that people from western cultures tended to be land owners, whereas people from minority ethnic backgrounds tended to be land workers.
My last thought was whether people from ethnic minorities perceive value in spending time outdoors. Going for a walk in the countryside is free, but perhaps there is less perceived value in a free activity than one that costs a lot of money, like an expensive restaurant or theatre show.
Regardless of perception, there are countless benefits, both physical and mental, to spending time outdoors, as well as benefits to having diversity in all areas. Groups like Muslim Hikers, Wanderlust Women and Flock Together are just some of the groups in the UK fighting to change the landscape by encouraging more people from diverse backgrounds to spend time in nature and they’re doing amazingly well. Given all the benefits I have personally experienced, I hope that their work continues to inspire more people of colour to head out to the countryside.
Post Script
In case any of you were concerned about the fate of the two British doctors that found themselves on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, they turned out to be just fine. The owner of the ranch was right, the rain didn’t last long and the experience lived up to all the hopeful expectations we had. Horse rides, bike rides and hikes were beautiful and scenic, my friend found a particular talent for clay pigeon shooting (I still felt a little too brown to be around that many rifles) and the forced fun (read line dancing, camp fires and country music) wasn’t that bad after all.
