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Mosey on downtown starting this weekend for the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering. The four-day celebration will offer residents and visitors a look into cowboy and Western culture.<\/p>\n
Now in its 28th year, the gathering will kick of with a community outreach program that brings the Cowboy Poetry Gathering into area schools and other institutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe try to keep the kids aware that this is a Western community and that Durango was founded on agriculture and mining,\u201d said Linda Mannix, executive coordinator for the Cowboy Poetry Gathering.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s this element of education about our Western culture that also carries into the other programs in the gathering.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy personal mission is to preserve that Western history and make people in Durango aware of it,\u201d Mannix said. \u201cDurango\u2019s become such a \u2026 I call it the \u2018ings\u2019 \u2013 biking, skiing, rafting \u2013 which is fun and wonderful that it\u2019s gone that direction, but I don\u2019t want them to forget that ranching \u2013 another \u2018ing\u2019 \u2013 was very important in the creation of this community. And so this event kind of keeps that culture going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Along with a weekend of celebrating Western heritage, the Cowboy Poetry Gathering is also a pretty big economic driver for Durango. Mannix said that over the course of the 28 years the gathering has been held, the event has only grown. What once started out as a way to fill in a fairly slow time of year, now it\u2019s difficult to get a room in town for the gathering weekend.<\/p>\n
The key to running a festival this long is to keep things fresh. New this year to the gathering is the cowboy comedy show.<\/p>\n
\u201cCowboys have this weird sense of humor because the very job that they\u2019re doing, they\u2019re liable to get killed at any minute; it\u2019s dangerous working with cows and horses and livestock,\u201d Mannix said. \u201cAfter the trail drives, after almost getting killed, they\u2019d sit down and back in the 1880s, they\u2019d peel labels off of fruit cans and scribble their thoughts and stick them in a pocket and maybe recite them at the end of the night.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, humor always helps us relieve stress, and so that\u2019s where cowboy humor came from.\u201d<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll also have the chance this year to scare up some vittles at the gathering\u2019s first chuck wagon breakfast, which will be held downtown before the parade Saturday morning. A benefit for the Animas Museum, the breakfast will be held in the parking lot across from the Gaslight Theatre.<\/p>\n