IT’S THE End OF THE Last TRAIL RIDE on a blazing summer day and time to put the horses away. Tami Martin, one of the wranglers at the Dixie Dude Ranch in Bandera, hoists weathered saddles off the trail-weary horses, her arms tan and strong from the job. In faded Wranglers and cowboy boots that read “Just A Good Old Girl” in capital letters on the back, she makes the work look cool and easy. So I ask Garrett Connell, a wrangler who’d been charming me with tall tales on the trail, if I can help “untack” my horse, Sancho.
“We aren’t equestrians here; we’re cowboys,” he says. “We unsaddle.” Then he shows me how to ease off Sancho’s bridle and latigo. I’m no Tami, but it feels good to haul Sancho’s gear to the barn and whiff the heady aroma of well-worn leather. Such a moment, I would later discover, is a microcosm of what dude ranches are all about.
What, exactly, is a dude? To many, the term evokes a vision of shaggy surfer types—someone trying to be cool. Or it’s a way to address them, as in “What’s up, dude?” Though this may sound incongruous to people familiar with Texas dude ranches—where paying guests participate in Western activities from trail rides to chuckwagon dinners to skeet shooting—the contemporary connotations of “dude” are actually closer to the origins of the dude ranch than I realized.
“I do not believe
