Bob West - Twenty Miles of Fence: Blueprint of a Cowboy

You can take an architect out of Boulder, but can you make him a cattle rancher in Wyoming? Twenty Miles of Fence answers that question in gritty, unflinching detail. A searing, adventurous memoir about the cold, hard realities of pursuing the cowboy way.

Mark Stevens, author of the Allison Coil Mystery series

Twenty Miles of Fence won me over. It is a charming story that is candid and open about the authors fears, passions, loves, disappointments, and the growing-up lessons that came along the way. It will delight a wide range of readers, including those from the West and far beyond.

Richard L. Knight, professor emeritus of wildlife conservation at Colorado State University

Colorado architect Bob West was already half qualified for cowboy life when he bought a Wyoming ranch. He loved vast wild spaces, enjoyed hours on horseback, and had a deep respect for the land, its people, and creatures. The other halfbackbreaking labor, a surprising reliance on machinery, gleefully fickle weather, and finances that rarely penciled outhe learned the hard way. Learn he did, and its a testament to Wests spirit that he held on. The take on ranch life in Twenty Miles of Fence, written with Janet Fogg, is both unsparing and yet so lyrical as to make readers yearn to give it a try themselves.

Gwen Florio, author of the award-winning Lola Wicks Mystery series

If you ever doubt that Wyoming is not for the weak, Twenty Miles of Fence will dispel you of that notion, with writing so vivid youll shiver at the January blizzards, smell the fresh-cut summer hay, and hear the river rushing on a cool evening. The reader is treated to an unfiltered look at what real cattle ranching is like, without the romance and legend. Bob Wests transformation from greenhorn to a man in tune with the land and animals shows grit and determination much like the landscape itself. This is a true story of homecoming, an unflinching look at the seemingly insurmountable challenges and the ultimate triumph.

Shannon Baker, award-winning author of the Kate Fox Mystery series

Bob West with Janet Fogg

University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln

2023 by Bob West and Janet Fogg

Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; cover image by Arvid Knutsen, Pexels.com.

Author photo Richard Fogg.

All rights reserved

The University of Nebraska Press is part of a land-grant institution with campuses and programs on the past, present, and future homelands of the Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe-Missouria, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Kaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Peoples, as well as those of the relocated Ho-Chunk, Sac and Fox, and Iowa Peoples.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: West, Bob (Rancher), author.

Title: Twenty miles of fence: blueprint of a cowboy / Bob West with Janet Fogg.

Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022022445

ISBN 9781496233578 (paperback)

ISBN 9781496235329 (epub)

ISBN 9781496235336 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH : West, Bob (Rancher) | CowboysWyomingBiography. | RanchersWyomingBiography. | Ranch lifeWyoming. | BISAC : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs

Classification: LCC F 596 . W 483 2023 | DDC 978.7092 [B]dc23/eng/20220816

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022022445

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

This book is dedicated to those whose lives and livelihoods are or were entirely dependent upon the land and nature, including all of the Wyoming cowboys and neighbors who so graciously showed me and my family the best of the West.

I can never walk in the boots of my great-great-grandfather or in those of the tribes whose lives were steered by the seasons, but I do walk the lands where Natives once walked. I hope I step lightly, that what I designed and built, what I created or preserved or nurtured, honors all who have gone before.

Bob West

How do you describe the utter vastness of Wyoming prairie? The smell? The clarity of the air? The inability to judge distance?

The solitude.

Where you can hear the sun set.

Janet Fogg

Im a third generation Coloradoan and true westerner at heart. My family two-stepped with the very foundation of historical influences, honing their livelihood and faith against the patterns of western culture and beliefs. Honesty, courage, independence, freedom, and a strong work ethic are the bedrock of this region and its people, and they are my foundation as well.

Everyday life with its acceleration of technology, population pressure, and shift to high-rise living made me, a young urban professional and architect of those actual high-rise structures, challenge my core beliefs. During the early years of my design career, I found myself compromising elements of my own being, including my relationships with those whose hearts beat in the slow, steady rhythm of my own. I questioned my relationship with nature and its raw, unyielding power, and I doubted my basic belief in a higher reason for life, along with my ability to live with what I felt to be the proper respect for lifes true meaning.

This book recalls more than a decade of experiences, starting in 1995, when I decided to escape the pretensethe false, half-life I livedand to become, quite simply, a cowboy. To accomplish this, I, along with my wife, her family, and my best friend, bought a working cattle ranch in Wyoming, away from the bluster and bustle of the Front Range with its all-consuming urban sprawl and the omnipresent noise that accompanies people and their expensive toys.

Little did I know how these years would challenge me, change my life, and bring me back to my true self. I became a cowboy, and my life was saved.

Bob West

I had no idea how demanding it would be to create a booka narrative encompassing the years I learned how to cowboy on the Devils Washtub Ranch. Reading my journals and having subsequent discussions with my sons and co-writer Janet prompted unexpected emotions and memories shared within Twenty Miles of Fence.

Weve been blessed with talented support and would like to thank Richard Fogg, best-selling author, for editing early drafts. Much appreciation to our peer reviewers, Richard Knight, professor emeritus of wildlife preservation at Colorado State University, and Shannon Baker, a two-time Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Writer of the Year, who so generously shared their knowledge about ranching and writing when evaluating our manuscript.

Working with the exceptional team at the University of Nebraska Press has been an honor. We would especially like to thank our insightful copy editor, Hope Houtwed, and editors Clark Whitehorn and Sara Springsteen, whose support and guidance have been generous and invaluable.

We feel fortunate to have worked with each of you.

Wind sluiced around my red Chevy S -10 truck, creating some sort of odd tunnel effect that made the thick, whining sound of the tires against snow-covered asphalt thrum in the cab and resonate in our ears. I increased the speed of the windshield wipers, and I swear I heard a cadence of gulps, that of a freshly caught trout held proudly aloft, gasping for water and finding only thin, unfulfilling air. Already unsettled, an Open Range sign riddled with bullet holes caught my eye. Then we were past, on eighteen miles of a one-and-a-half-lane, pot-holed, worn-with-age asphalt roadwayleading from civilization to nowhere.