I Once Was a Cowboy

Book excerpt: This book explores wanderlust, the price of gritty, hard work and the simple beauty of working outdoors and with horses. Hagen pulls readers into his poignant realisation of his dreams of being a cowboy, at a time when the frontiers of BC and the West were still in their infancy and the rodeo was an extension of the daily life of the cowhand. This portrait of a Canadian cowboy is a window into the one of the last of the living ranch hands in this country. The myth of the cowboy is revealed by a real person who lived, struggled and helped to build the West one herd, one fence, one horse at a time.