When I finally make it to a rodeo a year later, it is raining so much that the mud sloshes into the pores of our leather sneakers and turns their soles orange in the upstate hills of rural Vermont, entire camp sick except for us three and we are trying to take this moment in: murmur of the ref shouting out times, buck riding, lasso swinging, cowboy perched on his horse that we ask for a photo cause he looks exactly like the Okie cowboys, who will in turn ask, where y’all from? like a trade, a southern accent in Vermont we cannot believe but answer with our truth (Florida, Texas, New York) & he’ll laugh, say he’s from Ohio, have to leave cause it’s his turn to catch and tie up a calf with his lasso, so we get food and beg them to write down our card number cause we’re strapped on cash, just a few twenties to get us through the next twelve days… it is storming so hard that we cannot tell what is grease, what is chicken, what is rain, our fingers cramping into our palms, there’s a boy throwing ones up on that counter with a Mountain Dew in his right chest pocket, his freckles spilling into the creases of his eyes and the bridge of his nose, ordering a maple creamie, hot fudge, while Maddie is trying to figure out whether everyone’s cowboy boots are real or fake (she’s the one from Texas), and here we grip the railings to get a better glimpse of the Ohio guy from the bleachers, next to us a fourteen year old boy on his first date, we bet, fries, ponchos, burping contest, all the noise trumped by the ref, us in our windbreakers almost warm against the slosh of the mud and all these Vermonters, who stare while we turn around and spit thick saliva into the gutter when the cowboys drag the calves through the rocky mud, mooing from the depths of their stomachs, a reaction just short of bile while they announce the name of a cowgirl, Sierra, like the mountain range, which makes sense cause on the first day of camp they tell us Vermont means green mountain in French, & all I can think is that it looks like Oklahoma from above, in the hills, every time we get in trouble at camp or when the wannabe cowboys put on Trippie Redd instead of Dolly Parton, maybe I am less Florida than I think and more this, now that I have actually made it to a rodeo in some land I’ve never known, not the South but some enclave of it, somewhere I am reminded I’m an Okie, I’m a Floridian, I am everywhere I’ve ever loved, the Ohio cowboy waving to us as he leaves on his horse, done dragging the calf and ready to claim his prize.