Our "Eastside Profiles" concept is too big and too good--we couldn't limit it to the printed page! Here, Addie Gottwald, an aspiring young writer from Virginia who spends her summers on a ranch near Mammoth, gives us a closer look at one of Mammoth's favorite cowboys, Scott Lee.

BY ADDIE GOTTWALD

GROWING UP IN THE EAST, I have found that most people don’t believe in cowboys. They are a myth - men only found in Remington paintings and the old western movies your dad watches. You learn about them in history class, thinking they are just part of the past, an extinct breed of humans who used to roam the open range. It’s a game you played as a young boy - wearing chaps, a Sheriff badge, and a cowboy hat - running away from your feathered neighbor as he hits his mouth with the flat palm of his hand. But unlike most other Virginians, I’ve been lucky enough to know a cowboy for eleven years of my life. A full-fledged steer-roping, horse-branding, Wrangler-jean-wearing cowboy.

I met Scott Lee when I was six years old and it’s safe to say his discolored, rugged cowboy boots have left an impression on me. For eleven years, I have listened to his stories and laughed at his bad jokes. I know that he loves radishes and hates raw onions. I know that he loves George Strait and says all new country music is a bunch of guys whining. I know that it’s weird to see him dressed in anything but Wranglers, a Carhartt jacket, cowboy boots, a long-sleeve button down, and a white bruised cowboy hat. He wakes up around 5:30. He loves Two and A Half Men. He plays a good game of horseshoes. He’s frequently found having a drink in Nevados on a Friday night or flirting with the baristas at the Looney Bean in the early morning.

After knowing Scott Lee for eleven years, I finally realized that I never knew how he made his way to the Eastern Sierra. I only knew his past as a series of tangled stories. He went to four colleges in two years. Once, he rode his motorcycle into a car, flipped over the Mustang, landed on his feet, and proceeded to run down the street. I knew that he’s been in a Lexus ad and played a knight in a Capital One commercial. His brother was an Olympic water polo player. He lived in Hawaii, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco, but until yesterday, I wasn’t really sure in what order or at what age.

So I sat down with him, and as I picked the extra toppings off of my Nik-N-Willie’s pizza, I finally began to make sense of Scott’s past.

He told me he was born in Olympia, Washington, and at age thirteen, his family moved to what is today Silicon Valley. He stayed in the San Francisco Bay area for the next five years - driving a motorcycle, surfing, playing football, and running track.

When Scott was nineteen, he started work on a fishing boat in Santa Barbara. He then helped on another boat, capturing sea lions for zoos all around the world and building their cages.

I took a sip of my Coke. “So what did you do after that?”

“I sailed around the world on freighters,” Scott replied. “I was a seaman, a deck hand.” I had never pictured him as a sailor. I couldn’t see him in an all white suit, yelling “drop anchor!” while looking out to the sea. For four years, Scott traveled, docking in places like Africa, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines. After sailing around the world, Scott came back and settled in Santa Barbara. He worked as a carpenter and then successfully became a building contractor for the Santa Barbara area.

“What’d you build?”

“Everything from homes to commercial projects.” He worked in there for sixteen years. One day in 1985, while running in the hills, Scott bumped into an old friend on horseback. He asked Scott to accompany him to the Eastern Sierra for a horse drive. Scott used to come to Mammoth in the sixties to ski, so he was familiar with the area. He joined his friend as a guest on the horse drive for the Roeser family, who then owned the Mammoth Lakes Pack Outfit and what is now Sierra Meadows Ranch. For the next three years, Scott worked for the Roesers every spring and fall on their horse drives. In 1988, he left Santa Barbara, which he claimed had gotten too big “partially because [he] built it out so much,” and moved to Mammoth Lakes. He continued to work for the Roesers for the next ten years. He was a packer, a manager, a snow mobile guide, a cross-country track groomer, a wagon driver, and a horse shoer. In fact, at the same time as he worked for the pack outfit, Scott also owned and operated the Sierra Horseshoeing School in Bishop. For the past twelve years, Scott has been managing a ranch in Long Valley where he has welded together his many life experiences into one career.

And as I sat there, listening to his stories, I couldn’t help but think that maybe Scott Lee was our very own Forrest Gump. His horseshoe game rivals Forrest’s ping pong talent. He worked on boats, just like Forrest did with his shrimp business. He was “run-ning” when he bumped into his friend that introduced him to the Roeser family’s pack outfit. He’s probably dated a woman named “Jenn-ay.” He may not have been on a talk show with John Lennon or inspired the bumper sticker “Shit Happens” or taught Elvis his dance moves like Forrest did, but Scott worked on James Cagney’s boat, saw a fifteen-year-old Cher perform at the Cow Palace, led Kevin Costner into the backcountry, raced against Tommie Smith (who in 1968 became the world’s fastest man), went to Woodstock the week after it happened, and dated Jack Nicholson’s cook. The white feather is fluttering in the winds of the Eastern Sierra.