Do You Need a Weekend at the Confident Man Ranch?

Masculinity is evolving, and that shift has left some men feeling unmoored. At the foot of the Rockies, the operators of a dude ranch retreat are proposing a novel solution: a blending of cowboy culture and group therapy.

- ROSECRANS BALDWIN

OUTSIDE OF LOVELAND, Colorado, about 90 minutes north of Denver, sits a ranch at the foot of the Rockies known as Sylvan Dale. More than 3,000 acres of grasslands, canyons, and tree-topped foothills, plus a barn where a team of wranglers oversee a herd of 40-plus horses. When we arrived, the first assignment was to gather in a small cabin: 10 men warily sizing one another up before settling into a ring of chairs. A wealthy businessman, an architect, a long haul trucker. Mostly American, mostly straight, mostly white. At 46, I was the youngest, though I'd been told they'd had men in their 20s. The mood was perplexed and defensive we knew why we were there, but not exactly how our lives had reached a point where we'd pay for an intensive four-day break from society known as the Confident Man Ranch Retreat.

The United States doesn't lack for men's retreats. Many of them emphasize chest-thumping catharsis. The ManKind Project offers "new warrior training." Evryman is "CrossFit for your emotions, according to The New York Times. The Confident Man Ranch Retreat offers something else: group therapy for guys who might not otherwise be game for it, conducted at a setting straight out of an old Western.

The organizers looked like a mismatched pair: Steve Horsmon, a gruff cowboy type in boots and denim, lived in the mountains in a house he built by hand. Tim Wade might've passed as a downtown psychologist: Hokas, jeans, T-shirt, plus many bracelets he fiddled with as he spoke. Outside the retreat, both work independently as life coaches. They met in 2015 when Tim walked into a men's group Steve ran in Fort Collins and soon after decided to collaborate on something bigger: a mash-up of equine therapy and empathy training for small groups. In 2017, the retreat's first year, they didn't know if anyone would come; nine retreats later, 10 as of October, it sells out every time. (The retreat currently costs $3,600.)