Cowboy Ricky

The smell of warm leather, the dust of the arena, the silence of a waiting horse: some worlds can't be explained; they can only be felt.

​

For me, this connection is anything but accidental.

​

My family carries two nomadic traditions in its blood, borne by the same wind that once drove the first cowboys across the Great Plains: freedom, the horse, the open road. On one side, the Yenish: the semi-nomadic people of Central Europe who roamed the roads with their wagons and draft horses. On the other, circus folk: my maternal great-grandmother, Anna Nock, came from Circus Nock, the oldest big-top circus in Switzerland, founded in Zurich in 1860. From that same lineage, Pio Nock (a legendary clown and high-wire artist) shared the screen with John Wayne in Circus World (Henry Hathaway, 1964).

​

That way of passing things down, gesture before words, is what I rediscover in the western saddle. Since 1987, I cut my teeth selling western gear alongside Cowboy Kurt and his family, who over the years have become close friends, and today I'm their ambassador. That path opened the doors to North America's professional trade shows, among them the WESA Trade Show in Dallas, Texas (the Western & English Sales Association), a must-attend gathering for everyone in the western trade.

​

On the dance floor, I've danced Square Dance and Line Dance, and I'm a founding member of the NCSB, the New Country Smokin' Boots, a western country-dance club in Geneva, Switzerland.

​

Western riding, the ranches and arenas of the American West, a camera slung over my shoulder, the country music festivals: this is a culture I've lived for a long time, and from the inside.

​

In the French-speaking world, western culture is still too often reduced to a shallow set of clichés. Western United Spirit was born of a conviction: this culture deserves better. It has a rigorous, well-documented history, deep roots, and many voices that have intersected for centuries. This site is a serious attempt to do it justice.

​

No manufactured nostalgia, no shortcuts.

​

Welcome. Explore, read, come back. The West is bigger than you think.