The cows are back.

The day every January when cattle roam the streets of Denver always brings back my younger days in Brush, Colorado, home of the Beetdiggers (which, I would humbly argue, has to be best-named sports mascot in the state.)

Seeing those longhorns navigate those skyscrapers reminds me of one particular Brush day more than others, when I spent hours upon hours photographing 150 kids posing, or trying to pose, with their prize cows, hogs and sheep for the county fair.

Cows do not cotton much to selfies, let me tell you. And they sure don’t smile much. Those kids had to wrassle those beasts into position in front of my dropcloth until they were still as a prairie dawn. And keep ‘em still long enough for me to snap a portrait their parents would be button-bustin’ proud of. Sometimes, we only had a split second before calamity. My lights and camera equipment were knocked over just shy of 149 times, I’d guess.

But I’ve never forgotten that day as a day I got a glimpse deep into the true heart of Colorado. The wide eyes of every last one of those kids were brimming over with pride in the living, mooing, oinking, bleating product of their labors — the culmination in flesh of years of early morning chores, long nights of grooming and nurturing, and endless hold-your-nose cleaning of the stables.

I had a glimpse that day of Colorado’s roots as a cowboy state, of what if took to make Colorado what it is today.

A few years back, cosmopolitan Denverites pretty much decided they’d outgrown their cowtown roots, but it feels like maybe we’re reembracing them again right now.

After a two-year-hiatus, thousands of city folks came down to see those steers displace the bikes, scooters and cars on Thursday. And I gotta tell you, there’s something deeply satisfying in seeing a 1,500-pound wild animal wend its way through the heart of urbanity.

The cows of course mark the return of the National Western Stock Show in its 117th running. This year hosts are expecting about 15,000 cows and 700,000 humans at the show.

And that means it’s time for all of us to re-embrace our inner Beetdigger.

“It’s a part of understanding why Colorado is the great state that it is today,” one longhorn onlooker, Peter Castro, told our reporter Alex Edwards. “(It’s part of) understanding the folks that have come before us and what it took to live here 100-150 years ago.”

A city that one time turned up its nose at its cowtown heritage is now in the process of building a huge new National Western Center and research annex to give the stock show a home long into the future and double down on Denver’s cowtown roots.

Paul Andrews, president and CEO of the Stock Show, believes the new center has the chance to be “the Silicon Valley of agriculture, which I truly believe it will become.”

Mayor Michael Hancock, the National Western Center Authority and its partners recently broke ground on the 350,000-square-foot Sue Anschutz-Rodgers Livestock Center, which will host community events, concerts, exhibitions, sporting events, trade shows, banquets and more. That’s right, the stock show ethos is going year round, right there on the banks of Denver’s edgiest, artiest neighborhood, Rino.

Cows, one must conclude, are cool.

And cowtowns, one must further conclude, have made a comeback.

In all honesty, the stock show should be in some place like Greeley that is still rural in its complexion and orientation. About a decade ago Aurora was making plans to steal it away. But Denver has finally decided it wants this here bad. And forever. Denver once and for all has realized the unique advantages we have in the West to bring rural and urban together so that the tapestry of the whole state, and the whole state’s history, is accessible to all for a shining moment.

“We have to embrace our past as we develop the future,” Mayor Hancock has said of the new center. Though Colorado is considered an aerospace state now, and a high tech state, and an outdoor recreation mecca, livestock and agriculture are still the biggest industry here by far, to the tune of $47 billion a year. Four of our top 10 global exports are agricultural products and livestock.

And let’s not forget that 73% of Colorado’s landmass is rural. When we go skiing or hiking or biking in the mountains, we’re embracing rural Colorado, not urban.

“The National Western Center presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to honor and celebrate the spirit of the West, while also promoting research and progress in agriculture for the next 100 years,” National Western Center CEO Brad Buchanan told the press. “The center will make possible the connections our communities need today by connecting consumers to where our food comes from, connecting people from urban and rural places to one another, connecting people to the land, the water and the earth, and connecting Colorado to the rest of the nation and the world.”

Hell, if you ask me, the whole country’s reembracing its cowboy roots. You know the most popular show on TV right now? It’s not superheroes or computer graphics or edgy teen vampires. It’s “Yellowstone,” a show about a King Lear-like family of ranchers trying to hold onto its cowboy way of life.

My guess is our re-embrace of our inner Beetdigger has everything to do with the clamped down, masked up national claustrophobia we just endured because of COVID. We’re all looking for a breath of fresh air, if you ask me, and all we really want to do is get outside and rediscover our big horizons, magnificent vistas, and best selves. We want to remember who we were so that we reestablish who we are.

So git along over there to the stock show and embrace your inner Beetdigger in the next couple weeks, my fellow city slickers. You may be surprised at how right at home you feel.