"When all at once a mighty herd of red eyed cows he saw / a-plowing through the ragged sky"

Proposition: To write a contemporary Pastoral that takes advantage of the traditional methods and machinery for exalting the simple life over modern urban living, you could make a worse start than replacing the shepherds with cowboys.

Bonus points if you manage to co-opt the genre conventions of cowboy Romance novels along the way. Still more bonus points for co-opting tropes from country-and-western songs.

Caution: Do not attempt unless you are able to believe, at least for the duration of writing, that rural life really is simpler and not rougher, and civilization corrupts rather than refines.

---L.