Dear Roper,

Sometimes when we’re planning an issue, we start the month not really knowing what’s going in it—even after 16 years, we’re still making this up as we go, really.

But, as often happens, the stories just present themselves in this team roping world. I got an email from a reader reminding us that we need to pay more attention to the Canadian team roping community, and Contributing Editor Julie Mankin obliged with her feature on the Schreiner family on page 68.

Then the Old West Futurity hit big in Heber City, Utah, and we felt like all those storylines needed room to breathe—so you’ll find our pedigree deep dives and more on page 60. The setting in Heber City is always impeccable, so we snapped tens of thousands of images and days’ worth of video footage that you’ll be seeing online and in print for months and years to come.

Then, a few days before this magazine shipped to the printer—while we were with our futurity horse family in Utah—we got word that we lost Dick Yates, a legend we thought might never die. He was special to all of us, particularly to Senior Editor Kendra Santos, so she pivoted on her writing plans and crafted our cover story about Dick’s remarkable life over the weekend before our deadline with the care only she can give a story like this.

On the morning of his passing, we dug through our archives to find photos from our Roping.com shoot with the whole Yates family, and I had the photo you find on this month’s cover in mind. We left this cover simple—black and white—because that was Dick.

This isn’t a new sentiment on this page, but I’m in awe of the moments our team gets to capture, the people who let us into their arenas and the adventures we get to have. This issue—as so many are—was an honor to put together, and I’m thankful you’re here with us.

Chelsea