June 18, 2005
Saturday

Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about
Who’s never left home, who’s never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone.
        – Susan Gibson, b. 1973
           American singer-songwriter
           “Wide Open Spaces”

Wyoming is a big state with dramatically different geological areas. I’d spent two days in Laramie to get my bearings and visit the place where My Friend Flicka took shape. I was ready to slice north through the middle to the high mountains. 

I made one more Laramie loop, this one through Vedauwoo, a section of the Medicine Bow National Forest. Vedauwoo is a Native American word meaning “earth born spirits.” Huge rock formations made of 1.43 billion-year-old granite dot the area. Happy Jack Road, a paved byway that runs parallel to I-80, takes you out to the entrance. Vedauwoo Road is also paved for a few miles, but soon gives way to packed dirt. The guide book said that the trip could be undertaken in a conventional sedan if sufficient care were observed. This meant a top speed of about 5 mph. After about thirty minutes I decided to look at the map and measure the distance with the tip of my finger. It would be ten miles before I could emerge on the other side. You do the math. 

But the bone-rattling trip was worth it. I stopped frequently to take pictures. I was in the high desert now, the sand crunching under my feet as I walked around the formations. The bright sun lighted the planes and hollows so that the area looked like it had been laid out as a contour drawing lesson for giants. 

At the other side I emerged onto a road still unpaved but not as rough as the one through the forest. Ahead was the Ames monument, a 60-foot pyramid that sticks up from a plateau that itself rises above the surrounding sandy field. It was built in 1882 to honor Oakes and Oliver Ames, brothers who helped finance and promote the Union Pacific Railroad’s transcontinental venture. The tracks passed right by the monument, but when the brothers were disgraced in a government scandal, the tracks were rerouted to bypass the monument and the area became the deserted wasteland it is today. 

My driving directions told me to keep on past the monument and I would presently come to the abandoned town of Tie Siding, a former railroad construction settlement. So I drove, and drove, and drove. The road was bumpy and dusty, and presently I began passing through open gates posted “Private Property.” After twenty miles I knew I’d somehow missed the sign (if there was a sign) for Tie Siding. I was heading south, and I knew that I needed somehow to turn north again to complete the loop. Do I turn back and traverse that two-hour stretch of rocky trail, or continue on, sure that eventually the road would have to come out somewhere? 

For another thirty minutes I bounced along. Now I was passing the “loose stock” and “open range” signs, but no actual animals of any kind, not even the little prairie dogs that dart across your path, appeared. 

Presently I saw in the distance a row of trucks moving north. The interstate! Civilization! Now the area was becoming greener, the sand and dirt having given way to waving grass and clumps of trees. 

And then, just as I began to believe that the truck line, which had disappeared below the horizon, was a mirage, I came upon the Remount Ranch sign to my left. I had been driving across Flicka territory, the very land I’d been reluctant to enter just two days before. 

I was thirty or so miles farther south than I wanted to be, but now I was on the interstate headed for Riverton, Wyoming and my entrance into the land of the Wind River mountain range. 

Riverton is about 200 miles north of Laramie. The first hundred miles is on the interstate. I’m accustomed to the clogged highways at home where there’s an exit every two miles and locals going to the shopping center share the road with the tractor trailers trying to make good time to Florida. 

Out here the pace is faster (the speed limit is 75), but driving seems more relaxed, since the trucks are so far apart. But at least there were other vehicles. Once I left the interstate and picked up route 287 I was truly in wide open spaces. For two hours I saw not more than a dozen other cars. One had been pulled over by a Wyoming state trooper, and another was an ambulance that passed me with lights but no sirens. I hoped the passenger wasn’t dangerously ill, since there didn’t seem to be any place to take him. 

Somewhere way out there, Elk Mountain, I think, I stopped for gas. This was a scene straight out of “The Twilight Zone.” The interchange sloped up to a rise on which sat a metal building, three gas pumps, and several tall communications towers. The debit card mechanism wasn’t working, so I had to go inside to pay. The teenager behind the counter nodded to me as I nodded toward the restrooms at the back. A sign on the sink advised Don’t drink the water. I finished in there and then chose a drink from the cooler and a banana from a basket on the counter. The kid rang up the stuff and the gas and then nodded toward the cash register display screen. I laid the money on the counter, he gave me change, and I left. We had exchanged not one word. 

Presently I arrived at Riverton, population 9310. I had driven for five hours across miles of open country. I’d stopped at every scenic overlook and historical marker. 

Many precede and many will follow
A young girl’s dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn’t yet guessed.

I’m a middle-aged matron making good on a young girl’s dream. I’d had two enormous moments already, and miles to go yet.

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