June 23, 2005
Thursday

I checked out of the Blue Spruce not long after breakfast. My hosts were headed out of town for the husband’s 50-year high school reunion, and I knew they wanted to tidy things up from a full house and get on the road themselves. (Where do B&B hosts stay when they go out of town?) I spent some time (and some money) in Main Street Books.

I was determined not to buy books on this trip because they’re heavy and take up a lot of space in luggage. I told myself that these are just books, that if something caught my eye I could write down the title and order it on-line from a big box store later. But there’s something about buying a book about Wyoming when I’m in Wyoming, in an independent book store no less, that I found irresistible. I bought Woven on the Wind, an anthology of writing by modern women about life and friendship in the sagebrush west, Rising from the Plains, by John McPhee, a writer renowned for conveying a sense of place, and The Meadow, by James Galvin, another book about the natural history of a corner of Wyoming. In preparing for this trip I’d read several similar books. The experience helped me have a sense of familiarity that has helped me feel at home here. I’m hoping that reading the new titles over the long winter to come will help me remember what it was like here.

My next stop would be Pinedale. Getting there required a 150-mile drive along another hypnotic, nearly-deserted two lane blacktop. But like the drive from Laramie to Riverton, it afforded lots of historic sites and sceneic spots, such as the spectacular Red Canyon, a slash of oxidized iron rock left 200 million years ago by a now-vanished sea, and Atlantic City (so called because it’s on the Atlantic Ocean side of the Continental Divide) and South Pass City, relics of the region’s iron and gold mining heritage.

Pinedale doesn’t fare well in the guide books. “The scene along its wide central street seems designed to encourage you to speed through without a glance,” said one. “The town’s old-time charm . . . has been obliterated.” Pinedale’s major function these days is to serve as an outfitting center for people headed up to Jackson and Yellowstone and the Bridger Wilderness. One guide book recommended the Sun Dance Motel as a “pleasant older property, simple but lovingly maintained.”

The Sun Dance was the first motel I’ve ever stayed in that does not have air conditioning. It does, however, have free high speed internet service that does not fade out every time the wind changes, a refrigerator, a coffee maker, and a microwave oven that are clean and in good working order, and a table and chair that are the right height for writing.

I had a delicious dinner of broiled salmon and a baked potato at a family restaurant on Main Street. Then I took the walking tour outlined in a booklet sent to me in a vacation planning package. The first stop was the site of The Great Fire of Pinedale, which took place in March of 1939. The fire began in the hardware store. Frozen fire hydrants and an insufficient water supply complicated efforts to bring the blaze under control. Then the 19,000-gallon diesel fuel tank exploded, sending flames fifty feet into the air. The Rock Springs Fire Engine #2 took two hours and ten minutes to traverse the 104 miles from that town, arriving too late to save anything but the Elk Café, which burned to the ground anyway in 1978.

Most of the tour was like that — buildings that aren’t there anymore or have been so changed that the historical description bears no resemblance to the structure that occupies the space now. But it was a pleasant evening, cool and dry, and I enjoyed the walk, even if there was little to photograph except the cow mural painted on the side of the drugstore in 1980.

Despite the cool temperatures outside, the air in my room was still and just a bit stuffy, so I opened the window when I returned and settled in for the night. An argument over the volume of the television had erupted between the couple next door. “Turn that f&#$#*!ing thing down!” I’m pretty sensitive to noises. I hadn’t heard the television, but I sure heard the argument. Presently I heard someone come out of the room, and soon after that I smelled cigarette smoke.

I spent the first half of my teaching career sitting in smoke-filled faculty lounges because that was the only place to go to relax, and because that was where the social action was. My mother smoked throughout my whole growing-up years, and Ron was a smoker when I met him. (That I married him anyway tells you something about how compelling he is.)  He smoked outside or crouched beside the kitchen exhaust fan if it was really deep frigid winter, especially after Lynn was born. But he quit ten years ago, about the time that most places, including my workplace, went smoke free. I avoid restaurants that don’t have a separate, sweet-smelling nonsmoking area, so it’s not often that I have to endure the unpleasantness of someone else’s tobacco haze.

I peered out the window and saw that a woman had sat down on the plastic chair between my room and the next and had lighted up. I opened the door and suggested to her (I swear I was sweet and polite!) that she move out to the picnic table on the grassy area beyond the parking lot, lest I no longer have a nonsmoking room.

She glared at me, but she did move away. When she returned to the room I heard her yelling at the man that I had yelled at her. He yelled back, “That’s bullsh*^##*t!” and soon I heard him pounding on my door, yelling that they could smoke any place they wanted outside and I should just shut the f%&*# up.

This amused me more than frightened me, although I did momentarily worry that he might take a crowbar to my car. I shut my window, to make it harder to break through that, and settled in for the night with a few chapters of John McPhee.

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