My brain was so twisted on itself yesterday, all I could think about was going to
Wyoming. Wyoming is a good place for twisted brains. I got
in my little no-name car, foam-green and about big enough for half of me and a cat. Not that the cat came. Cats know Wyoming without ever
having been there. And off I went. No plan—just time. And space.
Twisted brains need time and space. Wyoming invented them both.
Wyoming breathes a restless contentment. The air is so hot and dry in summer that when the wind blows,
which it always does, you can taste it.
Not just the dust, which tastes like, well, dust. The air itself. Not so much a taste as a
feel—in the throat or on the tongue. Even
when the air is searing hot, it tastes like a long drink from a waterfall. That’s how it tastes all year long. In winter, it hurts your teeth. The romance of this state built by oil and minerals draws you in, away
from the lock-jawed rush of life. I spent a lot of time in the oil camps of Wyoming
when I was young; at least, it seemed I did. That seeming was
just an illusion—that length of time, but Wyoming lasts. It stays in your mind. It is immortal. The earliest Indian knew the railroad; the
largest oil well knows the smallest coyote and always has.
Salt Creek, Station Five, Midwest, Wamsutter, Bairoil. Shirley Basin and Devil’s Gate and Hell’s Half Acre. Among frozen horse heads of oil
rigs, which rock and bob forever, grazing cattle seem to turn to bones before your eyes. When you look down from Isaac Walton on scrub oak,
sand, and rock, all you see are paintings in Remington green and Russell
tan—paintings of life leaping out of that magic air; strong and wild. The
earth is a color not quite red and not quite brown. Burnt orange; maybe
that’s it—but no, not quite.
You stare down the road, squinting against dazzling light until you spot the horizon, half-hidden in a
bluish haze. Beyond that haze is
another horizon, even farther than the one before. Big Muddy, Ten Sleep.
I’ve forgotten if I ever knew, what the little town is ten sleeps away
from. It doesn’t matter. Canyon Ferry, Wind River. Chugwater, Sweet
Water, Independence Rock, Green River ... Well, maybe once upon a time The North Platte; a mile wide and a foot deep, they used to say.
Maybe; but impressive and dangerous even so.
Tie Sidings, Medicine Bow.
Thermopolis, Encampment. Big Timber, Jackson Hole. Sheep Mountains; stern, forbidding. The
living rock. The balance between shimmering red stone mountains—jagged
and jutting—and a soft sky of the most amazing blue draws your soul right out of you. It has a brightness like no other. In the invisible
distance, a meadow lark trills. Your life is no longer your own. You are
a creation as timeless as the earth.
My grandparents lived in the little oil camp of Bairoyl; its name given to us by someone’s ancestor who left nothing else. Until I was well
into my adult years, I thought the name was Bare Oil. It fit. Every day, my grandfather would scale the dizzying heights of water tanks to
check for leaks. We would be admonished, everyday, not to climb the
high hill which lay far across the wide road. If we even reached the near
foot of the hill, we were too far from home.
When I went back years later from that time and several years before this, I knew things would have shrunk in size from my childhood memory of
them. But how can this be? A dollhouse! Water tanks that would gleefully have
drowned us if we fell into them—tiny. Just large tin cans. The forbidding, tall
hill—just a pile of dirt practically crawling into
the miniature house. And not a wide road; just a rough-hewn track, barely wide enough for a little, no-name
car.
Oil played its part in the romance of the West--black gold and
corruption. But always, power from the earth; power from ancient flesh and bones
swallowed in time. “I am the grass, I cover all,” wrote the poet Sandburg. The grass in Wyoming is long and leaning and tough; it quietly,
inexorably absorbs both oil and cattle. What is left is wind and amazing blue sky. And sparkling air; soundless and alive.
The first mustang knew the lumberjack; the largest tractor knows the smallest grain of wheat. They are brothers, as they have been throughout
the marvelous span of ageless time.
