Out in Places Like Wyoming

Hay Bales and Cloud Studies: Art is Where you Find It

Despite the brevity of our visit to Wyoming at the end of October, Stefan and I fell into a routine that allowed us to work out of a kind of rooted-ness. We were as absorbed in our little cabin on the range as much as we were in our short excursions. And we worked well together.

Back at the ranch at the end of our drive to Saratoga on our third and last evening in Wyoming, we carried chairs from the kitchen of our little cabin onto the gravel drive in front. I sat in the westering sun to stay warm and make notes. Stefan set up an easel twenty feet away and began to work with watercolors. It was cold in the shade that grew from every raised surface. But it was quite nice in the sun.

As I wrote I listened to the raucous bellowing of the cattle pastured a half mile away. Their voices are most noticeable near sunrise and sunset.

Leah, our ranch landlord, had said when we arrived on Thursday that it was time for her to begin weaning the calves so we should not be surprised if the bellowing grew more intense.  But she hadn't gotten to the weaning yet; other things needed attending first. The bellowing we heard was just end-of-the-day chit-chat, cattle being cattle.

We saw her ride out in the late afternoon several different days to check on the herd. One or more of her dogs always seemed to run ahead of her on their way out, as in this picture, and frequently trotted behind on the way back in.

There were many things we found interesting on the premises, many things to photograph or paint or wonder about in addition to the mountains to the west and to the east. Stefan painted a series of watercolors that brought out the layering of the landscape visible from the kitchen door: grassland, foothills, mountains, horizon, sky, clouds, in gradations of color.

I found the fog that hung over the river beyond the trees in early morning to be particularly telling. It was as if an artificial gap or void had been created between the flat grassland and the highlands that rose into the sky.

One of the things that had attracted our particular attention when we arrived was a large stack of hay bales some one hundred feet from our cabin door. Here it provides a kind of natural border and gives a sense of perspective to the mountains rising in the distances.

The hay bales made an interesting study almost any time of day since they offered both an array of color variations that changed with the sunlight and an assortment of textured surfaces. The cattle who would eventually eat these bales would not have been interested in such distinctions, I am sure, but I was much taken by them if for no other reason than that they seemed to offer in an abstracted way the kinds of color and texture variations one sees in the grassland itself.

Well, perhaps hay bales are an acquired taste. I don't imagine just anyone would find them fascinating or would be patient if they had to wait while someone else photographed or painted the bales; but for us it was engrossing.

When we returned to New York, Stefan incorporated his watercolors and photographs of hay bales with other images and impressions of southeastern Wyoming into the MFA thesis project he had been working on.

Another way of understanding this fascination is to connect it to my family origins in this place. The hay bales, common and unremarkable though they are, have narrative value that resembles the story of our coming and going from Wyoming.

One particular naturally occurring feature of this landscape that attracted our attention were the clouds.  On our last morning, I watched and photographed a small formation over the ranch as it reflected the changing light from the rising sun.

The clouds turned pink before the sun breached the horizon. As it began to appear in the east, the Medicine Bow Range to the west turned pink as well. The clouds shifted from blue-grey to vivid pink to white in a matter of minutes. Once the sun was sending rays across the grassland, a treat in itself, the cloud show was over.

It was a lot to take in in just a handful of days. In short order the sun went down, we took our chairs back into the kitchen, and headed into Laramie to eat.   In those few days we felt very much at home in that cabin. Our hosts had afforded us a memorable experience.

The next morning we flew out of the little airport in Laramie in the dark and watched the sun come up at the airport in Denver. We were both sorry to leave so soon, but happy to have gotten out before the snows came.

Out in Places Like Wyoming

Looking West

On Saturday, the morning after we made our loop east to find Albin and Golden Prairie, we planned to head west into the Medicine Bow.

I got up early as I had the day before to see the sunrise. This time the sky was essentially clear. To step out into the yard in the cold, dark air at first is just an astonishing experience; the sounds of cattle lowing a half mile away and the stark contrasts between the dark and light colors as the sun approaches are nothing short of thrilling.
Overhead the sky was deep blue, gradually moderating to yellow-gold along the nearly black horizon.

Stefan was up too, both of us taking pictures in every direction. I walked up the road several hundred yards to a rise to catch the first splintering of sun and watch the colors of the grassland come alive.

The lively richness of color is astonishing. Behind me the mountains and clouds shifted colors minute by minute from blues turning to deep red hues, then to softer pastels.  Notions that this countryside is essentially monochromatic and featureless is just flat-out wrong.

We had chosen this day to drive into the mountains to see the Snowy Range up close and the Medicine Bow Peak in the Medicine Bow National Forest.


So after Stefan cooked up our eggs we drove out.

We arrived at Centennial at about 10. Not much was happening. Like our experience in Albin, no one seemed to be around. Most businesses were closed because of the lateness of the season.

Centennial is famous most recently, I suppose, because of the James Michener novel bearing its name. But it is hardly a town at all, more to my eye like a frontier settlement with trailers, ramshackle houses, and a handful of businesses -- garages, restaurants, western souvenir stores, gas station/convenience stores -- scattered along a bend in the highway just about where it begins a fairly steep ascent into the mountains.  There seemed to be a lot of "junk" lying about.

I don't want to be unfair in my description -- every tourist town has its less than pristine sections.  And perhaps there was more to the town than we could see, or perhaps things get cleaned up in the spring when the new tourist season starts. We stopped at the Centennial Museum but found it, too, closed for the season.  We went into one store and had a good look around at the assortment of western souvenirs. We decided not to buy anything, but I did find a rather interesting sign in the Men's room.

The clerk told us that a foot of new snow had fallen in the mountains the night before but the roads should be open. We thanked him and left















We drove up through the Snowy Range on Wyoming 130.  There had, indeed, been new snow, and the road was, in fact, clear and dry.



Just minutes after we left Centennial in the dun foothills, we were winding through high mountain, snow-covered woodlands. The road above Centennial actually has a gate that can be closed during bad winter weather.  They can literally "close" the road.

For a while we were stopping frequently to take pictures, to admire the long view, to feel the wildness that still characterizes much of this land.

Then we realized we would never make it to the top if we stopped every time we thought we could get a good picture. There was just too much gorgeous scenery for one short trip. Besides, the wind was blowing pretty hard and the cold quickly invaded our jackets and gloves and got under our hats. So we became more selective, stopping less frequently, viewing more from the car.

We did stop at the summit for a quick taste of arctic air and at a viewing spot facing the Medicine Bow rock face where a plane had crashed sixty years ago.  I have a vague memory of my parents discussing the plane crash, but it's one of a handful of memories from that time when my parents talked in hushed, serious voices. I remember generalized sadness detached from specific circumstance rather than a clear memory of tragedy.

My father used to hunt up in these mountains and fish in these rivers.



The landscape is different on the west side, more rolling plains with sharper features, rock outcroppings, rivers with their groves of trees.







As with our trip to Albin and Golden Prairie the day before, these childhood trips had always seemed too long and tiresome; I was too young to appreciate them. It was almost shocking to discover just how close these places actually were, how quickly one could drive there from Laramie.

We had lunch at the Wolf Hotel in Saratoga, a nicely kept, late 19th Century building.  Saratoga itself is pretty close to what I imagine a stereotypical "western town" would look like, with wide streets that formed a grid, wide sidewalks, old small-town store with facades.

After lunch we visited a few of these stores that sold western items, and bought ourselves some touristy things to take home, including  arrowheads for $1 each.





Then we headed back the way we had come, stopping again to take pictures at different spots.  We drove right through Centennial this time without stopping.








 We got back to the ranch by 4 or so to recover and work. Stefan got out his watercolors and I got out my journal. And then we had one more sunset to catch before heading into Laramie for dinner.