Looking at the mountains across the Laramie Plains.
When I was completing my bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Wyoming over a decade ago, I would drive from the big city of Laramie to the windy hills of Rawlins. I did this many weekends to do laundry, concentrate on homework away from distractions, and to eat my parents out of house and home. Those days, the drive was little more than a chore. I always felt like the view on the trip was little better than mediocre compared to the other wild beauties of Wyoming. Windy plains of desolation with snow-topped mountains in the background rolled on by the windows while I yawned tiredly. Those days, when seasons would allow me to climb the car over the winding Snowy Mountains, I thought I was being exposed to something magnificent and gorgeous. I did not feel the same about the hilly, burnt grass plains rolling in front of Elk Mountain or the bluffs jettisoning on the horizon behind Hanna. Those were boring.
I have always been the first to defend the rugged beauty of Wyoming. Often, my points of argument focused upon the unique beauty of the mountain ranges throughout the state. I had an active love affair with the sweet flowers of the Snowy Mountain trails, the wild call of the Wind River Mountains, and the boisterous beauty of so many places in the Big Horn Mountains near where I spent my childhood days in Thermopolis. Still, any Wyoming landscape apologist must account for the high percentage of desolate plains and desert sweeping across the broad state. I frequently found myself floundering between defense and concession in these areas of discussion. I was not passionate about the value of the prairie like I was about mountains, and the desert did, indeed, seem desolate and empty. I needed perspective.
Then I moved to the Dayton area of Ohio, summoned by an angelic vision of loveliness (my wife). I was astounded and entranced by all the seemingly endless supply of trees, all the shocking green of grass, plants, and leaves. When the landscape was not dominated by lines and lines of tall, leafy trees of many different types, it was decimated by immense concrete buildings, eye-catching billboards, or other often attractive manmade structures. Occasionally, the countryside was open in multi-colored squares of cultivated farmland, but never to the horizon; the horizon was always filled with forever trees. This country was definitely different from the Wyoming landscape I grew up with. While this country was not without its charms, the claustrophobia of the buildings and the trees began to feel oppressive and restrictive. It was here that I came to some serious realizations about the subtle and enchanting draw of the bleak Wyoming wilderness.
After a few good years in Ohio, my wife and I moved back to Southeast Wyoming. I knew I was intensely lovesick for the mountains: the sound of a creek over millions of stones, the smell of pine, the absolute darkness that obliterates the world on a mountain night, the powerful, infinite view from a jagged peak. What I did not immediately realize was how much I missed the Wyoming plains and the desert.
I began working as a service technician for Pepsi in Rawlins, a job that required a good deal of driving around Carbon County. This meant rolling along the highways to Saratoga alongside the picturesque view of Elk Mountain and the Snowy Mountains. It also meant driving the empty, cold plains on the way to Wamsutter or Baggs. During these years, I went through a bit of a transformation in the way that I began to see the Wyoming wilderness. I came to find myself intrigued by the quiet and solemn mysteries of the plains and the short rolling hills of rock and sagebrush. The immensity of a flat world stretching in all directions, desolate, silent, and wise began speaking in whispers altogether glorious and freeing. The absence of the trees gave birth to the sky, and the sky screamed in colors echoing the sudden beauties I observed in the shifting colors of the grass and sagebrush. The seasons yielded reds, greys, greens, browns, and yellows softly brushing shock blue skies. When snow blankets the plains in layers and the sun shines, fields of diamonds burst the senses flush with an endless horizon.
So, these days when I coax my car along the road between Rawlins and Laramie, I am anything but bored by the rolling plains with their countless colors and seasonal identities shifting past. My first love, the mountains, graces the horizon on all sides. These are often my hope, off in the distance, real and lovely. At the same time, the empty plain teems with life and fullness so far from empty, which took me some time to really recognize and appreciate. The vast Laramie Plains area, which I once thought a dull wasteland, now stirs my imagination and beckons me to stand silent, listening to eternity on a still plain softly sweeping the sky – free from the tyranny of trees.
