Remembering The Great 1972 Rainbow Family Scare in Colorado

The Colorado Sun reposted this piece by Jason Blevins in the Outsider newsletter:

The Rainbow Gathering of the Tribes plans to return to Colorado this summer to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The weeks-long confab that draws tens of thousands of hippie campers to public lands announced this week that the national gathering of possibly 30,000 would be returning to Colorado. 

The group’s national bacchanal was last in Colorado in 2006, with about 10,000 people camping on Forest Service land in north Routt County outside Steamboat Springs. Before that, they were 19,000-strong outside Paonia in 1992. The first national gathering was near Granby in 1972. 

My girlfriend Sharon and I hitched through Colorado during the summer of ’72. We weren’t card-carrying members of the Rainbow Family but your average observer couldn’t tell. My hair was long, my jeans scruffy. Sharon wore braids, a halter top, and jeans that were definitely not scruffy.

We wondered why we got flipped off as we stood with our thumbs out on the side of the road. We were both just good-natured college dropouts on a spree. Why don’t people like us?

You dirty hippies!

I took a shower yesterday.

Me too.

Can’t please some people.

When we arrived in Denver, we found out about the Rainbow Family Gathering of Tribes soon to descend on Colorado. The citizenry was up in arms about hordes of longhairs in scruffy jeans invading their mountains. The interlopers allegedly were going to smoke lots of illegal weed the quality of which would pale in comparison with the mind-blowing cannabis now grown all over Colorado and sold legally at your corner dispensary. Colorado newspapers raised the alarm that Rainbow Family members were going to trip on LSD, now the favorite micro-dosing drug of the techie who built your VR headset. The citizenry feared that Rainbowites on magic mushrooms might swarm their city, recruiting Colorado young people to psilocybin. Thing is, in the last CO election cycle, psilocybin was decriminalized by your grandmother’s pickleball group in Longmont.

My, my.

Colorado was a different place in 1972. My Uncle Bill sold insurance and Aunt Mary played bridge with her pals every week. They voted for Republicans and cursed hippies. Thing is, when Sharon and I turned up on their front porch in Denver, they took us in, fed us, and housed us -- in separate rooms, of course. We hung out with my cousins. Uncle Bill wouldn’t let them go full-hippie but they smoked pot with us anyway. Went with the cousins to Elitch’s Amusement Park, the old one in West Denver. We played miniature golf and drank a lot of 3.2 Coors. Went to a Red Rocks concert. Their friends didn’t care that we were dirty hippies as we were all young together, having fun. On the Fourth of July, we traveled up to Estes Park to watch fireworks from a friend’s lofty cabin.

Sharon and I eventually hit the road for points west. Many adventures along the way. Saw the sights. Swam in the Pacific Ocean. Went to some concerts. Met a lot of cool people. Visited a high school pal at Berkeley. At summer’s end, we hitched to Boston where we lived and worked for awhile. The relationship ended and I headed back to Florida, worked and went back to school.

Never really got close that summer to Strawberry Lake near Granby where the Rainbow Family was rocking out. They were doing their thing. Now their kids and grandkids are coming back to Colorado to rile the populace. I’m old enough now to curse the damn hippies but I know better. Besides, I live in Wyoming, the live-and-let-live-state. The Rainbow Family has gathered three times in Wyoming. Not sure about any casualties. It’s 2022 but all the good drugs are still illegal in The Equality State. While here, you will have to buy your weed from some shady guy on the street corner. Bring your own is the best bet. WYO is flanked by pot-friendly states Colorado and Montana.

According to the Marijuana Policy Project:

Wyoming is one of just a few states that continues to criminalize adults and patients for possessing and using cannabis.

My guess is that the Rainbow Family will choose any one of the weed-friendly states for future get-togethers. Besides the two already mentioned: California, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, Arizona. Millions of acres of forestland await you. Be careful with fires, though, as it doesn’t take much to start a conflagration. Edibles are a better choice.

Happy trails.

Weekend Round-up: Wolf says Meow, gigantic garden seed pods, and Notre Dame Cathedral visits the West

The garden has been winterized and the bulbs are in the ground. A pretty good year for tomatoes and Purple Podded Pole Beans, which I keep getting from the library's seed library because I like the name. Sounds like a crop a Martian might grow. The vines took over my container garden. Not tasty raw but can grow to incredible lengths because the beans blend in with the purple stems. There are some big ones, too. Not "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" big, but they're scary. The bigger they are, the tougher they are. Tomato varieties: Gold Nugget and Baxter's Early Bush Cherries. 

Mystery foliage still thrives in my big front yard flower pot. Looks like parsley but at first I thought cilantro since I was throwing around cilantro seeds in the spring. I used Plant ID but came up with nothing. I'll take some leaves into the Botanic Gardens and ask the experts. 

My two crabapple trees seem to be taking hold. Planted by Rooted in Cheyenne in August, they're six-feet tall and the leaves are dropping with the seasons. Must remember to water them on a regular basis. Weather Channel has mega-storms hitting the West Coast but whether the moisture makes its way to the Interior West is yet to be seen. Forecast calls for hurricane-force winds and giant waves on the Washington coast and up to eight inches of rain in California and multiple feet of snow in the Sierras. Pray for snow! Fortunately, Halloween is nigh and we all know what Halloween usually looks like around here.

I finished an article for WyoFile this week and it should appear online mid-week. It features two Wyoming-bred artists now living in Denver who highlight their work at the new Meow Wolf Denver. The four-story art outpost, wedged between I-25 and Colfax Avenue, opened Sept, 17. More than 300 artists contributed to the immersive art exhibit called Convergence Station, “the convergence of four different dimensions.” Haven't seen it in person yet but traveled there virtually through the imaginations of the artists. Look for my byline this week.

I just read "The Lincoln Highway" by Amor Towles. Color me clueless but I had never heard of this writer who has written many books. I will read more now that I blew through the latest on Kindle. The title attracted me. I live along the Lincoln Highway which was Hwy. 30 until it was swallowed up by I-80. I've researched the origins of America's first transcontinental highway for my novel. Fascinating stuff. Billy, an eight-year-old Nebraska boy in Towles novel, is fascinated by it and wants to travel it. But wanting to travel it in 1954 as Kerouac did just a few years earlier is tougher than it seems and launches his 400-page adventure. Great read. 

I'm also reading the new book of poetry by Betsy Bernfeld of Jackson and Laramie. Betsy is not only an accomplished poet but also an attorney and former librarian. I still treasure the tour of the old Jackson library Betsy led me on when I first came to work at the Wyoming Arts Council. That was the old log cabin library that smelled of wood. The new library is a work of art. I visit it every time I'm in Teton County. Betsy's book, "The Cathedral is Burning," was published by the fine Finishing Line Press in Lexington, Kentucky. It's one of the small presses that keeps literature alive in the U.S. and around the world. The book's cover features "The Mothers: Las Madres Project. No Mas Lagrimas, a public artwork about migrants in the Arizona desert at Pima Community College in Tucson. 

The other day I was thinking: how come there aren't more movies about poets? There are a few big names who have made it to the screen: Dante Alighieri, Allen Ginsberg, Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Emily Dickinson. That's a pretty good start. 

Surfing the streaming channels, I came across a film on Netflix about John Keats. I know Keats as a suffering English poet of the Late Romantic Period who died young at 25. He excelled at odes -- you don't see to many of those these days. "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," etc. I wasn't familiar with "Bright Star," a poem that speaks of mortality and youthful love. It's a beautiful poem that became the title of Jane Campion's movie, "Bright Star." Set in 1819 in a rural area just outside London, it tells the tale of a morose Keats and Fanny Brawne, a lively young woman was makes her own clothes and loves to dance. She is smitten with the scrawny poet. He eventually is smitten enough to write her several poems. His consumption gets supercharged after a night out in the rain. 

It's all over but the suffering. 

Thing is, Keats is doomed but the film is about Fanny's lovesickness. She is obsessed with Keats and she gets little in return. When he travels to London, she's in bed for five days, asking her mother why love hurts so bad. I kept hearing Nazareth's "Love Hurts" in my head. But her infatuation puts any pop song's lyrics to shame. She is physically ill when Keats goes to Rome to heal and won't take her along. She is torn asunder when word reaches her about the poet's death. They weren't married but were only informally engaged because her mother won't consent because she thinks her daughter is tetched and "people are talking." In mourning, she makes her own widow's weeds, cuts off her hair, and walks the heath for six years reciting her man's poems. That is worth a collection of odes right there. So sad to see her walking the heath reciting "Bright Star." She eventually marries and has three children but her future is also tied to Keats' gathering fame. 

Today I read a batch of Keats' poems and they are impressive. I also read some criticism that followed Keats post-mortem. I've always been more taken with Wordsworth and Coleridge and Blake of the Early Romantic Period. Later, Shelley was pretty cool although his wife was more cool. Lord Byron dies the true Romantic's death when he leaves poesy to fight a war that had nothing to do with him. Strange thing is, it seems as if Keats has a stronger legacy as the suffering creative genius. He was poor and unknown in his time. But the poet who suffers is still with us. And the poet's betrothed is the one whose suffering I felt most. 

Meadowlarks, cabbage burgers, and Pine Bluffs experiences a nuke boom (the good kind)

So this is Nebraska

So this is Nebraska. A Sunday

afternoon; July. Driving along

with your hand out squeezing the air,

a meadowlark waiting on every post.

Third stanza of a poem by Ted Kooser of Nebraska, one-time U.S. Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress. To hear him read the poem, prefaced with a short description of why he wrote it, go to  Poetry Foundation. To read in full, go to So this is Nebraska

I heard Kooser read this poem aloud along with other work at a Wyoming Writers, Inc., conference a few years ago. He's a short and unassuming man. You can't say the same adjectives for his poetry. His work tells stories of life in the Great Plains, Nebraska mainly. The poems are simple in construction but you can find worlds in "a meadowlark waiting on every post."

I traveled from Cheyenne to Nebraska last week, my first visit since before Covid-19 struck. It was a short visit. Family visitors who had never been to Nebraska wanted to see it, step foot in a foreign place. I told them Nebraska stories, how Chris and I got trapped in Kimball during a spring blizzard when lightning veined the sky and I skidded through mushy snow a foot deep on I-80 before snagging the last hotel room barely 60 miles from home. I gathered my family one spring break day and met friends from Lincoln in Red Cloud, Nebraska, home of Willa Cather. An odd choice for spring break if you're not an admirer of Cather and her work. But our friends got into the spirit of the day. The kids played in the playground while we toured Cather's old home undergoing restoration (I snagged a 100-year-old board) and poked around the library which checks out books, videos, and cake pans. Chris and I walked the quiet autumn streets of Lincoln, campus lights twinkling in the distance. I remarked that it took a victory by the visiting CU Buffaloes over the Mighty Cornhuskers to bring the silence of a graveyard to the capital city. 

We drove through Pine Bluffs and past the border into Nebraska. "Looks a lot like Wyoming," Eileen said.

We pull off at Bushnell. I glide to a stop on the paved road which probably morphs into a gravel road. Next to the sign for Bushnell (No Services!), with farm equipment clattering down the road, prairie grass waving in the hot wind, I read them Kooser's poem. Looking back, I should have dialed up the poet reading his work. His voice matches the scenery.

I hear traffic zipping down the interstate. Thousands pass this way every day bound for somewhere else. Those who do get off at this interchange take bio breaks and tend to a crying child. No need to seek succor in Bushnell (No Services). Winter winds or weather might cause high-profile vehicles to pull over. But a truck stop is just seven miles away across the border so why stop here? I can easily conjure a winter day near Bushnell because I have experienced them near Torrington and Muddy Gap and Sinclair and Meeteetse. 

But today it is summer and it's beautiful.

We get back in the car and stop for lunch at Sadie's. A big weekend ahead for the town with Texas Trail Days. A parade, rodeo, concerts and a mud volleyball tourney. I order a cabbage burger because I never see that on any restaurant menus. Only time I've eaten one was at Germans-from-Russia events that feature the Dutch Hop Polka. 

We tour the Texas Trail Museum and find out that we just missed the brief stop of UP's rebuilt Big Boy steam locomotive as it began its cross-country travels. We tour the gigantic Virgin Mary statue at the east end of town, and then the archaeological dig site on the way back to Cheyenne.

A school teacher tending the info booth at the rest area tells us that there isn't a single apartment or house to rent or buy in Pine Bluffs. The town expects an influx of workers set to begin the first phase of the renovation of the area's nuke missile sites. This is part of a multi-year $3 billion project to bring our "nuclear deterrent" up to 21st century requirements. Nobody ever talks about the "peace dividend" anymore. That's so late-20th century. Not sure what the nukes can do to help the Afghans about to regress into the 5th century. The Taliban, it seems, are not impressed with our nuclear might lurking in burrows on the prairie.

Behind a shelterbelt of cedars, 

top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees,

a pickup kicks its fender off

and settles back to read the clouds.

Agnes McDermott: The open road in an open car

A recommendation letter written on official stationery from United States Post-Office No. 18859, Mason, Ohio:

July 27, 1914

To Whom It May Concern:

            This letter will introduce you to Miss Agnes McDermott, who was employed by me for three and one half years, as Assistant Post Mistress, at this office. This work consisted of general office work, together with some bookkeeping.

            As to her integrity, honesty, capability and Christian character, I have the highest respect, only words of praise to offer in her behalf.

            It is a pleasure for me to recommend her, and I do so knowing from personal observation, that she is worthy of any position she may seek.

            Very Truly,

            Orville L. Girton, Postmaster

Nice rec letter. It came to me with other family documents. It was in two pieces, paper brown with age, frayed edges. I had to tape it together to read it.

I see my 25-year-old grandmother leaving her job with the fresh letter in hand intent on seeking a new and worthy position in Warren County, Ohio, only 22 miles away from downtown Cincinnati. Mason had but 737 residents when Agnes joined the P.O.

I don’t know what Agnes did after leaving the P.O. I do know that she lived with relatives, her sister Julia and brother Leo. I know that she took a road trip with chums to Colorado sometime between 1918-1920. Or maybe she and her pals set off for Colorado the summer after she left the P.O. Whenever she went, it was no mean feat. Motorcars were such a new addition to the landscape that highways were almost nonexistent.

I have no “On the Road” journal entries from Agnes but I do have plenty from Lieutenant Colonel Dwight Eisenhower’s First Transcontinental Motor Convoy in the summer of 1919. Army cars and trucks drove 3,251 miles from D.C. to San Francisco in 62 days. You can read the convoy’s daily log online. The log reported that the roads that my grandmother and friends drove from Ohio to Colorado were chucky, pine brick, fair but very dusty, gumbo mud, sandy with some quicksand, soft sand gumbo and, intermittently, good gravel roads. West of North Platte, Neb., many of the convoy's vehicles had to be rescued from a 200-yard stretch of quicksand. Dust was a constant problem, clogging carburetors and fuel lines. Cars and Army trucks broke down and slid off of bad roads. 

Agnes didn’t get to travel across Wyoming as she and her pals detoured south to Colorado. Eisenhower & Company encountered lots of Wyoming wind (no surprise) and rickety bridges built for travel by horse and wagon. It was good that engineer unit was part of the convoy as they had to strengthen some bridges and rebuild others.

Eisenhower was late to cross-country travel. Between 1913-16, suffragists made at least three long-distance automobile trips to promote the suffrage amendment. The earliest, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, was in 1913 when women drivers from all 48 states took turns driving cross-country collecting signatures on petitions calling for a national suffrage amendment. These women crusaders confronted some of the same problems as Eisenhower’s expedition although they didn’t have a platoon of engineers to help them over the rough spots. Sara Bard Field’s and Marie Kindberg’s 1915 tour in an open-air Oldsmobile included a “machinist” and she saw plenty of action. In 1916, Nell Richardson, Alice Burke and their kitten Saxon drove their “Golden Flier” 10,000 miles visiting cities coast-to-coast.

Grandma was not a suffragist. Somehow, she and her friends made it the 1,194 miles to Denver and explored the Rocky Mountains by automobile along dirt roads, some little more than one tracks cut into a steep mountainside that probably got its start as a mule trail or even a trail blazed by Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes. Grandma loved the mountains and returned to stay. 

Agnes may have used her post office reference while job hunting. She worked as a domestic when she met my grandfather, Martin Hett, at a Hibernian Club function. Cities with largest Irish immigrant populations boasted at least one chapter of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, named after references to ancient Ireland by the Greeks and Romans. Denver had three AOH clubs.

My grandparents were an odd match, this tiny ex-postmistress from Ohio a decade older than my tall, lanky and uneducated Irish grandfather. They were married in 1922 and had three children. The middle one became my mother, Anna Marie Hett.

I knew my grandmother as a nice lady who treated us kids to ginger ale and cookies. By the time I moved back to Denver in 1978, she had been dead for four years from complications of arteriosclerosis. In those days, it was called “hardening of the arteries” or that is how it was referred to by my mother the nurse. I was 23 when grandma passed, too busy at school to travel from Daytona Beach to Denver for the funeral. I couldn’t imagine her younger and pregnant, someone who gave birth to my statuesque mother and her sister and their 6-foot-5 baby brother who played college basketball. Whatever was in my mother’s DNA cocktail added to her husband’s Shay-Green mix, brought me to six-feet-tall by the seventh grade and my short but memorable stint as a high school b-baller.

I have nothing written in Agnes’s hand. I can find plenty of official documents online through ancestry.com. Birth certificate, death certificate, census records. Some blank spaces in her personal life cry out to be filled in but, it many cases, there’s nobody around to do that.

I imagine my grandmother tootling along with her pals in an open-top Model T. The road is rough, the way, dusty. She leaves behind her dreary old Ohio burg. She looks ahead, ready for new adventures in a new place. The wind riffles her hair. She can’t imagine that one day it will turn gray and she will be betrayed by the arteries bearing oxygenated blood to a brain trusted by the U.S. Post Office in Mason, Ohio.

But that is exactly what happens.

Where is the Wichita Lineman when we really need him?

I am a lineman for the county...

In the late-60s, I loved that Jimmy Webb song, a chart-topper for Glen Campbell. It's a fine song. And it mentions Wichita, a place where I did some of my growing up. It may be the only song that equates hanging power lines out in the sticks with aching loneliness for a loved one.

When I think power lines I think telephone pole. I have been passing telephone poles since I was a seventh-grader in Wichita, probably before that. It's many decades later and I'm still looking at the ranks of telephone poles that march up and down the streets of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Thousands of similar poles were toppled or rendered useless in hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Linemen/women from all over the U.S. and Canada are working on the outage. They are climbing telephone poles that their daddy or granddaddy knew. maybe even worked on. We desperately need these people because they are trained well to do a dangerous and necessary job. We can't just grab our gloves and spikes and shinny up our local pole to fix a problem. It can get you killed.

Some power company contractors were in my neighborhood yesterday. They dug around the base of the telephone pole that sits on the southwest corner of my lot. I was just having my second cup of coffee, searching for excuses to avoid the TV news and start my daily writing ritual. So I grabbed my coffee and went outside to chat. The supervisor was a friendly guy, but busy. He said that he and his crew were inspecting power poles to see "if they would last another ten years." We bantered about other crews like his fixing power lines in Florida. He said he'd be finished with this job in three weeks and be off to Florida. I wished him well and got on with the business of the day.

I wondered how much high-plains wind would it take to topple our poles. We don't get hurricanes. But winds have been clocked here over 100 mph. We easily get 50-60 mph winds each winter. How would my neighborhood poles fare? And why do they need to last 10 more years. Is something magical going to happen in 2027 to replace these poles with something more tech-savvy? Our smartphones need no telephone poles. If you have satellite TV, you don't require a cable strung from a pole into your house. Why can't our electric lines be buried as are lines for gas and sewer? Is it really necessary for power to go out for millions when the poles come crashing down?

I write this as everyone is abuzz about the Hyperloop One Global Challenge. Yesterday, 10 demonstration projects were selected for a transportation system that basically involves putting passengers into giant pneumatic tubes and speeding them to their destinations at 700 mph. One of those projects involves a segment from Cheyenne to Pueblo, Colo., via Denver International Airport. If I could get to DIA by tube in 12 minutes without driving I-25, I would do it in a hyper-second. But we will have to wait until the next decade to see if this happens. Meanwhile, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) has agreed to conduct a feasibility study on the 360-mile route. CDOT is the first governmental entity to form a partnership with Hyperloop One. Nothing yet from the State of Wyoming.

Meanwhile, I write this post on a laptop that connects with the worldwide web via cable lines that are strung on wooden poles that may (or may not) last another ten years.

Music, fiction-out-loud, and the company of friends add to Eclipse Day 2017 in Casper

I joined a million-plus people watching the eclipse in Wyoming on Aug. 21.

I almost missed it. In 2015, when Casper began promoting Eclipse 2017, I thought it silly to plan so far ahead for an event that lasted two minutes.

I see now that Casper had the right idea. Wyoming’s “Second City” was right in the path of totality. Cheyenne, the Capital City, was not. When the eclipse passed my house in north Cheyenne, it would be 97 percent of full. As it turns out, that three percent meant a lot.

On Memorial Day weekend, Chris, Annie and I journeyed up to Guernsey State Park to find a good spot to view the eclipse. Campsites were already booked for eclipse weekend. We got on the waiting list. We also bought a day pass for Aug. 21. That was enough, I thought.

In June, Carolyn Deuel of Casper’s ARTCORE called and asked me to participate in the Music and Poetry series held at Metro Coffee Company. I was set to appear with a young musician, Ethan Hopkins, known around town as The Ukulele Kid. That sounded fun. I planned to read a chapter from my new novel set in 1919 Colorado. The Roaring Twenties was a boom time for ukuleles. Maybe Ethan would know a song from the era. Then Carolyn dropped the bomb, asking me to come up for the evening of Aug. 21. A new opportunity presented itself.

ARTCORE would put me up in a hotel as it always did. The bad news was there was no room at the inn. No room anywhere. She suggested that I arrange a home stay with one of my old pals in the arts world. I made many trips to Casper in the past 15 years. Many were planning sessions for the Casper College Literary Conference and the Equality State Book Festival that grew out of it. I grew close to many fine people in Casper who loved the book and the written word and an occasional beer at the old Wonder Bar. It takes a village, as a noble Democrat once said. It also takes a village to plan a big event such as a literary conference or book festival. I knew that, which was why it was such a treat to find a group who wanted to launch an event that would involve years of planning and last for only a few days. You know, something like an eclipse festival only with books.

This story has a happy ending. Chris and I stayed with our old friend, Liberal Twit of Casper. That’s not her real name, but one we use because she is a private person who spent most of her career at a college library and now spends retirement reading, studying history, and cooking.

I am Liberal Twit of Cheyenne. A Republican librarian gave us both that name when we objected to Lynne Cheney headlining our first book festival in 2006. Lynne is a Casper native who writes children’s books. She once ran the National Endowment for the Humanities in the noted swampland that Donald Trump threatened to drain. Dick also is from Casper. I think he wrote a book, “Into the Quagmire,” or something like that. The federal building in Casper is named after his federal self. So is the playing field of his old high school. We should name Iraq War Two after him too.

We two liberal twits have been causing trouble almost as long as the Iraq War has lasted. We believe we have worked in the fields of the Lord while Dick & Co. labored in one – or maybe all -- of the circles of Hell. That’s just the kind of thing you would expect a Liberal Twit to say.

Chris and I watched the eclipse in Liberal Twit’s backyard. It was very quiet. The moon gobbled the sun bit by bit. We watched through our ISO-approved eclipse glasses. The morning grew quieter as it grew darker. When the moon blotted out the sun we knew it was a cosmic event and not some sign of God’s wrath.  That’s what you get from working in libraries and arts councils and reading lots and lots of books. I am not a better than anyone else because of it, just different. I value that difference.

After the eclipse passed, we were all a bit bedazzled. It was cosmic, yes, but also spiritual.

That afternoon, I set out for downtown. My goal was to buy a Zak Pullen eclipse T-shirt. The festival was still humming downtown. I parked blocks away and walked to the new Daniel Street Plaza. A band played. Vendors vended. Beer purveyors purveyed (it was too early for me). I found Zak’s T-shirt but the vendor only had small sizes. Someone told me to go to the Nicolaysen Art Museum’s gift shop. I walked the six blocks on a hot afternoon. The Nick was closed for a private party – it’s usually closed on Mondays anyway. I returned to my car by way of the Second Street festival. The new plaza is a great spot for concerts and gatherings. Designers put in artificial turf instead of grass. It’s comfortable enough, but doesn’t the artificial stuff absorb heat during hot summer days? People were having a good time – that’s all that matters.

A band played at the Yellowstone Garage, a restaurant bar that I’ve never been in. This area is called the Yellowstone District. Old warehouses are now sites of bistros and ART 321, among other venues. Casper seems to be making more headway with its downtown than Cheyenne is with ours. Its work-in-progress seems further along than the one we got going on.

Ethan and I drew a good crowd for that night’s performance. Ethan’s entire family was on hand. They are a lively bunch and gave the show a jolt of energy. Ethan’s original music is wonderful – he’s already blazing a trail as a songwriter. He did some covers too.

All the chairs were filled by the time I got to the stage. Thirsty people wandered off the street and stuck around for music and poetry. Or prose, in my case. I read the first chapter of my novel-in-progress. The chapter has been worked over by me, my writing group, a writing friend, and me again. I even timed the delivery on my smartphone which, indeed, is very smart. People paid attention – that’s what you want, and all you can ask for.

After a beverage break, in which the espresso machine got rolling again, I read a short story from the anthology, “Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An anthology of Wyoming Writers.” The story, “George Running Poles,” is set in Riverton and features two Rez teens skipping school. One of them has a dark secret. You can find the anthology at your local bookstore or order it online from Sastrugi Press in Jackson.

The next morning, I dropped Chris off at the YMCA for a workout and I proceeded to The Nic to get my Pullen T-shirt. I got the last extra-large size. I then saw Aaron and Jenny Wuerker's exhibit of landscapes. I got a chance to meet them, too, as they were on hand to take down the show. Some of the big canvasses were going to exhibits in Denver; others return to the Wuerker's studio in Buffalo. 

It was a long drive home, but at least we avoided the gridlock on Eclipse Day. These were mostly day trippers from points south (Colorado) and many had to get back to their routines on Tuesday, which I did not. Over the course of the last week, I’ve heard tales of people taking eight to ten hours for what usually is a three-to-five-hour drive. Even those folks said that the eclipse was worth it.

And it was. 

What is on my plate for 2016

What I'm looking forward to in 2016....

Retirement. On Jan. 15, I will work my last day at the Wyoming Arts Council in Cheyenne. I was among the fortunate to have a job that I loved. I depart the WAC on the eve of its 50th birthday, which comes up in 2017. It has nurtured the arts throughout the state. Sure, I'm a liberal artsmonger, but Wyoming's cultural world would not be what it is today without all of us working toward the same goals. It took me awhile to shut up and listen when I went into communities, to find out what their residents wanted instead of telling them what was best. This is a good strategy for all of us. In fact, if I were asked for my hard-earned advice on the matter, I would reply, "Just listen."

Publishing. I have a roomful of written work awaiting publishing. To date, I have published one book of short stories and numerous stories and essays in magazines and journals. But there remains a lot of work that's yet to see the light of day and the eyeballs of readers. Suire, I've been sending stuff out. But the act of writing is comprised of several full-time jobs. First, the creation. Second, the publishing. Third, the promotion. During my career as a professional writer/editor/bureaucrat, I've been able to do the creation part. But those other two parts? Not so much. It was fascinating to hear Kent Nelson's publishing strategy at last summer's Wyoming Writers, Inc., conference in Cheyenne. Kent, a one-time squash champion and lapsed attorney, keeps his stories circulating, up to 20 at a time. When one is rejected, he sends it back out into the world. In this way, he's managed to publish many books and scores of stories. But it takes time, and attention, and that's what I plan to do with my new-found time and my lagging attention span.

Presidential elections. Yes, I also cringe when I think about it. Republican bloviators such a Trump make me fear for the future of our republic. "Make America Hate Again" is not a winning slogan. As one who has blogged frequently about the paranoid excesses of U.S. conservatives, I am not surprised that Trump has found a footing among them. Scared Old White People (SOWP) make up his base. As an Old White Person (OWP) myself, I am glad to report that I am not among the scaredy-cats.

Traveling. I have traveled extensively in the U.S., at least traipsing through all of the states in the lower 48. But I've only been overseas twice. I plan to remedy that in retirement, with trips planned to Italy and Mexico with more to come. Chris and I are curious travelers. Maybe I should say that, as travelers, we value curiosity. When we find ourselves in a new place, we like to roam around and check it out. Never know what you'll find.

What happens when Wyoming tourists no longer want to drive?

Gas prices are lower and expected to go even lower. We may be in for $2.50 gas prices in early 2015.

Yellowstone had a record 4 million visitors in 2014.

All good news for Wyoming.

Or is it?

America's love affair with cars may be over. Hard to believe for us Baby Boomers. I've been driving for almost 50 years. I couldn't wait to get my license and a car and tear around Volusia County, Florida -- and possibly use my new motorized self to get a date.

I did get a date or two. And I've driven in hundreds of counties all over this country and had a pretty good time doing it.

But those days may be over, at least in urban centers where most of the population lives. Kids these days -- they don't dream so much about piloting their own car as they do about saving the planet. Public transportation and car-sharing and walking and biking are hip.

Teton County, the gateway to Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks and the cornerstone of Wyoming tourism, just opened a new terminal for its Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit (START) bus line. We have buses in Cheyenne and Casper and maybe a few other communities. But none of us has a transportation terminal that includes a "bus barn" for storing vehicles indoors away from the cruelties of Wyoming weather. The first phase of this transportation terminal was dedicated Friday. When it's completed, it will even include employee housing, a real concern for any middle class person hoping to make a living in one of the richest counties in the country.

The state has no plans to widen tourist-clogged Teton County roads. And many environmentally-conscious residents don't want those roads widened anyway. So the county plans for more rapid transit to get residents and visitors out of their cars. As it is now, visitors can fly into Jackson and spend a week without a car. In fact, they may prefer that.

The town of Jackson's web site had a link to this article written by Tim Henderson for the PEW Charitable Trusts. It talks about the drop in rates for commuting by car, not only in cities but here in the Great Wide Open:

Western areas known for wilderness and a car-loving culture are seeing big decreases. In Oregon, Washington and Colorado, the percentage of workers commuting by car dropped by either 3 or 4 percentage points. 

The car commuting rate in Teton County, Wyoming, with its breathtaking mountain views and world-renowned skiing at Jackson Hole, dropped from 79 percent to 70 percent. No other county saw a larger decline. 

“We took a number of actions between 2000 and 2010 with the intention of changing the mode of travel away from the auto, particularly for the work trip in our area,” said Michael Wackerly of Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit. Some of the steps included providing commuter buses to get workers from neighboring Idaho, bus passes for Teton Village employees and higher parking fees to encourage bus use. For Teton County, the motivation was largely environmental. 

“A transportation system oriented toward automobiles is inconsistent with our common values of ecosystem stewardship, growth management and quality of life,” said the county’s 2012 master plan.

The Western Greater Yellowstone Consortium, a four-county partnership in Wyoming and Idaho, cites the expectations of Eastern tourists, many of whom come from cities where driving is falling out of favor. “A growing percentage of those visiting our National Parks from the nation’s urban centers and other countries expect to have alternatives to driving a private vehicle,” the group said in laying out its transportation goals.

You can read the rest of the article at http://townofjackson.com/current/more-cities-and-states-car-commuting-skids/

Many tourists "expect to have alternatives for driving a vehicle." They may be prompted by an environmental ethic. They may not want to be bothered with the hassles getting around unfamiliar territory on their own. Or they may not want to endure a National Lampoon-style family summer vacation family trip from Des Moines to Yellowstone. Where's Aunt Edna?

Sure, Jackson may be filled with tree huggers (along with the occasional Dick Cheney). But what about tourists visiting other Wyoming destinations? It's hard to imagine Cheyenne Frontier Days without city streets clogged with coal rollers and RVs. But even at CFD, the city uses school buses to transport tourists from a big parking area off of I-25 to concerts and the rodeo. And the city offers a free downtown circulator bus each summer. Downtown is very walkable and there are more and more reasons to walk around in it. We have a superb bikepath system, although commuting by bike on roadways still can be a harrowing experience.

There is a huge difference between Jackson and Cheyenne, One of the first comments I heard after moving to Wyoming in 1991: "Too bad you live in the ugly part of the state." It's true -- Jackson Hole is gorgeous while you have to hunt for the beauty in the High Plains. It's there, but it's not staring you in the face as it is every day in The Hole. More and more, Teton County residents realize what a gift they have. It's reflected in transportation policies and planning and a strong "locals" movement and arts and cultural activities such as the summer's Wild Festival which has the goal of "deepening our connection to nature through the arts."

In Wyoming, tourism is as important as digging carbon out of the ground to incinerate in giant power plants that obscure our national park vistas and contribute to global warming. But changes in national attitudes and demographics may be the real key to the state's future.

Day two of touristing on the high plains

At Oregon Trail Ruts State Historic Site: Mike Shay and Brian and Eileen Casey. Thousands of wagons passed this way during the heyday of the trails that cut through Wyoming. 

Why all of the sheriff’s cars at Hawk Springs Reservoir?

A Sunday drowning. But on Tuesday morning, I didn’t know that. We stopped at Hawk Springs to take in the reservoir and the bluffs beyond. We were touristing so stopped at almost every site we came across. When I travel Wyoming, I’m usually zipping to or from a destination and I need to be there at a certain time. Not just work trips but personal ones, too.

I used to be the guy who stopped at all in interesting things. What’s that marker? Where does that road go? Somewhere along the line, I lost that sense of adventure that drove my family crazy.

We stopped at Hawk Springs State Recreation Area because we were escorting my sister Eileen and her husband Brian on a Wyoming adventure. Can’t have an adventure unless you take the road less traveled. Our goal was Fort Laramie but we had all day, so why not stop?

It was quiet at Hawk Springs. Wind rattled the Cottonwood leaves. Some locals fished. We didn’t know it, but search parties scoured the reservoir for a drowned man. On Sunday, James “Jesse” Nelson of Torrington apparently dove into the reservoir to rescue another person who had fallen overboard. That person was rescued by another boat but Nelson was not.

Tragedies happen around us while we look the other way.

But on this day, we were roaming around southeast Wyoming. We stopped in the town of Hawk Springs to take some goofy photos. We met the proprietor of The Emporium, one of the few eating and drinking establishments along this stretch of state road. On this day was closed for a thorough cleaning after a busy summer catering to tourists and Sturgis-bound bikers. The owner invited us to return on the weekend to dine and watch a UW game.

Ever stopped at the Homesteader Museum along Torrington’s main drag? Me neither. You can’t miss it – it’s in the old train station across from the sugar plant. A big caboose sits adjacent to the museum. On the north side of the museum is an old homesteader cabin that once occupied good bottom land near Hawk Springs. It was moved when the dam was built and before the water rose high enough to drown people in 2014. A couple raised their three children in this windowless log cabin. Imagine. The museum grounds also included a one-room schoolhouse and a two-story rancher’s house, all moved from elsewhere in Goshen County. Settlement history in our part of the world may be recent, but there’s a lot of it.

Did you know that Jackson Hole is not the only hole in the state? This part of of Wyoming was historically referred to as "Goshen Hole?" A valley carved by rivers over thousands of years. You get the sense of "hole" when you top of rise of the highway and look down into the valley all the way to Nebraska. 

We picnicked at the city park in Lingle. Mothers and their pre-K kids trooped into the park, set up some soccer nets and commenced a game. One of the younger kids clambered around on the bandshell that was built by the Works Progress Administration in 1941-42, just as the U.S. was entering WWII and men in those WPA and CCC crews were putting on uniforms. Beautiful red-white-and-blue concrete bandshell that’s probably been the home for many Fourth of July concerts with fireworks to follow. Across the front of it is this: “Small but proud.”

Fort Laramie was our next stop. I’ve written about it before. This National Historic Site was a favorite destination when the kids were young and we were looking for a jaunt into history. This frontier fort along the North Platte and Laramie rivers was a thriving place for much of the 19^th century. It closed when the frontier was declared closed in 1890, which is also the year of the Wounded Knee massacre. The fort’s buildings almost disappeared from disuse and scavenging by citizens from the town of Fort Laramie. But, as often happens, the government stepped in and saved it. Drat that damn gubment. Now southeast Wyoming has a beautiful historic site to add to many others and an economic generator. Lots of cars and campers in the parking lot on this Sept. 16 afternoon. A big bus, too, filled with tourists anxious to explore history and plug some Euros into the Wyoming economy.

Chris and I has never been to the historic sites celebrating the wagon ruts and Register Cliff. The Oregon Trails Ruts State Historic Site marks the place where thousands of wagons and handcarts cut a swath through the side of a hill on the Oregon/Mormon/California trails. When you stand in the ruts, you can imagine the hard slog that these pioneers experienced. The major traffic would have been in June as they planned to reach Independence Rock near Casper by the Fourth of July. They already had glimpsed Laramie Peak shimmering in the distance and wondered, “How are we going to get over that?” But the trail turned northwest from here, following the path of the river through the relatively flat county on the way to Fort Caspar.

There’s a marker at the wagon ruts that celebrates the site in language a bit flowery for my tastes. A photo of it is included. I wanted to rewrite it in simple language, something a little more Hemingwayesque. Maybe you’d like to take a crack at it.

The marker at Register Cliff was a bit more to my liking, as it actually mentions the natives of this area, who also happened to etch petroglyphs into this site. Their signatures were destroyed by a sea of immigrants, a metaphor for what happened to their tribes as the wagons rolled West.   

"Wagon wheels cut solid rock, carving a memorial to Empire Builders." Not sure when this sign was installed but it could use a few updates.

Day one of touristing on the high plains

Hanging out at Esther Hobart Morris's statue at the Wyoming State Capitol with Brian and Eileen Casey.

My sister Eileen and her husband, Brian Casey, visited us this week in Cheyenne. They live in Orlando, Florida, and had never been to Wyoming. Eileen is a history buff and Brian likes trains. I told them, “You’ve come to the right place.”

Visitors from distant climes help me focus on the clime I’m in. I’ve lived in Cheyenne 23 years but have not seen everything there is to see. A human trait, to take for granted the place where you live.

On Monday, their first day in town, Eileen, Brian, my wife Chris and I toured Cheyenne. We exploited the state capitol building, which is in the beginning of a $250 million renovation. I saw Leslie in the Governor’s office and went in to say hi. She asked if we wanted to see the inner office, the place where Gov. Mead signs bills, and we said yes. She let Eileen and Brian sit in the Gov’s chair and I took photos. We wondered if we could walk into the Florida governor’s office, sit in his chair and take photos. Probably not. We toured the legislative chambers and viewed the art. I took time to actually view the art on the walls instead of just passing by. On the House side, the portrait of the 1913 group had a tear in the middle. The tear is about the width of a human head, which is due to the fact that one disgruntled legislator plucked the portrait off the wall and bashed it over the head of a colleague. Those are the kind of details that make history come alive.

We next toured the state museum. I’ve been in there a hundred times. But on this, the 101^st visit, I saw things I didn’t know were there. It is a gift to have fresh eyes alight on a thing and say “I didn’t know that.” That’s what museums are all about, right? We ate lunch at the historic Albany and then toured the Depot Museum. Trains created Cheyenne. The magnificent depot was created in view of the State Capitol to remind legislators to not forget what side their bread was buttered on. These days, legislators don’t have a view of the Powder River Basin coal fields, but that lesson has a prominent place in their memory.

You can see the coal trains from the second-floor museum viewing room. It’s a busy rail yard, which delighted Brian almost as much as the big model train in the next room. You’re in choo-choo country, pardner!

Time flies when you’re touristing. We walked around the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, a place that I love. The flowers are in their last gasp of beauty before the frosts arrive and the snow falls. The folks at the gardens did a great job of resurrecting the flower beds after our June and July hailstorms. I showed off the architectural plans of the new building. I’m very proud of it, as I was one of the forward-thinking voters who approved it during the election of 2012. Without Chris and I and thousands of others, we wouldn’t be creating a city for our children and grandchildren. Take a bow, ya’ll.

We wrapped up the day with a barbecue at our house. A fitting end to a fine, late-summer day in the high prairie.

To be continued….

Sunday morning wrap-up: Spring is lion time

March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. That expression shows more wishful thinking than reality. In Wyoming, March comes in like a lion and goes out like another lion, or maybe the very same lion -- it's hard to say. March announced itself with snow and announces its end with more snow. This morning it's snowing like crazy in the western part of Wyoming -- and it's headed this way. The NWS has issued a winter storm warning for the Snowy Range which means that driving across Elk Mountain will be hazardous for my wife and her fellow travelers returning from a conference in Green River. I've written about I-80 before. Anyone who's traveled its tortuous miles between October and May can attest to its wintry bite. Even in the fall. Even in the spring. Lion time!

Still, the clock doesn't lie. Spring brings the launch of gardening season. April is the month for preparing the ground and sprouting seeds. May is planting time, although don't rush into it because we're still not free of frost and snow and biting winds. I ventured out to the annual Laramie County Home & Garden Show yesterday at the events center. The building was filled with more home than garden. The Laramie County Conservation District staffed a booth. I stopped and picked up a packet of wildflower seeds, a guide to pollinators and a recreation guide to the Upper Crow Creek Watershed. I didn't know about squash bees that specifically pollinate squash, pumpkins and melons. I will be on the lookout for them this summer. I also stopped by Gitty-Up & Grow, a business that sells raised bed and patio veggie planting gardens. Julie explained that she grew enough tomatoes, peppers, onions and herbs in her in her 3-by-2-by-1-foot screened-in patio grower to keep her in homemade spaghetti sauce all summer and fall. Not bad. Look her up here. Most of the other booths offered services for landscaping, barn-building, home-building, sprinkler systems, etc. A grass-fed beef purveyor was doing a brisk business, as was the Tupperware booth nearby. I wasn't interested in most of it. Not that my home and yard don't need help. But I have gardening on my brain.

Wonder what old-time ranchers and farmers think about the grow-your-own-food craze? Millennials are jumping on the bandwagon. Some spend their summers volunteering at farms. Others start gardens on rooftops or vacant lots or even frontyards, which is going to cause apoplexy among some of their lawn-obsessed Boomer neighbors. Denver allows frontyard veggie gardens and proposes to amend its zoning code to allow yard sales of "uncut fruits and vegetables, whole eggs, and home-prepared food products such as jellies, jams, honey, teas, herbs, spices and some baked goods." Obviously some homeowners' associations will not go along with the trend. Property values! But what if you live in a hip neighborhood where keeping up with the Joneses involves lush tomato plants supplanting bluegrass.

Neighbor No. 1 (snidely): I see that you're mowing your grass again.
Neighbor No. 2 (defensively): What's it to you?
Neighbor No. 1 (grabs a purple heirloom tomato from his vine and bites into it): Want a bite?
Neighbor No. 2 (revving up his lawn tractor, pointing at his crotch): Bite this.

Another chapter in the culture wars. Some of us (even Boomers) will see foodscaping as an inalienable right, much like craft brews and artisanal doughnuts. Others will see it as another Agenda 21 plot. Neighborhoods will be grouped accordingly, thus giving us even fewer opportunities to interact with those we disagree with.

In Jackson, where a new company, Maiden Skis, is making artisanal skis and snowboards, there are plans for a greenhouse attached to the city parking garage. It's called Vertical Harvest:

The greenhouse will grow and sell locally grown vegetables to Jackson Hole restaurants, local grocery stores and directly to customers year-round, providing a stable, consistent source of produce at competitive prices. The site for the greenhouse is a currently unused 30’ x 150’ lot owned by the Town of Jackson on the southern edge of a public parking garage in the center of town.

Organizers plan to recruit people with special needs to work at Vertical Harvest. This combines the usual contemporary blend of an innovative project with "doing good." Plus Kickstarter. Sure, Jackson is the hip part of the state where stuff like this seems to spring out of the rocks. But this could be done anywhere. There's a proliferation of mini-greenhouses and high tunnels throughout the state. Bright Agrotech in Laramie makes nifty indoor growing towers that you can put in any sunny room. Creativity and a bit of chutzpah is all it takes. Not surprisingly, you usually find artists in the mix.

Winter off-roading in Wyoming

A week ago today, I sat in my Ford staring out at the frozen tundra of Carbon County. I was about ten feet off of Hwy. 287, rear end facing the road. My tires had carved a trail as straight as an arrow from road to final resting place, a slight depression midway between asphalt and barbed wire. 

My mistake was going too fast through a slushy mix of snow and ice. You'd call it "hydroplaning" if the road was awash in rain water. The tires lose contact with the road and the car goes into a spin. Florida people hydroplane all the time. It's an official state sport.

But it rarely happens in Wyoming, where rain usually falls in a fine mist. Hail is a different kettle of fish. I once was caught in a hailstorm in I-25 near Buffalo. My car began to lose traction as hail swamped the road. Couldn't see either. So I slowly rolled to a stop on the shoulder, coming to rest five feet behind a truck hauling a horse trailer.

Last Saturday, I sat for a few minutes and then decided to take a look at my predicament. The wind blew about 50 mph but it was a warm wind, as these things go, not an Arctic blast but a downslope wind, a chinook or "snoweater" as Native peoples used to call it. It also blows freshly fallen powder snow in great quantities across roadways, leaving snow traps for the unwary.

My front wheel wells were clogged with wet snow. My running board rested on a snowbank. I guessed that I was high-ended, the term used when your car's mid-section rests on a mound of snow or sand or dirt and your wheels can't find traction. This usually means a tow, or getting pushed out of your predicament by a roving band of cowboys or collegians. When I was younger, I found pleasure in helping push people out of predicaments. My damaged heart won't let me do that any more.

A father and son in a small truck pulled over and asked if they could help. "Don't have anything to tow you out with," said the man. "Want us to call someone?"

I showed him my phone. "I'm going to call my insurance company."

He nodded and pulled away.

I extracted my gloves and ice scraper. I dug out around the front tires and poked the scraper beneath the car, trying to loosen the snow that kept me high-ended. I scraped the snow down to the prairie grass, hoping I could get a purchase on dry ground. Winded, I got back in the car and caught my breath. Bluegrass tunes played on the radio. At least I could get Wyoming Public Radio. 

I rocked the car -- reverse to forward and reverse again. The car moved a tad, but finally got stuck again. I shifted back into park and fished out my insurance company's 1-800 roadside assistance number. I called. Reached an electronic voice that transferred me to another e-voice and then I got a real person. She wanted to help me. I reconstruct our conversation from memory.

"Where are you located?" she asked.

"Off of a state highway about 10 miles north of Rawlins, Wyoming."

"Where?"

"Off of Interstate 80, north of Rawlins in Wyoming." I was tempted to add: "The big square state right in the middle of the map."  But didn't.

A few seconds passed. "I-80 -- found it," she said. "You said Rawlins?"

"Yes."

I heard her tapping on the keys in an office somewhere in Dallas or Indianapolis or Portland. "State highway, you said?"

"Can't remember the name. 287 I think."

More tapping. "Ah," she said. "Highway 287."

"Sounds right."

She asked me if I was stuck. I said I was. She asked if my car was damaged. I replied that it was OK. She asked if I was less than or more than 10 feet from the road. I thought it would sound better if I said less than ten feet so that was my answer. She asked if she could have permission to log into my phone's location finder. I told he that my smart phone was busted and that I had a dumb phone with me. That didn't seem to phase her. She said she was going to locate me, said I would get a call from the responder. We said our goodbyes and disengaged. Wind rocked the car. Old-timey banjo music played on the radio.

I looked to the south and saw two snowplows headed my way. You couldn't have been here a half hour ago? They stopped just short of me. Both drivers disembarked.

I got out of the car. 

"Need any help?" asked the first driver, who was surprisingly young. He looked at me and then at the car.

"I have a tow truck coming."

He nodded. "You sure?"

"I'm sure."

We parted ways. During this three-day trip, I had seen a dozen snow plows. It's winter in Wyoming and this winter is a doozy. The WYDOT plows get a lot of credit for keeping the roads open. But it was a closed interstate that brought me to this predicament. I-80 was closed between Rawlins and Laramie and it didn't appear it would open any time soon. And I needed to get home for my wife Chris's birthday party. So I was taking the long way around, going north around the snow, or so I thought.

My phone dinged. I answered an automated call. It went something like this: "Your roadside assistance vehicle is on its way. You can expect it in approximately six hours."

WTF? Six hours? I'll never get home. The call disconnected. I noted with alarm that I had only one bar of service showing on the phone face. How did I get so low? Now I was going to sit here for six hours with very little phone service, a heart patient trapped in a snow bank. Cars and trucks passed on the road. I thought about making a sign and standing out by the road. "Heart patient needs help." Or maybe "Help -- Wife will kill me if I don't get home for birthday."

As I contemplated my options, I noticed a surprising number of cars and trucks and SUVs passing me by. Would I stop if I saw a stranded motorist on the side of the road? Depends. It was the middle of the day and, if they were to get a good look at me, people could tell that I was somewhat harmless. What does a red Ford Fusion tell you about the person inside? Buys American cars. Wyoming license plate. Probably not a very good driver -- what kind of knucklehead slides off a road in the middle of a sunny February day?

Someone did stop. Dark blue pickup. Guy got out. I got out. Young Latino, maybe 30. Wore a light jacket and a ballcap. Asked if I needed help. I told him my story, said a tow truck was coming but not until dark. He walked over to the car and looked around.

"I think we can push it out." He spoke with a slight accent. "My girlfriend is in the truck -- she can drive."

I thought about it for a second. I really shouldn't be pushing out any cars, even my own. But he seemed very certain that we could do this. I nodded. He waved his girlfriend out of the car. She came out. Very pretty woman wrapped in a bulky coat. She walked over, the two spoke and she got behind the wheel. 

The man and I pushed. The girlfriend turned the wheels and the man said to keep the wheels straight. We pushed again, the car moved back a few inches and I fell on my face in the snow.

"You OK?" said the man.

I nodded. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Don't be a weinie. Heart don't fail me now.

We pushed again. I slipped in the snow. The car moved back toward the road, slowly, and then it gained traction and reached asphalt. Two cars on the inside lane had stopped, giving us some room to back up. The girlfriend backed gently onto the road, and then pulled forward on the shoulder. I breathed heavily, my heart pounded. 

"Thank you so much," I said to the man and his girlfriend. She grinned. I never heard her speak a word. The two walked back to the car. I got into my Ford, looked in the rearview mirror and saw them get into their pickup. I waved. I put my car into drive and gently pulled away, hoping I hadn't sustained any front-end damage. The car purred. I drove. It was a good 20 miles before I caught my breath. From there, it was mostly smooth sailing.

Also see my post that day from the new Burger King in Rawlins, written while I waited (in vain) for I-80 to open. This new BK featured gaming PCs at several of its tables and AT&T wireless. The password: ILoveBacon. Read my blog from Rock Springs about the travails of Elk Mountain here.

Getting religion on I-80

Stuck inside of Rawlins

With those Cheyenne blues again.

Don't you just love winter driving in WYO?

Since I just came from a literary event in Rock Springs, it's only appropriate to revisit a poem by one of that city's fine poets. Here's a sequence from Barbara Smith's poem "Interstate 80:"

...even if you drive the same forty miles

morning and night to work

and know every pimple on the lady's ass

every curve or incline

you could drive it in your sleep or blind

like you do half of the time in January anyway

whiteout white knuckle terror

braced against the blast of triple trailers

whipping like rattlers in the ruts.

This road will give you religion, mister.

 

Amen, Barbara.

Elk Mountain -- that's all you need to know

One of the constants of winter driving in Wyoming: Elk Mountain.

That's all you have to say. Elk Mountain. 

When I arrived in Rock Springs from Cheyenne, I was asked about the driving conditions. 

"Elk Mountain -- you know."

"Yes, I know."

I crept across the flank of Elk Mountain yesterday in a light snow. It drifted across the interstate, flakes swirling in great gusts with the passing of each truck. Yes, trucks were passing me because I was tailing a semi doing 40. The swirling snow made it hard to see the road. To make it worse, the sun peeked through the low clouds, which added a glare to the white landscape. I did fine as long as I kept my eye on the dark-gray square of the semi's rear end. 

Once I cleared the mountain, the low sky lifted and I could see more than 100 feet. Then it was off to the races. It was snowing in Rawlins but the road was clear from there all the way to Rock Springs.

My last drive over Elk Mountain was at night in mid-October. The road has patches of slushy snow but it was smooth sailing, for the most part. October is early in the season. The road is still warmed by the sun and the snow is wet. This February is deeply cold and the snow is a light powder. Great for skiers but not so great for motorists.

That part of I-80 has many moods. A few Novembers ago, I visited the facilities at the Wagonhound Rest Area. Elk Mountain was a snowy beast rising out of the prairie. And there was only a whisper of a breeze. Usually a brisk wind is halting my progress to the restroom or threatens to send me sailing back to Cheyenne. I could see a stunned look on the faces of other Wyoming travelers, unacquainted with such calm beauty.

Why isn't the wind blowing?

I don't know. It's Elk Mountain.

Must be global warming.

Give it a few hours and we'll be back in the deep freeze.
 

Just think -- only four more months of winter.

Saying farewell to Daniel my brother

Paddle out for my brother Dan in Ormond Beach, Fla. Photo by Marcus Stephen. 

Hundreds of people gathered at the Salty Church Nov. 23 in Ormond Beach for the final send-off for my brother Dan. Wife, sons, daughter, brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, friends. All the seats were filled and people stood along the back wall.

I sat in the front row next to Nancy, Dan's widow, and her children. My sisters and brothers and their kids surrounded us. A slide show portraying Dan's life played across the dual screens that flanked the altar/stage. I was raised Catholic, so the space at the front of any church is an altar. As a Catholic, of course, I can't sing, and am used to aging priests mumbling in English or, when I was a kid, in Latin. I still am startled when people play electric guitars in a place of worship.

Chris Breslin, one of Dan's nephews and a divinity school grad, conducted the service. He opened up with a prayer, followed by a rendition of "Danny Boy" piped in from the P.A. system.

Dan's eldest son Ryan spoke first.

I was next up, there to say a few words on behalf of my brothers and sisters. Here are those few words:

I'm Dan's older brother, Mike. I grew up in Daytona and now live in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Dan meant everything to his brothers and sisters. Let me name them: They are me, Molly, Eileen, Tommy, Timmy, Maureen and Mary. [I name them all and point them out to the crowd]. They all are here today except our brother Pat, who passed away three years ago. Dan and Pat are surfing together now.

One thing about Dan -- you could talk to him. Now I know what you're thinking, Dan could debate politics and religion and philosophy for hours. When I say "debate," I mean "argue."

But when you wanted someone to listen, really listen, Dan was your man. I'd call Dan and say I was going through a rough time and I could count on Dan to listen, really listen. I did that more than once, as did all of his brothers and sisters. It meant a lot to us.

Dan's house in Ormond Beach was the central gathering place. Back in the 1980s, Dan found a job as an air traffic controller in his home town of Daytona. It's a job he did for 25 years, 22 of those in Daytona and three in Fort Lauderdale.

His house on Putnam Avenue became the headquarters for all Shay activities. My brother Tim and sister Maureen had their 50th birthday parties there last summer. There were many other birthday parties, anniversary parties and those memorable Fourth of July parties. Our mom spent her last Fourth of July at Dan's house, arm and arm with our father, watching the fireworks from Dan's backyard. I was up on the roof with other party-goers watching them watch the fireworks.

Not that Dan was a homebody. My sister Mary says that when they were in Houston during Dan's treatment for leukemia, they traveled all over the place. 

"We ate our way through Texas," Mary said.

Dan, Maureen and Mary took a memorable 12-hour jaunt from Houston to San Antonio to Austin and back to Houston. Family members traveled with Dan to the space center, submarine docks and lots of historic places. Molly went with Dan to Galveston. If Dan could have, and if there were any waves, Dan would have gone surfing. 

All of us traveled with Dan one time or another. In 1988, Dan and I traveled with a Habitat for Humanity group to Nicaragua. That was during the Sandinista era and the Contra war was going on. We were sitting in a meeting one day hearing from the Sandinistas about how the country one day would be a tourist attraction and a surfing paradise. A uniformed officer came into the room and removed Dan. I was a bit concerned, as Dan was conservative and a big Reagan fan. Five minutes later, Dan returned to the room. After the meeting, I asked Dan what that was all about. He said they just wanted to know his name and where he was from and what he was doing in Nicaragua. He gave them the answers and that was it. I told him that we were worried that he was being dragged off to a Sandinista firing squad.

Dan, Nancy and the kids traveled all over. During my time with Dan last week, he told me many tales of journeying to Turkey, El Salvador, Germany, Peru, etc. If you want to hear details of these travels, talk to Nancy or Ryan or Connor or Bryce after the service. They have lots of adventure tales to tell. 

As I said at the beginning, Dan meant everything to us. His departure leaves a hole in our lives. 

But as he replied to our sister Eileen when she asked if he was afraid of dying: "What do I have to be afraid of?" That was his strong faith speaking.

We miss you, Dan. There's an old Roy Rogers song, "Happy Trails." I'll spare you my singing it. I'll leave you -- and Dan -- with a couple lines from the song. I've personalized it:

"Happy trails, Dan our brother,
Until we meet again."

Others rose to speak. A friend from high school. An accomplished blues musician who went to school with Dan and had some things to say about Dan's musicianship when he was a teen bass player. An air traffic controller buddy who now works in Germany and flew over for the service. A friend who surfed with Dan the last time he ventured out into the waves.

Elton John's "Daniel" played while the slideshow recounted more of Dan's life and times. "Daniel my brother...."

When the service concluded, we walked over to the Granada approach. Police directed traffic while we all crossed A1A. In the picnic shelter adjacent to the beach, U.S. Air Force personnel conducted a flag ceremony for Dan the veteran. Four civilian aircraft did a flyover in the "missing man" formation. We then went down to the sand for a paddle out. For those of you unfamiliar with that tradition, surfers climb into their wetsuits and paddle out beyond the break. They get in a circle for a prayer for Dan and then toss their carnations into the Atlantic. We waded into the surf and did the same from the shore. I felt the sand scrape the pads of my feet, the water swirl around my toes.

The red, white and pink carnations ebbed and flowed with the tide.