Love Tour 2011: The Sights, part II

photo credit: travelpod.com

Wind River Canyon, Wyoming

I'll never forget bringing an LA friend of mine home to Cowley and showing her some of the local sites. We hiked to waterfalls, saw Devil's Canyon, climbed Castle Rock, watched the wild Mustangs, and standing in the middle of nowhere, clutching her Kate Spade bag, she gushed, "I can't believe this place! You're close to everything!" And we are, I suppose. Just a different kind of everything. We're close to the earth, and sometimes, as it stretches wide over us, we're close to the sky. Now that I've been away a few years, it's an everything I can't get enough of. I want to drink in each rise, field, cloud, and blade of grass. I have missed Wyoming.

Missed it so much that I watch carefully as the scenery changes outside my windshield passing first through the rolling cattle pastures of the southeast corner of the state. Grey clouds threatening another rainstorm only intensify the green fields where cows and baby calves stand peacefully munching. At some unidentifiable point on our passage northward, the surrounding terrain becomes a bit more rugged. The rolling quality of land no longer rolls so much as slopes and points. The ground angles toward the enormous sky like a mad wave, and rocky masses protrude from the ground. The grass becomes tinged with a bit of yellow and the sagebrush becomes denser, as though the artist of the scene became a bit carried away with dotting those silver green bushes across the canvas. Then just to add some more color, he drew in some wild alfalfa springing randomly along the road side, their purple and yellow blossoms nodding in the wind. It is a land perfectly created for the antelope and deer, which we randomly passed.

Then, soon enough, we are careening through the Wind River Canyon, the river writhing and sparkling beside us.  I have always loved this canyon, its winding path between sky high, rocky walls, and maybe it is the closest I have come to understanding those serenity mazes which are supposed to lead one to his/her center.  As we wind our way through its twists, turn, and three tunnels, I travel backward in my mind to the many, many times I have been this way before; on school buses, on family vacations, on my way to college, the trips tick off in my memory...always away, but always home again.  Centered.  Still.  At peace.

After the canyon, the farmlands of the Basin take center stage.  Alfalfa, wheat, bean, corn and sugarbeat fields turn the arid desert green.  Only the irrigation ditches stand as reminders of the hard fought battle these farmers wage.  Today the landscape is gorgeous.  I am not a farmer's daughter, so there is much I do not know, but to this unpracticed eye, the crop looks to be a good one:  healthy, tall, and thick, even at the edges.  I wish them a blessing, these fields, the backbone of this area's economy and the produce of our nation.  Sometimes, on days like today, when the sun is shining low in the horizon and that golden light slants sideways kissing the leaves and stalks of the field, I romanticise about moving to a farm, maybe buying a cow and some chickens.  It is easy to think that life would be so much simpler, so much more centered, so much more peaceful, but then I remember my dying garden back home.  It doesn't look anything like these fields, and I have to take my hat off to the keepers of them.  They rise at farmers' hours--that's "so early it's practically night" for people like me; they strain and sweat; they gamble against rain, wind, frost, and heat, not to mention pests; they get by most of the time, and then they do it all again next year.  Farmers don't get enough credit in my estimation.  Tonight, as I pray over the corn on the cob, the green salad, and the string beans (not to mention the sugar) I think I'll thank God for the farmers.

The fields stretching into the distance on either side of the highway are only interrupted once, and this interruption--the ugliest stretch of our entire drive--signals the nearing end of our trip.  Turning onto highway 310 and heading toward Lovell from Greybull, there is little visual interest and a lot of dirt.  Even by some evil trick of landscape the mountains seem to disappear.  On every rise I find myself scanning the distance to see if I can catch of glimpse of my hometown.  At last she is in view, and I joyously call out, "See the water tower, guys?  Okay...see the big white tower with the steam coming out?  That's Lovell's sugarbeat factory.  Now look just beyond it.  See the white watertower?  That's Cowley!  Just about a half hour now."  And just like that we are back in the land of farmers' fields and mountains.  The Big Horns and Pryor Mountain stand sentinels as we ramble downhill into the valley.

My little hometown has undergone a facelift these last two years.  The new high school is the first sight to greet us, brashly claiming its territory among the empty fields that surround it.  I'm used to the town kind of sneaking up on me, but this big ol' building practically jumps on us as we curve into town.  I like it; it's just going to take some getting used to.  That and some trees, I think.  Once I get passed it, I can't help but notice that the new subdivision continues to grow.  Some beautiful homes have popped up on the edge of town.  It's good to see.  And then, just when things are looking as I remembered, I nearly miss the curve gaping at the big, brick house going up on Tucker's hill.  That's a showstopper, I'll tell you.  I make the curve, despite my rubbernecking, but it isn't two seconds and I am ogling the new Cowley downtown.  It's wide sidewalks and newly planted trees; the stone and log breezeway in front of all the businesses.  It's really gorgeous!  So gorgeous that I nearly forget to turn into my mother's driveway; I am so accustomed to driving to the end of the block to u-turn around the median, which is no longer there, that I am not quite sure what to do for a moment.  Old habits die hard, and changes are never easy to make.

I sit there, in my mother's driveway for a moment feeling a little foreign in this once so familiar place.  The kid's scramble out, and I slowly slide from behind the wheel.  Changes are good I remind myself.  Certainly good for this place that I love, but it does make me feel out of place...That is until a familiar face drives by and throws me a wave.  Some things--perhaps the most important things here--never change after all.  I have come home.

photo credit: Gary Little via myfamily.com

Cowley, Wyoming Mainstreet, Today