Nature Girl
There was a boy
a very strange enchanted boy.
They say he wandered very far, very far,
over land and sea.
A little shy and sad of eye
but very wise was he.
-Nature Boy by E.A.
This has been two days of barefoot summerisms. Yesterday my mother, the two dogs and I went up to the Bighorn Mountains, first walking the remnant of the old road on the western side, then up to the July-dry alpine meadows. We could see where the underground rivers wind beneath the crackling grasses and mountain daisies. The deep-rooted lupines ebbed and swirled as if they were petticoated ladies walking secret roads over the aquifers. On the western side of a bald ridge is where the underground rivers emerge, pouring white even in September after months of no rain.
For lunch we stopped by a little river, letting ourselves through the green cattle gate by the side of the road. The soil and stones were a hot, chalky white and as we walked down the embankment the grasses rushed up to meet the sky. Down in the hollow the river ran over stones yellow with alge. The water is so clear and the evergreen pines around it so emerald that the wet stones look like a rill of gold. My kelpie Shelby Sue proved true to her name and plunged into the icy waters, I going in after her up to my pale shins. My feel warped and wavered like strange fish.
Sally Anne, past her centenial if converted to human age, became a puppy again and waded on uncertain feet in the stream. She even charged afterward through the sweet-smelling rushes and the dust, to sit contentedly in the shade of a willow. She was oblivious to the amber and ruby-coloured biting flies on her face. I spent my lunch swatting at the things. Save for them lunch was idyllic. I half expected the Lily Maid to go floating by, chanting on her boat. Everything was bejeweled.
On the way past Burgess Junction we wanted to keep going east, following the nearly irresistable itch of adventurers on their way to somewhere they've never seen before. I wanted to see Sheridan for the first time, on the cusp of the Midwest. Still, we agreed to go in two weekends and veered south instead.
On the way down the mountains my brakes began to overheat as the yahoo from the flatlands (read: urban Minnesota) didn't know how to mountain drive and was riding his breaks in the red. We pulled over to give Nikki a rest (she being my little red Neon) and strolled around a campground perched on the side of the mountain. We will camp there before the summer is out, and rendezvous with my sister in Sheridan. Our spot is already picked out, a little poem of a place benath shivering aspens. The campground is as remote as Tintagel, so we shall have our pick of shade.
The drive down Shell Canyon is one of my favourites, so quintessential of the Old West; the rocks are red as new blood and the cottonwoods green and golden over the little Shell River. I prefer the drive moreso than the Wind River Canyon far to the south and west. It is so intimate and secret. Where we were yesterday looks like a place where Butch Cassidy and Sundance might have lounged about in the heat of midday.
Just before Shell we stopped at Dirty Annie's, a restaurant and souvineer shop with an uncertain name. Since the place is actually (relatively) clean I got a Reeses milkshake and lazily ogled the skeleton of an apatosaurus that they are assembling in an aviator's shed. The area is rich in fossils.
In Shell we stopped altogether. The town is the veritable twin to Coloma, California, the "stomping grounds" of my girlhood. Dusty, overbright streets beneath the cottonwoods that stood in for sycamores and great oaks, the crumbling pioneer claim cabins, a little red school house. The Shell trading post was in a thick-walled stone building with four hidden green gables on the back and a river-stone companion house attached to it by a mismatched, dimensionless hall. All that was missing was the smell of water; no river runs through here. We wandered about looking hopelessly out of place with an eerie feeling in the dry heat. I felt completely at home. Home, for the first time in Wyoming, and in a place where I have never even laid my head to rest at night.
I felt happy to see the new blonde wood doors shining on the old post. Apparently someone is bringing it back to life.
This day was spent recovering from the hundred-plus mile loop that we made over the mountains and through the Basin. (Deliverance, thy name is Greybull.) It felt good to just be, for a time.
This evening there was a terrific lightning storm. I have never smelled the air with more of a sickly sweet electricity to it before. My mother and I danced soaking on the lawn in the rain while children down the street ran from their houses and laughed in the street. We all had our arms upraised over our heads, our thirsty gardens. The flowers and leaves unfurled under the arcs of violet lightning, drinking, perfuming the already sugared air. The deep rose sunset peeked beneath the roof of the clouds the whole time, a thin gold ribbon glinting on the western horizon.
When we finally came back inside it was dark enough that my small, bare feel glimmered in the dim. Our hair was dripping and our faces sparkling with dew. I sipped rain from a hollyhock blossom.
Bliss and bliss.
a very strange enchanted boy.
They say he wandered very far, very far,
over land and sea.
A little shy and sad of eye
but very wise was he.
-Nature Boy by E.A.
This has been two days of barefoot summerisms. Yesterday my mother, the two dogs and I went up to the Bighorn Mountains, first walking the remnant of the old road on the western side, then up to the July-dry alpine meadows. We could see where the underground rivers wind beneath the crackling grasses and mountain daisies. The deep-rooted lupines ebbed and swirled as if they were petticoated ladies walking secret roads over the aquifers. On the western side of a bald ridge is where the underground rivers emerge, pouring white even in September after months of no rain.
For lunch we stopped by a little river, letting ourselves through the green cattle gate by the side of the road. The soil and stones were a hot, chalky white and as we walked down the embankment the grasses rushed up to meet the sky. Down in the hollow the river ran over stones yellow with alge. The water is so clear and the evergreen pines around it so emerald that the wet stones look like a rill of gold. My kelpie Shelby Sue proved true to her name and plunged into the icy waters, I going in after her up to my pale shins. My feel warped and wavered like strange fish.
Sally Anne, past her centenial if converted to human age, became a puppy again and waded on uncertain feet in the stream. She even charged afterward through the sweet-smelling rushes and the dust, to sit contentedly in the shade of a willow. She was oblivious to the amber and ruby-coloured biting flies on her face. I spent my lunch swatting at the things. Save for them lunch was idyllic. I half expected the Lily Maid to go floating by, chanting on her boat. Everything was bejeweled.
On the way past Burgess Junction we wanted to keep going east, following the nearly irresistable itch of adventurers on their way to somewhere they've never seen before. I wanted to see Sheridan for the first time, on the cusp of the Midwest. Still, we agreed to go in two weekends and veered south instead.
On the way down the mountains my brakes began to overheat as the yahoo from the flatlands (read: urban Minnesota) didn't know how to mountain drive and was riding his breaks in the red. We pulled over to give Nikki a rest (she being my little red Neon) and strolled around a campground perched on the side of the mountain. We will camp there before the summer is out, and rendezvous with my sister in Sheridan. Our spot is already picked out, a little poem of a place benath shivering aspens. The campground is as remote as Tintagel, so we shall have our pick of shade.
The drive down Shell Canyon is one of my favourites, so quintessential of the Old West; the rocks are red as new blood and the cottonwoods green and golden over the little Shell River. I prefer the drive moreso than the Wind River Canyon far to the south and west. It is so intimate and secret. Where we were yesterday looks like a place where Butch Cassidy and Sundance might have lounged about in the heat of midday.
Just before Shell we stopped at Dirty Annie's, a restaurant and souvineer shop with an uncertain name. Since the place is actually (relatively) clean I got a Reeses milkshake and lazily ogled the skeleton of an apatosaurus that they are assembling in an aviator's shed. The area is rich in fossils.
In Shell we stopped altogether. The town is the veritable twin to Coloma, California, the "stomping grounds" of my girlhood. Dusty, overbright streets beneath the cottonwoods that stood in for sycamores and great oaks, the crumbling pioneer claim cabins, a little red school house. The Shell trading post was in a thick-walled stone building with four hidden green gables on the back and a river-stone companion house attached to it by a mismatched, dimensionless hall. All that was missing was the smell of water; no river runs through here. We wandered about looking hopelessly out of place with an eerie feeling in the dry heat. I felt completely at home. Home, for the first time in Wyoming, and in a place where I have never even laid my head to rest at night.
I felt happy to see the new blonde wood doors shining on the old post. Apparently someone is bringing it back to life.
This day was spent recovering from the hundred-plus mile loop that we made over the mountains and through the Basin. (Deliverance, thy name is Greybull.) It felt good to just be, for a time.
This evening there was a terrific lightning storm. I have never smelled the air with more of a sickly sweet electricity to it before. My mother and I danced soaking on the lawn in the rain while children down the street ran from their houses and laughed in the street. We all had our arms upraised over our heads, our thirsty gardens. The flowers and leaves unfurled under the arcs of violet lightning, drinking, perfuming the already sugared air. The deep rose sunset peeked beneath the roof of the clouds the whole time, a thin gold ribbon glinting on the western horizon.
When we finally came back inside it was dark enough that my small, bare feel glimmered in the dim. Our hair was dripping and our faces sparkling with dew. I sipped rain from a hollyhock blossom.
Bliss and bliss.