Big Horn Mountains

Day Six:  September 19, 2016

Wyoming. We left the A Western Rose motel in Cody and headed east.  Another snappy slogan accompanied a red, white and buffalo sign in Byron, Wyoming:  “A great place to live.”  

We saw something that I thought no longer existed.  A train passed us that was pulling an actual caboose!  

It wasn’t long before we saw a sign with a familiar name:  Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center.  I had been to the Pryor Mountains with the Scott Community College Environmental Club, on our class trip in June of 2004, where we saw the wild horses in situ. I didn’t realize how close we were to the places I had visited in Montana that summer. 

We didn’t take the time to explore the mountains and look for the herd—it simply wasn’t feasible with the trailer/transmission situation, but we did stop at the Center, where I learned that the famous white wild mustang, Cloud (of PBS documentary fame) is 21 years old now, still alive, but aging and lost his herd to a younger stallion last summer.

Apparently not everyone valued the importance of the wild horses.

Back on the road in this beautiful open country between the mountains, and soon we see a herd of cattle along the highway and shoulder of 14ALT E with cowboys on horses AND ATVs!  Sadly we were moving too fast to get a picture, but I was amused to see them using ATVs the same way horses were used.

We passed a sign that read, “Steep grades ahead.”  Uh-oh.  Hoping we could make it.  Too late to turn back now, and this is the shortest route back to I-90.  A jackrabbit ran across the road in front of us, reminding us to not be afraid, but to stay alert.

It wasn’t long before the climbing began, coming up out of the broad “flateau” of the land around Big Horn Lake into the Big Horn Mountains.  

Almost immediately it was steep!  Steep, narrow, no shoulder.  For me, terrifying and exhilarating, too.  It seems I have an almost pathological fear of heights. It was a slow, harrowing climb.  I was reassured to see semi-trucks on the road—it made me believe we, too, could make it over these mountains.  The road is well-engineered as well, with concrete guard rails in most places, which took the sharpest edges off the fear.

The Bighorn Mountains loom ahead.

At every turn, we got a breathtaking view of the valley below and behind, and the storms over Yellowstone in the distance to the west. To give the transmission a rest, we stopped at a pullout not far from the great Medicine Wheel of Wyoming. Spirit directed me to get my magic basket out and do a ceremony.

In honor of the Medicine Wheel and the First Nations of this land, I called the in the spirits of the four directions for their support on the Dakota pipeline protests, and to protect us on our journey.  It was a powerful moment, with the wind blowing and that vast vista before me.  

Panoramic view to the west from the pullout where I held ceremony.

Thus empowered, we returned to our climb.  Following US 14 ALT E, one climbs over 7,000 feet in 11 miles at a 10% grade to a height of just over 10,000 feet.  The top is a nice, relatively flat, mesa top, a relief from the harrowing climb before beginning the equally frightening descent on the other side.

On the down side.

The view from close to the top.

The relatively flat stretch before descending the eastern slope.

We can see the valley to the east of these mountains. 

A couple of hours later, we made it back to the Interstate at Ranchester. By the time we got south of Sheridan, Wyoming, we were in folded velvet hills in hues of green and gold.  Veins of creeks and rills support a tiny host of dwarven trees. The land is a rumpled bedspread abandoned by some glacial giant of long ago. Then we emerge into the treelees rolling hills of the northern plains.

Near Powder River, vestigial rocks and upthrustings like rocky thumbs protuberate briefly and are lost again in the barren plateau. Road machines, idle now, stand like mechanical elephants, with trunks raised.

We pass a final little mountain pass and as I glance down into the a cleft between the rocks, I am aware of a creek below.  A side road leads down into the little canyon. Soothed by the ceremony and the relief of getting safely down the mountain,  and being a bit hypnotized by the rhythm of the highway, I began to experience a shamanic-type vision.

I saw myself going down the road to the bridge across the creek below.  There are trees, of course, all along the little river. There is a chute and I glide down the chute.  The path levels off, well shaded by the mountains.  The sunlight illuminates the little river before that hosts yellow aspens and other vegetation in fall colors. I realize there are fairies in the trees.  At first they dart away and become very still as I arrive.  Then they realize it is me and they went on about their business.

I meet a baby bear, crying, bawling, barking, his face screwed up with the crying--his mouth open and his eyes squinting.  "I'm crying for my mama," he sais.  Then I realize he didn't say it, instead it came from a voice to my right. I thought perhaps it was the Mama Bear, but it wasn't a bear at all, it was a fairy.  A bear fairy.  

A bear fairy? I thought.  "Yes," she said, "a bear fairy.  I'm called that because I talk to bears.  You can talk to fairies and fairies can talk to animals."  I realized that other fairies could talk to other animals.  My bear fair is named Ursalina. But there are many fairies and if I want to, she was telling me, I could communicate with animals and their animal totems via the fairies.  

The vision ended and we continued onto Sturgis, South Dakota.

Crazy Woman Saloon

Monument at the first SD rest area. Unfortunately, despite signs that indicate this is a visitor center, there was no visitor information, not even a wall map.

Entering the Black Hills just before Sturgis.

Day Five: Yellowstone and Beyond

 From my notebook that day:

Approaching Yellowstone on 89, the Absaroka Mountains soaring before us and to the left, clouds gathered grey and misty with rain as we cross through Yankee Jim Canyon.  Entering the spattering rain between the ranges in the narrow canyon, beyond it, more mountains framed foggy in a yellow morning haze.  The Yellowstone River flowing, placidly now to our right, knobby rocks thrust like fits punching toward the sky.

The light from the clouds punches back with finger of heavenly streams of light caressing the landscape.  On the other side of the river, bright green stretches of narrow irrigated fields sit in contrast to the yellow grass horse-grazed meadows.  Red patches here and there were fall-bearing berry bushes push forth their winter fruit. 

I want to eschew the houses and ranches—the white man’s presence—aware of the irony that we are enjoying this from our car on a well-paved road. Still, my spirit longs only to connect with the land, with the Divine forces of nature exhibited within.

We entered the gate of Yellowstone from the north at Gardiner, Montana. A couple of miles later we crossed into Wyoming. We ate lunch at the Mammoth Visitor Center, saw some geysers from a distance—mainly because we were both so tired and hurting from the drive that neither of us was much interested in walking the trails or up stairs of any kind. We were to do our share of walking before the day was over, but physical pain and exhaustion dogged our every step.

Yellowstone is the smell of sulphur and rain and driving through skeleton forests, the remnants of long-extinguished wildfires. The surprise of Yellowstone Lake! 

Mammoth Village

Elk just laying around on the lawns.

Terrace Grill

Even the bathrooms have a wilderness motif.

Fort Yellowstone

Vintage Yellowstone tour bus.

We drive on, up, up into the rain and the smell of sulphur lingers here among the dead, blackened and sun-bleached trunks of the long-burnt pines. We move even higher, into the raincloud itself, into the shadow of a hostile mountain with a taste for human lives.  I sense waves of hostility, of a great sense of danger washes over me.

In Yellowstone, we saw buffalo (bison), up close and personal, and pronghorns and waterfalls. We passed away from the hostile mountain and the sense of danger faded into the distance. We emerged, hours later, from the eastern gate near Wapiti, Wyoming, and drove across a long flat stretch toward Cody, where we stopped for the night.