I've been thinking about the Wilderness Act of 1964, which has its 50th anniversary this year. I have thought quite a bit about the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, but never gave any thought at all to the Act that has made much of what we have been doing for the last two months as amazing as it has been. We are all very lucky that so much land was set aside without development for future generations to enjoy. It is one of the things that makes traveling in the Mountain West so incredible.
The big chunk of the country that the Rocky Mountains are in seems quite different from the rest of the US. I've been trying to figure it out. The different feel clearly has something to do with how rugged the terrain is, and how big a presence Nature has here. All the people we meet in these places seem to be very actively engaged in spending time in the open outdoors, and this seems to be a bigger part of the culture of these states than it is in the other places we have been.
I have often thought about the difference between New England and California cultures as coming partly from the motivations of the people who settled there. Of course the early white settlers of New England were escaping something, but they still were more or less interested in preserving their own culture in a new place. The pioneers who made it out to the west were people who were looking to leave it all behind, which I think partly accounts for California's smaller interest in preservation and larger interest in innovation of culture. Perhaps the people who settled in the mountain west were rugged types who brought their love of the outdoors and of adventure with them. They also had to be hardy people who wanted less of a feeling of "civilized society," and more of a feeling of freedom to be left alone. Whatever it is, to me it feels like there is a different connection to the land in these places.
At Flaming Gorge
In Flaming Gorge
As for our own adventure, after our time in Idaho, we headed to the Salt Lake City area to visit with friends, which was lovely. Then we visited a place I had certainly never heard of, but will certainly remember, which is called Flaming Gorge. It is in both Utah and Wyoming. It is amazingly beautiful, and very unpopulated. Well worth a trip off the more-traveled path if you are ever on the border of Utah and Wyoming! Speaking of the roads less traveled, I can't emphasize enough how profoundly our experience has been influenced by staying off the big interstate highways. You can get from one place to another faster on them, but you get much less of a feeling for the places you travel through. The old state highways are just so much more interesting--if occasionally quite a bit more challenging.
We had the wonderful and unusual opportunity to visit a friend in central Wyoming, who lives in a cabin on wide open cattle ranching land. She lives four miles down a dirt road from the county highway, and the closest town is about forty miles away. Part of the path to her cabin is on the Oregon Trail. It was extraordinary to visit her there, and to see a way of life we certainly would never encounter otherwise. Bob had the chance to accompany her, and then her son, on some ranch "chores," and we both had the opportunity to learn more about the way of life of people who raise cattle on the sagebrush desert of Wyoming. We are both so grateful for the opportunity. It was terrific. It gave us also a lot of opportunity to think about the pioneers who went across this terrain on the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail, and the California Trail, which are mostly the same trails in that area. How brave they were! How tough they were! How resilient they must have been. In that part of Wyoming there is also a part of the Mormon hand cart trail, where people actually traveled on foot, pushing a hand cart. Incredible.
In some places the old trail is marked with a monument
We visited an old mining ghost town in Wyoming that is in the historic South Pass of the Mormon, Oregon and California Trails, between the Wind River Range and the Oregon Buttes
We are following our friend as she leads us to her house
This is our car pulling our trailer on the dirt road, on the Oregon Trail. Amazing!
We are now in Rocky Mountain National Park. It is incredibly beautiful here, and particularly so because the aspen trees are turning yellow and orange against the green pine trees. The altitude has been surprisingly difficult to adjust to. We have been higher than 6,000 feet for six weeks, but the higher elevations here (from 8,000 to 12,000 in various areas of the park) have meant a kind of light-headed shortness of breath for both of us. Even walking up a slight incline makes for some real huffing and puffing. Our hikes are of necessity quite a bit shorter. It makes us feel like old guys.
Aspens on display
Dead trees (all the gray ones) due to mountain pine bark beetles. So sad!
In some areas it seems more gray than green. The beetles destroy both lodge pole and ponderosa pine
This picture was taken at 12,000 feet! When you're that high up, the mountains don't look that tall! The low plants at the front are alpine tundra. This is above the timber line.
We had the opportunity to have lunch and go for one of these short walks in the Park with someone who lives here that I have known since the seventh grade. That, too, was such a wonderful addition to our trip. Bob and I get along quite well and do fine as one another's primary contact, but it is also deeply satisfying to see a familiar face, as we have done three times in these last weeks.
We have seen in each of these states, but particularly in Colorado, the devastation brought on by the pine bark beetle. In The Montana and Wyoming Rockies, a quarter or even close to a half of the trees were dead in many places. Here it seems like more than half, and almost everywhere we go. Apparently climate change has meant the winters are not as deeply cold as they were previously, and this has kept the beetles from completely dying off. So sad! How strange it will be to go to the woods and find mostly dead trees.
This guy was actually in Yellowstone. But you get the idea.
We happen to be visiting Rocky Mountain during elk rutting season. There are elk all over the park in the early evening, and there is quite a show of the boys trying to show off for the girls, and the boys trying to one-up each other. The bugling sound the bulls make is incredible, and can be heard from quite a distance. We have been told that the bulls will herd about 20 cows into a harem, and after the girls agree, with him as the Big Man on Campus, he will mate with and impregnate all of them. Wow, what a guy. We also heard that after he has done the hard work of getting the harem together, a bigger bull might come along and get rid of him and take over. Doesn't seem fair, does it? At one of the visitors centers we saw an amazing sight, the locked antlers and skulls of two bulls. Apparently a few years ago someone came upon their remains. They had gotten their antlers completely entangled, which is part of how they determine who the real BMOC will be. But one of these bulls had a piece of antler stuck under a tree root, and couldn't get it out. They stayed intertwined, and they both starved to death. Amazing. In the meantime, some other lucky guy probably just walked along and found big boy number one and big boy number two out of the picture, and I assume, just became BMOC without much work. Also not fair.
My take away from these last weeks: the Mountain West is spectacularly beautiful. The people who live here seem to feel a deep and abiding connection to the land, and make use of that to spend time outside. Many of the places that seem "empty" in this part of the country are interesting and beautiful, if you take the time to get off the interstate, get out of your car and experience it. We are lucky that in a previous time, those who represent us in government cared enough about the country and its future, and the extraordinary beauty of the West, to set aside enormous chunks of land to be preserved as National Parks, or as protected wilderness, in spite of the possible commercial and profit-making uses of that land. High altitude is a bear when you are not used to it. It is mighty cold in this part of the country overnight, even when it is warm during the afternoons. Aspen trees are beautiful in the Fall. An epidemic of bark beetles is killing trees here faster than you can feel sorry to see them go. The western pioneers were brave and strong. A friendly face is a welcome sight. The Rocky Mountains are a mighty thing. I am a lucky woman. That is all. So far.
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