Ten acres

Walked the 'property' the other day, almost everything a complete mystery. Cottonwoods down--at least six of them though Lea Ann says it's ten--since the creek shifted course a year or so ago. Boulders not where they were but someplace else, as if they'd walked away from something too terrible to see. Animal bones, deer and elk antlers and fresh pellets of deer and elk poop. Sage and more sage, Indian paintbrush, lupine, something I call 'Wapiti lettuce' because it looks almost edible though I'm pretty sure it'd kill me if I took a bite. Underneath it all a lost continent of sand and volcanic pumice, left behind for for ants, snakes, rabbits and whatever else likes the stuff. God's garden I call it, beautifully worthless, resistent to credible human explanation, an outright rejecter of both common sense and interpretation. Living in Wyoming you might as well believe in God.

Ten acres bought cheap in 2000. Couldn't afford it now, wouldn't buy it again anyway, desolate, lonely, far away. Upstate Wyoming I call it: as a destination it's among the international leaders in the administration of tough love. The wind will blow a front door right off its hinges. The food chain starts at the top with the grizzly and descends to the common rattlesnake, with you and me somewhere in the middle. Changing a light bulb can be an adventure, or lighting the hot water tank in winter while lying flat on your back in -0 temp and a 60 mph gale. There are times on my ten acres when I think everything in the world is against me, and it is.

And I love the place, I'm the luckiest man in the world to be able to live here, a member of the top .00001%. My ten acres make me try things I'd never try, do things I'd never do, think things I'd never think. There are no abstractions in Wyoming like there are in San Francisco, the place won't tolerate them. 70% of the eligible voters in Wyoming voted for Donald Trump in 2016, 70%! My friends and neighbors. And it seems like I've met them all. Only Teton County, home of wealthy liberals and Dick Cheney, went for Mrs. Clinton.

I keep an old pick-up truck here, the last great American vehicle, a 1993 half-ton GMC with original paint-job, a beast I bought used from my oldest son who bought it used. The truck's the real deal, gets about 15 mpg, though the gas gauge is kaput: I keep a hand-written journal in the cab correlating mileage with fill-ups, not wanting to run out of gas on some lonesome highway, the only kind of highway there is in Wyoming.

I made the mistake of parking the truck outside the cabin the other day, facing downhill. A sudden late afternoon thunderstorm dumped a couple of inches of water in the open cargo area. Not good, this won't do, water breeds small flying things that bite you. What to do? Go to all the trouble of getting the broom, dropping the tailgate, sweeping the thing out? Not me, I think like Wyoming. I walked inside the cabin, grabbed the keys, and turned the car around so it's facing uphill, then opened the tailgate...water runs downhill, as most of us know.

Once in awhile up here in Wyoming I think about 'doing something' productive with the property. Pursuing this thought I asked a big-time cattle rancher in Meeteetse how many acres it takes to raise one marketable steer? 80 acres, he said. By that calculation I have next to nothing.

Wyoming means what it says and says what it means, as this sign on the author's property indicates in no uncertain terms. July 31, 2018.