{"id":35,"date":"2005-06-21T16:31:19","date_gmt":"2005-06-21T20:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/2005\/06\/21\/a-heaven-i-dreamed-of\/"},"modified":"2008-12-26T14:10:50","modified_gmt":"2008-12-26T18:10:50","slug":"a-heaven-i-dreamed-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/?p=35","title":{"rendered":"A Heaven I Dreamed Of"},"content":{"rendered":"

June 21, 2005
\nTuesday<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

I arrived in Lander, Wyoming just before four o\u00e2\u20ac\u2122clock yesterday afternoon. After five nights in commercial budget hotels, I was ready for the homey comforts of a bed and breakfast.<\/p>\n

The Blue Spruce Inn\u00c2\u00a0is a spacious old house built in 1919 by a Wyoming sheep baron. The proprietors are a retired Air Force officer and his wife who have operated the place as a bed and breakfast for about ten years. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d made almost all of my arrangements for this trip online, but the Blue Spruce didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have that option, so I had to call. Mrs. Brown was the first actual person in Wyoming that I ever talked to.<\/p>\n

The brochure she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d sent me noted that check-in was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153after 4:00.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d So did the little sign on the doorbell that I rang at about 3:45. Through the gauzy curtains I could see the people who would be my hosts sitting in the office area just inside the door. When no one moved to answer my ring, I sat down in one of the 50s-style metal lawn chairs on the porch and just waited.<\/p>\n

At precisely 4:00 the door was opened and I was welcomed in.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is that grease on your shirt?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the woman said to me with some alarm.<\/p>\n

I was wearing a beige t-shirt I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d gotten three years ago at Walden Pond (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Henry David Thoreau.) It was, I now discovered from twisting around to see it in the mirror over the fireplace, streaked with black on the back.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s soot, I think,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I had to keep moving back to get a good angle for a photograph at the Washakie cemetery, and I sort of fell into a patch of bushes that looked like they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been burned.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said, sounding unconvinced. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want you lying down on my bedspreads with grease on your shirt.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

In my sunny room I carefully removed my carbon-streaked shirt and took a shower before lying down for a nap. I spent the evening checking out Sinks Canyon State Park in preparation for completion of one of the goals of my trip.<\/p>\n

Sinks Canyon is so named because the middle fork of the Popo Agie River flows out of the Wind River mountains and through the canyon. Halfway down, the riverbed abruptly turns into a large limestone cavern and the crashing water sinks into fissures and cracks at the back of the cave. The river then\u00c2\u00a0travels underground for a quarter mile until it emerges in a large calm pool called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Rise,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and then continues its course into the valley below.<\/p>\n

Popo Agie (pronounced “Po-PO’-zhia”) is a Crow phrase meaning “river of tall grass.” Early in my planning for this trip I learned that the Popo Agie Falls trail offered a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153spectacular short hike\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of one and a half miles described as an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153easy-to-moderate climb.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Since at the time I was finding the trek from the parking lot into the supermarket something of an ordeal, I determined to change my habits and get into shape to accomplish this.<\/p>\n

The ranger at the visitors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 center gave me a map of the various trails and agreed that the first mile of the falls trail was easy, with the last part moving through moderate to fairly strenuous at the end.<\/p>\n

So this morning, after a communal breakfast at the Blue Spruce, I put on my Columbia Razor Ridge boots and my Fox River wool socks, grabbed my Tilley hat and my Stoney Point Polecat collapsible adjustable hiking staff, and set out for adventure. (All these items were bought new at Cabela\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in Berks County on June 9. Everything about me said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153TOURIST!!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure I looked ridiculous.)<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure now I was on the right trail. The markings provided by the park service tend to differ from the titles used by the guide books. I might indeed have been on the Middle Fork trail, described as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a more rugged six miles.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It occurred to me that the guide book\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u01531.5 miles\u00e2\u20ac\u009d meant it was that far to the falls. One would then have to backtrack over the same distance to reach the parking area again, for a total of three miles.<\/p>\n

In any case, I started out. I wound along a narrow trail that began close to the river\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s edge but moved both up and away as I climbed. The river rushed, every square inch of it a frothy white. The water roared, the sound muffled sometimes by thick stands of trees between the trail and the river\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s edge. Nevertheless, above the roar I could hear bird calls I never heard at home and the wind, the constant Wyoming wind, more of a rumble here than the whoosh out on the plains.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve often said that somebody like me can buy better pictures than she can take. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d picked up some nice postcards at the visitors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 center, but I had my camera with me anyway. I tried to take pictures that said something to me about the nature of this trip. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d photograph an outcropping of rocks maybe 200 feet ahead, and when I got there, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d turn around to capture the sweep of the climb I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d just made. I snapped banks of wildflowers and a rock formation that made a natural bench in a shady place just off the trail.<\/p>\n

After about an hour I felt the climb suddenly turn more difficult. I’d regarded the first part of the trek as more moderate than easy. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d probably gone less than a mile and a half because I moved slowly and stopped a lot, not because I had to rest but because I wanted to reflect and take pictures. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d consumed the two bottles of water I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d brought and was beginning to feel thirsty again. The scenery was not changing and I knew I was reaching my limit. So I turned back.<\/p>\n

Although I had not reached the falls, I consider the trip to have been a success. I completed a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153short spectacular hike\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that I could not have endured just twelve weeks before.<\/p>\n

This evening I returned to the visitors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 center for a program called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Small Town USA: The Heaven We Dream Of, The Prison We Escape.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Chris Kennedy, a singer-songwriter who teaches at Western Wyoming Community College, and Mike Hensley, who retired from the school, presented an hour and a half of song, statistics, and literary references that had me enthralled. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nothing is more responsible for nostalgia than a bad memory,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d they said. More than half of all Americans live in big cities of more than half a million (which happens to be the entire population of Wyoming), yet we long for the romance of a place where everybody knows your name and people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lock their doors.<\/p>\n

I arrived back in Lander as the dusk was deepening. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d climbed a mountain (sort of), eaten at a place called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Malt Shop,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and been entertained by clever artists who fed my own desire to capture my ideas. Before bed I took a walk around the neighborhood to ponder the day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s achievements. People were watering their lawns and walking their dogs, or sitting on their porches while the children caught fireflies in the side yards. They smiled and called out hello to me. Everything had a 1950s feel to it and I felt young and fit and strong. It was a heaven I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to dream of.<\/p>\n

To be included on the notify list, e-mail me:
\nmargaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the brackets with @ and a period)<\/em><\/p>\n


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