The Green Grass of Wyoming

I rate books I read one to five trees based partly on literary merit but mostly on how meaningful they are to me personally.  Very few books get five trees.  Those have to be books I’ll read again and again, books that shape me, that I love so much they become a part of who I am.

 

Four books by Mary O’Hara get five trees.  O’Hara wrote My Friend Flicka in 1941, followed by Thunderhead in 1943 and Green Grass of Wyoming in 1946.  Eventually she would write Wyoming Summer, which was mostly autobiographical.  One day when I was a kid, my Aunt Liz pulled a book with a pale green cloth cover out of a hallway bookcase and casually handed it to me.  She was responsible for giving me a number of books which I would love all my life.   A great reader herself, she took it for granted that I would be also.   The book she gave me that day was My Friend Flicka.  She said nothing about it, just indicated with a nod that I should read it.  Her endorsement was enough for me. I read it with no idea it would weave its way into my soul and inform my future life with its descriptions of the beautiful, wild Wyoming ranch country.  I was not a horse crazy kid when I read that book, and although I did become one not long after, I don’t think it was because of O’Hara’s books.  I generally didn’t care for most books about horses that were written for young readers.  O’Hara’s books were different.

 

Though the Flicka books are commonly thought of as horse stories for young readers, I don’t think they are either.  Horses feature largely in the stories, and many, many young people have read them and loved them, especially My Friend Flicka.  But really I think they are about the land, and the characters--people and animal--that O’Hara painted to populate that land.  The land itself is perhaps the main character, perhaps the meta character that makes the stories possible.  The books take place on the fictional Goose Bar Ranch, but the Goose Bar was based on the very real Remount Ranch where she and her husband lived and eked out a living during the depression by raising sheep, and then by operating a boys camp.  Read carefully, it becomes apparent that many of the themes in the books are very adult.  These are not children’s books, although I have never been of the opinion that children should be restricted to reading only what adults think proper for them.

 

At some point while idly surfing the web I found the Remount Ranch’s website (the current owners raise longhorn cattle there now), and read their fascinating account of the history of the ranch, including the time Mary O’Hara lived there and wrote her famous books.  Although I had known for years that the Goose Bar was based on a real place O’Hara had lived, it was a different matter to be able to zoom in on the very location in Google Maps, to find clear directions on how to get there, and to read the invitation on the Remount website to contact them anytime if your longhorn related travels brought you to the area.

 

I was not likely to be going on any longhorn cattle buying trips, and it wasn’t until I started planning this trip that I remembered one detail from the Flicka stories.  I can’t at the moment recall which book it was in, but there is a passage where the protagonist, Kenny McLaughlin is alone at the ranch on a warm afternoon and he can hear the sound of traffic on the Lincoln Highway.  From researching my route along I80, I knew that I80 was the Lincoln Highway.  And something clicked.  If Kenny Laughlin could hear highway traffic from the house, then the ranch must be very close to the Interstate where I’d be traveling.

 

A quick check of the Google directions proved this to be true.  The Remount was less than 2 miles from the Interstate.  Even the tightest schedule could allow for a quick stop.

 

Here’s the fantasy that played in my head: I would call the Remount, tell them about my Big Adventure and how I hoped a visit to the ranch could be arranged.  They would warmly invite me to visit, would greet me at the gate with a saddled horse (a sorrel mare that looked remarkably like Flicka).  I’d be told that the only way to really appreciate the ranch was from horseback, my protests that I haven’t been on a horse for years would be waved away, I’d mount up and ride into the magical landscape of my dreams, loping over rolling range land and inhabiting the very stuff of my (and O’Hara’s) imagination.  My blog post that night would be titled “Best. Day. Ever.”  I’d go on about how I had found myself inside the world of one of my favorite childhood books.

 

The part of me still grounded in reality asserted itself here and suggested that this was a working ranch and such people had no time to squire around strangers who showed up at their gate, inviting themselves to a privately owned home and business and taking up the valuable time of hard working folks.  I countered with the argument that I wasn’t asking for a tour.  I just wanted a chance to stop and take a couple of pictures, smell the air and just be there for maybe ten minutes.  Then I’d leave.  I wouldn’t ask to be invited in to the house or given a tour . . .and there was that very public invitation right there on the website.

 

I felt awkward about it though, and I had the suspicion that I was probably not the first person who had read Flicka as a little girl and now wanted to see “where Flicka lived.”  In fact this idea made my face burn with embarrassment.  So I put off trying to contact the ranch until shortly before my trip.  Time grew short, and I realized that I’d better at least try to talk to somebody or there wouldn’t be time.  The only thing worse than inviting yourself to somebody’s house is inviting yourself at a moment’s notice.  And so I screwed up my courage and I dialed the number.

 

The phone rang and my hand sweated.  The phone rang. And rang.  I started to relax and think I could just leave a message and if I was lucky nobody would call me back.  But then a recorded message came on and said the mailbox I was trying to reach was full and no messages could be left.  Apparently they weren’t listening to their voicemails very often.  Or answering their phone.  Maybe the mailbox was filled up with messages that started out, “Hi!  I just loved the Flicka books when I was a kid and I was wondering if I could just stop by and . . .” No wonder they weren’t answering their phone.  I COULDN’T BLAME THEM ONE BIT!

 

I wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.  I guess I was a little of both.

 

There was still email to try, and probably that would have been the better way to make contact.  One can craft a mail message that hopefully paints one in the best possible light, and it’s a lot easier to edit text than it is a rushed voicemail message.  But in the stress of dealing with preparations for my trip it didn’t get done.  And so I started on this trip with the idea that I might just drive out to the ranch gate and have a look around, but I wasn’t going to bother those people with any phone calls or emails.

After my wonderful day in Laramie, I looked at the clock and saw that there wasn’t a lot of daylight left.  The Remount is between Laramie and Cheyenne, and there’d be no point in going out there in the dark.  I needed to get going and do it if I was going to.  So I punched in the location into the Google maps navigator, which in this case did a better job of finding the place than the Garmin (more on that later).

 

The countryside out of Laramie began to change.  Less sage and more grass, more gently rolling landscape, and coniferous trees began to appear.  A funny feeling came over me.  I recognized that I was coming into Flicka’s country.  Things were looking as O’Hara had described them, and also as I’d imagined them.  I watched the mileage clicking by on the gps and my heart began to beat faster.  The turnoff came up and I took a breath and exited the Interstate onto County Road 103, then came to the intersection of County Road 106 and saw a big sign pointing the way to the ranch.  County Road 106, also known as Remount Road, was well maintained but unpaved.  Goose rattled slowly down it, and the swells of the land lifted on either side, covered in the most amazing, lush, green grass I’d ever seen.  I was trembling by this time, driving into a landscape I’d been to so many times in my mind, an imagined landscape that for many years I never had any idea I might actually see.  Wyoming has always been so far from where I live, a fantasy land that just from the practical standpoint of distance was difficult to get to.  But here I was in Wyoming, and even more amazing was the fact that my crazy, idealized fantasy of riding into the world of a beloved book was actually, in all the ways that counted, really happening.

 

And there it was.  The timber gate and the ranch sign.  I pulled over to the side of the road, and turned off the engine.  I sat there, the windows down, an unbelievably sweet, green smell coming in.  Goose sighed and ticked into silence.  I got out, stood there a minute, and looked around.

 

 

 

It was some kind of profound, magical moment.  I was here.  I was really here, in some sense standing at the place I had seen in my mind’s eye for years and years, the place I’d run away to in my imagination when life was dreary and boring, the place I’d imagined so often and for so long that it had become as real as if I’d actually been there.  And now I was there, not inside the book as I’d fantasized, but at the blended edge of reality and imagination.

The gate was open but clearly posted with no trespassing signs, and of course I would not trespass or barge into private property.  It would have been something to see the house, to see the places that might have been those O’Hara describes in her books, the terrace and the castle rock and the creek where Flicka and Ken Laughlin have their great crisis. Many changes and improvements have been made to the place since the 1940’s when O’Hara lived there, particularly to the house, and the Goose Bar of her books is not precisely the Remount anyway.  So it was enough to be where I was standing.

It was enough to be at the gate, to see that rolling country and smell the amazing smell of all that greengrass growing, to smell it just as O’Hara described it, filling the air with a rich, heady scent.  To see how lush and vivid it was, how it looked good enough to eat, and to realize that it was good enough to eat, the best, most wonderful food for horses and cattle, sheep and antelope, and any number of other creatures who thrived here.  It was enough to look up at the current gate and imagine the Goosebar sign hanging there, the sign that Rocket reared up and struck her head against, killing herself in a final act of useless, untamable wildness.  It was enough to hear very clearly the traffic from the Lincoln Highway, just as Ken Laughlin had heard it one drowsy afternoon when he was alone on the ranch, and to hear beneath that the deeper silence, broken only by birdsong.  It was enough to look out at a sweep of lush pasture and imagine Flicka standing there.

A lump came into my throat.  I recalled that Mary had said that the Depression had essentially trapped them on the ranch, that it was hardship and misfortune that had held them there.  Yet out of that hardship and misfortune had come the books that would be beloved by generations of readers, that would ultimately be her great and lasting work and would allow her to move on to other things.  There had to be a quiet lesson for me in this thought.  Sorrow and misfortune have led me to the place that resulted in me taking this trip, a journey which in turn gave me the irresistible chance to visit a place I had once thought it was not possible to visit.  Out of misfortune can sometimes come wonderful, unlooked-for things.

I am glad I have come here, so very, very glad that I found the courage to make this brief visit to this remarkable place.  In some metaphorical sense it suggests that sometimes the impossible can become possible, and a mythical place you thought you could never go to can come within reach.

I took some pictures, none of which come close to the capturing beauty of the place.  But I did what I could.  Clouds had gathered in front of the lowering sun, so the landscape was resting in shadow. 

 

 

But then the sun broke through and flooded the slopes with golden light. 

 

 

I leaned on the fence rail and gazed in at the ranch, seeing a shed in the distance where a single horse stood patiently and looked toward me, the hint of buildings off in the trees in a fold of the land, buildings that might have been the house or perhaps just other ranch buildings.  I breathed the air, and I marveled that I was there.

 

I composed a quick blog update and attached a picture, noticing with some irony that I had a better 4G signal than I ever get in the heart of Silicon Valley, and that I had no trouble uploading data.  I was just doing this when a car came rolling by.  I braced myself to be peered at with suspicion and questioned as to my business.  But the people drove on after giving me a quick once over.  I suppose I looked harmless enough, just another tourist from California.  I was still on the county road, so I figured it was ok to be stopped there.

 

I took one last look around, then I climbed back aboard my great, gray steed, and drove back toward the Interstate, pausing only to try and get a picture of some pronghorn antelope near the road.  I rode on, continuing on my way and leaving the Goose Bar Ranch behind.

 

But I was riding, riding through Flicka’s country!