Reading 1

The following passage is taken from the essay “The Solace of Open Spaces” by Gretel Ehrlich (© 2000 Gretel Ehrlich).

1. The name Wyoming comes
2. from an Indian word meaning
3. “at the great plains,” but the
4. plains are really valleys, great
5. arid valleys, sixteen hundred
6. square miles, with the horizon
7. bending up on all sides into
8. mountain ranges. This gives
9. the vastness a sheltering look.
10. Winter lasts six months here.
11. Prevailing winds spill snowdrifts
12. to the east, and new storms from
13. the northwest replenish them.
14. This white bulk is sometimes
15. dizzying, even nauseating to
16. look at. At twenty, thirty,
17. and forty degrees below zero,
18. not only does your car
19. not work, but neither do your
20. mind and body. The landscape
21. hardens into a dungeon of space.
22. During the winter, while I
23. was riding to find a new calf,
24. my jeans froze to the saddle,
25. and in the silence that such
26. cold creates, I felt like the first
27. person on earth, or the last.
28. Today the sun is out – only a
29. few clouds billowing. In the east,
30. where the sheep have started off
31. without me, the benchland tilts
32. up in a series of eroded
33. red-earthed mesas, planed
34. flat on top by a million years of
35. water; behind them, a bold line
36. of muscular scarps rears up
37. ten thousand feet to become the
38. Big Horn Mountains. A tidal
39. pattern is engraved into the
40. ground, as if left by the sea
41. that once covered this state.
42. Canyons curved down like
43. galaxies to meet the oncoming
44. rush of flat land.
45. To live and work in this kind of
46. open country, with its
47. hundred-mile views, is to lose
48. the distinction between
49. background and foreground.
50. When I asked an older ranch hand
51. to describe Wyoming’s openness,
52. he said, “It’s all a bunch of nothing
53. – wind and rattlesnakes –
54. and so much of it you can’t tell
55. where you’re going or where
56. you’ve been and it don’t make
57. much difference.”
58. John, a sheepman I know, is tall
59. and handsome and has an
60. explosive temperament. He has
61. a perfect intuition about people
62. and sheep. They call him
63. “Highpockets” because he’s so
64. long-legged; his graceful stride
65. matches the distances he has
66. to cover. He says, “Open space
67. hasn’t affected me at all. It’s
68. all the people moving on it.”
69. The huge ranch he was born on
70. takes up much of one county and
71. spreads into another state;
72. to put 100,000 miles on his
73. pickup in three years and
74. never leave home is not
75. unusual. A friend of mine has an
76. aunt who ranched on Powder
77. River and didn’t go off her place
78. for eleven years. When her
79. husband died, she quickly moved
80. to town, bought a car, and drove
81. around the States to see what
82. she’d been missing.
83. Most people tell me they’ve
84. simply driven through Wyoming,
85. as if there were nothing to
86. stop for. Or else they’ve skied
87. in Jackson Hole, a place
88. Wyomingites acknowledge
89. uncomfortably because its
90. green beauty and chic affluence
91. are mismatched with the
92. rest of the state. Most of
93. Wyoming has a “lean-to” look.
94. Instead of big, roomy barns and
95. Victorian houses, there are
96. dugouts, low sheds, log cabins,
97. sheep camps, and fence lines that
98. look like driftwood blown
99. haphazardly into place. People
100. here still feel pride because they
101. live in such a harsh place,
102. part of the glamorous cowboy
103. past, and they are determined
104. not to be the victims of a
105. mining-dominated future.
106. Most characteristic of the state’s
107. landscape is what a developer
108. euphemistically calls
109. “indigenous growth right up to
110. your front door” – a reference to
111. waterless stands of salt sage,
112. snakes, jack rabbits, deerflies,
113. red dust, a brief respite of
114. wildflowers, dry washes, and no
115. trees. In the Great Plains the
116. vistas look like music, like Kyries
117. of grass, but Wyoming seems
118. to be the doing of a mad
119. architect– tumbled and twisted,
120. ribboned with faded, deathbed
121. colors, thrust up and pulled down
122. as if the place had been startled
123. out of a deep sleep and thrown
124. into a pure light.