Tag Archives: Jackson Hole

Reemergence

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One of the tales we have posted in the past dealt with the heart-breaking story of the Scottish Thistle farmers of the Jackson Hole area in Northern Wyoming. Briefly, they were early immigrants to the area and brought with them their ways, traditions, farming techniques, and a streak of bull-headiness seldom seen in an area noted for its stubbornness.

As described in this earlier post http://www.bigshotsnow.com/thistle-farm/ these new comers to the valley were bound and determined to sow their seeds and reap the harvest of thistle thereby capturing and dominating the thistle market. But due to ignorance and the refusal to take any advice regarding the agricultural limits in this part of the country they met with a stunning defeat, a failure of magnificent proportions, that bankrupted each and every family in the thistle industry.

Soon they were seen leaving the area. All their earthly goods piles into wains of all sizes, their women walking listlessly behind them, some carrying nursing babes at their breasts, the children, the few who had not died from the harsh unforgiving conditions dragging their hoes behind them. The little furrows they left the only sign of their passing. Some of the older men pushing their wooden wheelbarrows ahead of them, still filled with unplanted thistle seed, their hope for the future, as they headed for the new promised land in Nevada. They had heard that the conditions there were perfect for growing thistles and with that dream in their hearts they left Jackson Hole and its surrounding area forever.

The remaining thistle left behind unattended soon withered and died until there were no more thistle plants left alive in the valley. It was as if they never were. However every once in a while a fence rider would come into town and after a few daiquiri’s, or a Golden Grasshopper, both without the little umbrellas in them, this is the west after all, would tell of seeing a thistle plant growing next to a fence post. Of course he was immediately cut off and thrown out of the bar. No one wanted to hear that crazy talk. It was like the stories of Bigfoot or happy marriages, there are some things you just don’t talk about.

For years the plains were empty of thistle, stories of their reemergence swept aside as the ravings of sunblind drovers and frost bitten cowboys. Then one fateful day in early March a prospector came staggering in to town nearly dead from exposure. Clutched in his hand was a thistle. Just the red part but undeniably a thistle. The town needless to say was on the edge of mass hysteria, some not knowing whether they had been snakebit or struck by lightning. Others ran around in circles hollering “Woe are we! The thistles, they’ve returned.” Others unable to stand the stress and strain immediately got blind drunk and were last seen staggering off into the wilderness. It was a time of chaos. A time of fear.

Before long, cooler heads prevailed and the largest posse ever assembled in Teton County, Wyoming was galloping out to find and root out these thistle plants wherever they may be. They were out seven months but finally they returned with a small group of thistle tied across the packhorse’s panniers. The thistle’s heads lopped off as a symbol of victory and worn around their necks as badges of honor. They assured the nervous townsfolk that they had eradicated the thistle from the countryside and it was gone forever. A huge sigh of relief was heard throughout the land and people began to go back to work, safe in the feeling that thistle was gone and gone for good.

But the story is not over, as they seldom are, and it was one of The Institutes own researchers that was responsible for bringing it back to life. We had sent our own Scottish descendant of one of the very first families to settle in the area, Somerfed Fyfe Olgilvy Callum Ewan McLean-Kennedy/Burns or as we all knew him, Tim, to see if there was any truth to the stories of the Reemergence of the Scottish thistle. What he brought back was nothing less than remarkable, clear photographic proof that thistle was alive and well and growing in Teton County. Tim wanted to keep the location secret to protect the plant but we said no Tim, this is too big a story. We have to inform the public. People have to know about the return of the thistle. It’s their right. What the future will bring with this knowledge is anyone’s guess, but I can tell you this, the story is not over. Not while The Institute is still in existence. We will out the truth regardless of consequence. Even if it creates a thistle emergency in Jackson Hole. Let the seeds fall where they will.

Finding Scenery

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Many times people come out West looking for something. Usually its scenery, sometimes it’s just a restroom, but mostly it is something cool to look at. Something different from what they see at home every day. However, being new to a place, and a place that has overwhelming scenery everywhere they turn their heads, it all begins to blend in to a flat tapestry of vivid colors and shapes. They often have trouble determining exactly what scenery is and what is the best scenery to look at on their limited budget. It is like walking through a museum in Florence for hours on end that specializes in priceless gold encrusted icons from churches all over the world. Each one a king’s ransom and unique. Suddenly you realize you’ve been staring at the same one for 15 minutes and it no longer registers as anything special. You’ve been velocitized by the art. You’ve seen too much, too quickly. That’s what happens when you don’t pace yourself.

Now that nothing registers as something unique they drive frantically hither and yon, peering out of a bug-smeared windshield, their one sunburned arm resting on the window sill hoping to see that one bit of scenery that will be the highlight of the trip. Because there is so much scenery and all of it spectacular they soon get discouraged and rather listlessly glance out of the car window now and then. They’re in a downward spiral. They need help. Many western states try and assist the gob-smacked tourist, knowing that they’ll soon burn out and take their gold cards home with them if they don’t capture their interest. These people have been stuck in their cars for days, kids screaming, the dog needing to go out every 35 miles, they’re tired, disappointed and frustrated, so the Public Relations folks and the various Merchant associations post roadside signs with arrows pointing at a more significant piece of scenery to view, hoping to stem the exodus of bleary-eyed travelers. But the signs are small and soon blend into the blur along the highway.

Seeing this as a large and costly problem the western states bring out the big guns several times a month. There is a special lighting program available to highlight various scenic areas but it is expensive and can’t be used to light up Uncle Everett’s Skunk Emporium and Waterslide even if Uncle Everett had the money to pay for it which he doesn’t due to some unfortunate accidents in the petting zoo. It has to be saved for the really big stuff. The stuff that still grabs the jaded locals and make them stop in their tracks and remember why they moved here in the first place. You can see it in action over the Tetons. They had it cranked up to maximum on this day, the meter was spinning so fast the meter housing was smoking but it was worth it. It’s kind of like daytime fireworks. The grateful tourists were parked along the highway for miles and miles, some with tears in their eyes, others mouthing silent thanks, a few so awe-struck they were just passed out along the roadside. There is a movement afoot to collect enough funds to make this an on-call program, like during a big weekend. Such as when Jackson hole celebrates National Moustache day. Slow going yet but they’re hopeful. For now just enjoy it when it happens and count yourself lucky to have found some scenery.

Thistle Farm

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Of all the difficult ways there were to make a living in the scrub land around Jackson hole in the mid 1860’s Thistle farming had to be the hardest. Hardy homesteaders from Scotland moved into the territory and with dreams of establishing a thistle empire began dozens of small farms in the arid land north and east of Jackson hole Wyoming. It was subsistence farming at its heart and depended primarily on a lack of snow in the winter to keep the land at its most unproductive state.

A late snowstorm could wipe out an entire crop of thistles leaving the farmer and his family destitute but broke after a year of backbreaking labor in the thistle fields which happened more often than not. Ignoring the advice of local hunters and trappers and refusing even to talk to the ranchers in the area who had long years of getting through the winters here and were a fount of knowledge regarding snow and other moisture-laden events, they steadfastly planted their thistle seeds, hoed away the nuisance plants like alfalfa and its companion plants hay and silage and constantly fought to keep the scourge of pasture from forming. Determined but misguided they fought on year after year until eventually even the most die-hard thistle farmer saw it was a futile but lost cause.

Sadly all we have left is the occasional deteriorating building with its chinking of mud and dried thistle stalks, often with a forlorn thistle plant growing nearby in a futile attempt to reestablish its prominence. Now its once proud purple head faded to a dull listless straw color, still hoping against hope to drop its seeds into the wind one more time. It remains a sign of the herculean effort by these early dedicated but clearly unintelligent emigrant agriculturists. Still today, if you look closely at some of these abandoned homesteads you will see a small cluster of thistle bravely making a stand against the elements, their purple heads still nodding defiantly in the wind in apparent acknowledgement of their futile battle with the elements, a testament if you will to determined but misguided efforts on a huge scale. There are other failures written in the book of lost causes here in the west but none quite measure up to this one, the thistle farmers of the high plains.

This Old Door

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This old door has stood the test of time. Rain and snow have blown against it. The hot searing sun has dried it out until slivers of itself hang loosely from its skin. Its rusting hinges still let it swing freely though, opening and closing with the same solid wood against wood sound as its latch fits into the socket, it too worn with age, that it has since it was installed so many years ago.

When it was new it arrived first by train from St. Louis to Denver, then up the eastern side of the Rockies on a spur line to the young and vibrant city of Jackson hole in Wyoming territory. A clerk from the Jackson hole livery and hardware store helped another young fellow load it into his wagon for the trip up the side of Kingston mountain. It was bound for a construction site where he was building a home for his soon to be new bride. It cost four dollars and was considered a huge extravagance by his father who thought he should have built one himself and saved the money.

After they were married, and the house was finished, Wallace and his bride Hetty decided to paint the door the brightest white they could find so folks traveling up the road past the house could see it coming for miles. Hetty wanted them to see it and know good hard-working people lived there. People that cared for their home and each other and to use the door as a marker for the love they had for each other. It took a lot of effort on her part to keep the door white and clean, especially as they had so much else to do. But Hetty thought it was worth every minute she spent on it. They were happy and the house was a joyful one, full of promise.

Years passed. Hetty bore seven children, three of which lived, and the door began to lose its luster. It wasn’t that the love it sheltered was ebbing, it was just hard to keep the door bright when her life was getting so dark. She missed those children. Life showed so much promise then. Young Wally drowning in the creek that last spring was almost enough to make her give up. Before that the others she lost were mainly due to sickness and there wasn’t anything that could be done about that. Little children died back then. But she wished with all her heart that she had told that boy not to go to the creek with it running so high. But he was like his father, headstrong and stubborn. He went anyway.

Her pride and joy were the two girls, Arletta and June, both of which married well. Arletta and Jess went to live in Denver, and June and her husband started a haberdashery in Cheyenne. They came home every so often but that had slowed now that June had two of her own. Hetty’s remaining son Stiller, the quiet one, stayed home to help Wallace keep the place going but she could see that he was getting restless. One morning Wallace came in and said he’s gone and that was that. She didn’t get up that day. It was also the last day she scrubbed the door.

The house was empty now again except for the two of them, and dinner time was a quiet time. Wallace didn’t have a lot to say and Hetty was lost in her own thoughts more often than not. Wallace had pretty much quit working the place after that young colt got in a lucky kick and shattered his knee. Hetty did some mending and took in laundry but soon that got to be too much and they were having a pretty rough go of it. June came and got them one bright summer day in 1927 and moved them into their place in Cheyenne. She and Bill had room and she could use the help with the kids. They both missed the old place but this was Ok. Hetty liked the gentle chaos of having a family around her again, although she often wondered if she would ever see Stiller before her time was gone. Wallace never brought it up but she noticed he still carried that old pocket knife he had given Stiller on his twelfth birthday. For some reason Stiller had left it next to his bed when he left. When it was Wallace’s time to go she made sure she put it in the casket with him.

The door began to show the ravages of time. The final flakes of white paint had long ago been swept away by the wind. The family, now June and Bill, and Arletta and Jess kept the place so they’d have somewhere to take the kids in the summer. The door still opened and closed with a satisfying thunk and they saw no need to paint it again. Arletta in particular like the way it had weathered and there was a small but short-lived argument about whether they should fix the place up so they could rent it and maybe take care of the taxes. June and Bill wanted to but Arletta fought for it staying the same as it was the only reminder they had of the folks now that Hetty was gone. Arletta won, at least for now, and so far the door has stayed natural.

If you go up there now, on the side of Kingston mountain where Wallace built Hetty her first and only home, you can still see the old door. It is still weathered, but Arletta finally gave in and now the place is rented out to summer people. If you’re there and lucky you may hear the satisfying thunk of the door being slammed as one of the kids runs in and out. The sound of a mother yelling “Don’t slam the door!” is lost on the kids. That’s what doors are for. Hetty never yelled, that time was too precious to waste it on yelling at the kids.

Rough Night Ahead

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The Dubois badlands. I think they have been very badly misnamed and should have been called the Dubois Goodlands. Now I know why they’ve been called badlands and it has a lot to do with settlers being able to settle here and basically stay alive. Once you move away from the Wind River and head into the drier and more vertical areas of the badlands your possibility of raising a bountiful corn crop lessen dramatically, so are your chances for a good rice harvest. And trying to run cattle there poses some unique problems as well. Cows don’t climb cliffs as well as bighorn sheep, say, and if they do by some chance get up one of those slopes the forget how to get down and normally wind up cascading down the hill with their udders in the air and end up badly. All of this contributes to a prejudice against places such as the badlands that don’t cooperate with, as Mr. Sagan used to say, Yuman Beings.

Places that seem hostile to Homo sapiens have always offered a challenge that must be overcome regardless of the value of the victory. It is a moral affront to some that there should be spots where people can’t easily live and they will go to any lengths to change that. Fortunately Mother Nature views these attempts with amusement and although she might allow things to go on for a while, her time schedule being different from ours, she will take a perverse delight in sending them packing just when it is most inconvenient for them.

The beauty of these places is only enhanced by its ability to create monumental displays of power and drama. This storm for instance, still in its infancy, will soon unleash incredible forces that at its whim can overcome any man-made constructs and never bat an eye. We see this as bad luck when this happens, but Mother Nature just goes about her business unaware that there have been people inconvenienced and rightly so. Why would folks pit themselves against what is surely a lost cause. Because there are always those who dwell in the murky depths where their vision is impaired and never float to the top of the gene pool. And because they apparently are working at a disadvantage they don’t always see things with the clarity of other brighter beings, and hence they are destined for failure. We call this tragedy, Mother Nature calls this weeding.

Sunset on the Wind River with a storm brewing is a wonderment to observe, however it makes good sense to take your picture and get over Togwotee Pass and on into Jackson as quick as you can and do not test Mother Nature. If you do reach the upper levels of the gene pool you have to keep paddling, because life is an IQ test, and its primarily pass/fail. Good luck.

Brigadoon Arch

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There are many mysteries in the mountains here in the west but none so intriguing and compelling as this one. It has always seemed strange to me that the horse tribes had such a short history. I don’t mean that they weren’t living on the plains and mountains for hundreds of years but that their glory days, when they had horses and rode proud and free, clothed in leather, carrying lances and bows, fighting with their enemies and living as Kings on this land seemed to be a very short time. That time of their life only seemed to last for decades, a very brief time that was captured by only a few artists, photographers and the memories of their people. Where did that spirit go? It has only been in the recent past that a small numbers of stories, legends if you will, began to emerge. They were always greeted with skepticism if not outright derision whenever they were told. Maybe because you only heard them in the bars and honky-tonks late in the evening and told by those who had had a few too many. The fact that they appeared to believe them with every fiber of their being, did little to keep them from being so easily discounted. The legend of course, is the story of Brigadoon arch.

The way it has been told is that every hundred years or so the Arch appears in the mountains just north of Jackson Hole not far from where their present day airport is located. The exact time it appears is not known nor is it known how long it is open, but when it is, there is the possibility that you, if you were brave enough, could hike up to it and pass through, and there you would find the lost horse tribes living as they always have, in their lodges made of buffalo skins, with their favorite ponies tied out front and the smoke from their campfires slowly spiraling up into the crisp morning air. There are occasionally, unexplained sightings of a string of lights winding down the mountainside late at night, torches perhaps, as some of the young braves trek down to the plains for a last buffalo hunt. One person told me, swearing it on an oath that can not be repeated here and sealed with a shot, that after seeing the lights one night he found pony tracks leading down to the river and nearby a dropped beaded pouch like the ones carried by Arapahoe Dog Soldiers when they were out raiding. Inside it, he said, was a freshly taken scalp barely cured. When asked if the pouch could be seen now he told me sadly that he had lost it in a poker game. It almost made him quit drinking he said, tearing up some, and he was no longer able to speak of it.

Think what you will, I for one, believe that there are things we can’t explain, things that will always remain a mystery. The arch wasn’t there the last time I went through so if you want to find out for yourself I guess you will just have to wait until the arch appears again and go and see for yourself. If it does appear and you are brave enough to enter I would brush up on my Lakota if I were you.