“Just that one thing, the wind howling like that, the way it does on the prairies, I can’t explain to you. But somehow you know, as an animal, that you’re near the place where you were born.” – Joni Mitchell
Opinion
Our son Clark and his family live in northern Utah. His lovely wife, Jana, raised in the shadow of the Wasatch Range, often remarks that the wind blows a lot here in Wyoming. She inquired one time about the big trucks you see knocked on their sides along I-80. I explained that those long-haul outfits get tired of bucking the wind and just need to lay down and rest a bit before continuing on to their destination. She thinks I’m funny.
Funny or not, you can’t help thinking about wind this time of year in Wyoming. It’s right there in your face. Sometimes, no matter which way you turn, it seems like you’re facing a gale-force headwind. I had a pickup once that I just loved. It was powerful. It could tow anything heavy as fast as you wanted to drive it. But in a headwind, it was a world-class wimp. You could watch the fuel gauge drop, and you knew that you were destined to visit every place that sold diesel from wherever you were to wherever you were going. Awesome truck — so long as it never had to face adversity. Some trucks are like that.
Some folks are like that, too. They show real well when they’ve got the wind at their backs. Wyoming folks are different. This time of year, when we have a particularly windy spell, my social media feeds are full of competing posts from around the Cowboy State. A friend in Cody lays claim to 76 mph. Another in Wheatland says it hit 81 mph at Bordeaux. Somebody at Harriman claims 90 mph. And so it goes — each of us vying for the title of Least Inhabitable Place in the Interior West. Wyomingites take pride in our ability to withstand gale-force winds and everything else life throws at us. Wimps need not apply.
It’s probably been like that since the beginning. This is not a place where you can live your life in the absence of a headwind, literally or metaphorically speaking. They say that the Comanche people — a tough bunch, and the greatest horse warriors the world has ever known — once lived in what is now Wyoming. According to their history, sometime in the late 1600s or early 1700s, they lit out and rode until they hit the southern plains of Texas and Oklahoma. I suspect the wind ran them off. It was that way when the big trail herds came up from Texas. Some of the young waddies that came up the trail found a place that suited them on the lower Laramie, the Platte or maybe Powder River. Most did not. And with each successive migration to Wyoming, the same thing happened. People came to the Cowboy State chasing a dream. Those who could make their peace with low wages, periodic economic busts, March gales and the complete absence of both spring and a Whole Foods store, they stayed. Those who couldn’t handle it left.
It’s no different today. A few years ago, Clark and Jana visited the home place on the west side of the Wind Rivers during a truly once-in-a-lifetime wind event. The National Weather Service monitoring station on Muddy Ridge, about 9 miles west of our place, clocked winds over 100 mph for 24 consecutive minutes. There were downed trees everywhere. Clark and his crew had to cut their way out with a chainsaw. He called me from Farson to report in. When I asked him if they were OK, his answer was a laconic “Yeah. Why?” Like generations of Gassons before him, Ol’ Clark isn’t troubled much by wind or downed timber or adversity in any form. For us, like Joni Mitchell, the windsong in the lodgepoles is the sound of home.
Life is full of headwinds, of adversity. Sometimes it seems like you’ve been bucking a headwind forever. But I’ve learned that headwinds are what you make of them. You can simply quit, if you want. But if you’re willing to tough it out, and especially if you’re willing to tough it out alongside other people who care about you, it doesn’t seem all that bad. If you’re willing to find joy in the simple things — the sound of a meadowlark, the smell of spring rain, the first elk calves or pasqueflowers — it will all be worth it in the end.
