Give me land, lots of land under starry skies above
I'm back from the wild west. Last week I traveled to Worland, WY for a short business trip. The trip went well, but the place is what merits mentioning here. Worland, WY is not just a small, rural town. It's a small, rural town more than an hour from the closest Target, Wal-Mart, or interstate. It's a place where the only national chains are a McDonald's and a Burger King. It's small, and not in a quaint way. It's got appeal -- mostly from outstandingly friendly people I met while there and the unique land that surrounds it, but this factory town with a wild west history is certainly dusty around the edges. The plane trip in shows you how remote Worland is -- nothing to see for miles around -- and the town feels very flat. Maybe there were a few two-story buildings, but apparently it's cheaper to build out than up. It all felt dwarfed by the space surrounding it. I came home humming Cole Porter's song, "Don't Fence Me In."
I flew in on a bumpy ride, a prop plane where every seat was a window and an aisle. The co-pilot (a woman!) doubled as the safety-speech person and airline greeter at the bottom of the jetway stairs -- we walked onto the tarmac to board and de-plane. Nearby thunderstorms kept the ride rocky and I spent most of the trip trying not to throw up. Not fun. The ride home was in a storm so severe we couldn't land at our intermediate stop in Laramie, WY. Not much better. I will now keep Bonine with me at all times when I travel.
Worland is on the edge of the Big Horn Basin, a remote area of north central Wyoming. It's tough to get to because it's hemmed in by mountains on almost all sides. For years those mountains made it difficult for (white) people to come to the region, but the thing that really kept them out was that those mountains were protected Native American hunting ground. When that treaty dissolved (in the aftermath of the Battle of Little Big Horn, which was fought nearby in Montana), whites, and their cattle came in -- in droves. Literally. Not long after things started to get messy.
And this isn't the only interesting thing about this little town you'd only stumble across if you were en route to Yellowstone by car. One of the largest excavation of mammoth bones on the planet was in the Big Horn Basin, and as a result anthropologists have spent decades studying the area and developing theories about how early humans interacted with these large animals. How would you go about killing a mammoth? And fossils. Plant fossils, dinosaur fossils, fossils of long-extinct mammals, and fossils of the marine creatures who once called the sea that covered Wyoming home. Remarkably, the Big Horn Basin is the best place on the entire planet to study the evolution of life on earth. Seriously.
So we're building 'em a museum. Big project, won't open until 2010, and we need every minute of that time to get things done. I'm looking forward to my next visit, which may later this summer. The people were great and the areas outside of town look like a moonscape. If you ever go, stay at the Days Inn. Dan will hook you up.
I flew in on a bumpy ride, a prop plane where every seat was a window and an aisle. The co-pilot (a woman!) doubled as the safety-speech person and airline greeter at the bottom of the jetway stairs -- we walked onto the tarmac to board and de-plane. Nearby thunderstorms kept the ride rocky and I spent most of the trip trying not to throw up. Not fun. The ride home was in a storm so severe we couldn't land at our intermediate stop in Laramie, WY. Not much better. I will now keep Bonine with me at all times when I travel.
Worland is on the edge of the Big Horn Basin, a remote area of north central Wyoming. It's tough to get to because it's hemmed in by mountains on almost all sides. For years those mountains made it difficult for (white) people to come to the region, but the thing that really kept them out was that those mountains were protected Native American hunting ground. When that treaty dissolved (in the aftermath of the Battle of Little Big Horn, which was fought nearby in Montana), whites, and their cattle came in -- in droves. Literally. Not long after things started to get messy.
And this isn't the only interesting thing about this little town you'd only stumble across if you were en route to Yellowstone by car. One of the largest excavation of mammoth bones on the planet was in the Big Horn Basin, and as a result anthropologists have spent decades studying the area and developing theories about how early humans interacted with these large animals. How would you go about killing a mammoth? And fossils. Plant fossils, dinosaur fossils, fossils of long-extinct mammals, and fossils of the marine creatures who once called the sea that covered Wyoming home. Remarkably, the Big Horn Basin is the best place on the entire planet to study the evolution of life on earth. Seriously.
So we're building 'em a museum. Big project, won't open until 2010, and we need every minute of that time to get things done. I'm looking forward to my next visit, which may later this summer. The people were great and the areas outside of town look like a moonscape. If you ever go, stay at the Days Inn. Dan will hook you up.
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