RODE OFF INTO

If I were to write a cowboy ending there'd have to be a sunset somewhere. There's always a sunset, right? The day ends itself the way we seek to start and end our own thoughts. It ends without ever checking to be sure it's alright. Without stopping to make sure it hasn't stepped on any toes. I would have a sunset and I'm pretty sure it would look something like this. Let me credit this photo. I stole it from a website for KEVA radio. It is a beautiful picture and exactly what I wanted to show; the part of Wyoming that knows about the Rockies but is, for the most part, really all about the next 200 miles. Just a stretch between one little group of civilization and another That's all. This is near a place named Bridger, Wyoming. Bridger, as I remember it, is near a place named Fort Bridger. Fort Bridger was a place established by the famous mountain man, Jim Bridger. You'd think a place as big and wide open as Wyoming would have plenty of names to toss around. It isn't that way here, though. You can't spit without hitting something named Bridger. I guess if something works, why mess with it, hey? It was a place where the mountain men met to drink, buy guns and whiskey and sell pelts, trade women, play games and speak the first English any of them may've heard for better than a year. The entire mountain man era was very short lived. Less than 10 years, I'm thinking. And when it went, it went fast. Like Beta-max. Like 8-track tapes. All the rage one minute. Gone the next. When the mountain men stopped making any money from pelts they stopped coming. When they stopped coming, Fort Bridger became something else. Nothing more than a way station for travelers along the Oregon trail.

Now the Oregon trail is something everybody should see but until you do it won't make any sense why I think you should. Even standing there looking at it you'll wonder why you'd care. You will, though. It grows on you. After years and years, you'll find yourself thinking back to it, almost like you're touched by the ghosts of the pioneers. It's two thin tracks crossing the length of southern Wyoming, looking like somebody intended to lay down a railroad line but couldn't get the metal. Those old horse or oxen-drawn wagons with their narrow iron wheels wrapped around wooden spokes cut the land like an 8-bottom plow; split it open, laying it bare to an environment where nothing much ever grows and there's no reason to plant. I've heard stories of how the wagon trains would come through in the winter or during the mess of spring melt and travel for 500 miles buried almost to the hubs in mud. Like I've said before, Wyoming is a really big place. I would've thought it might occurred to somebody to travel just a few feet to the left or the right of this path and stay out of the muck. I guess if something works, why mess with it, hey? I just thought they were more adventurous than this indicates they were, that's all.

Where were they all going? The name Oregon Trail would lead one to believe it was mostly the state of Oregon but in fact, the majority of the people on the trail were Mormons, fleeing from religious persecution that had driven them out of New England, through the heartlands and dropped them in the morass of this muddy prairie. SPLAT! And they weren't going to Oregon. Most were headed to Utah. The Mormons bought Fort Bridger and used it to protect themselves and other travelers from Indians, the rigors of life on the trail, and the half-million other things that might seek to do one harm in this environment. Foremost of those turned out to be the U.S. Calvary. I don't really get the reasoning behind it. I've heard that the soldiers thought they were rescuing defenseless women from a new white-slavery of polygamy. I can picture these guys waiting to be the heroes and knights in shining armor to all of the beautiful young Mormon wives. It wasn't true but it got the cavalry off their butts and kept them moving across the lonely west. Fact is the women were apparently happy in their situations. I guess if something works, why mess with it, hey? The Mormons conducted a scorched earth tactic, burning and destroying everything contained in Fort Bridger, everything they'd found and everything else they'd worked so hard to build and grow. The only thing left was a rock wall, which they apparently didn't feel was worth tearing down.

But if I were writing a cowboy ending, I think I might have to tear it down. I think I might have to tear it down or blow it up or watch it washed away in a flash flood. I don't think I could leave the wall to get in the way of the view. That sunset. That's the thing a cowboy lives for. Riding off into that. Riding off alone. Always alone. Always a "Shane" scene, always a man who knows the heavy of truth and yet finds he can live with it. He'd been sitting tall in the saddle and holding the reins real loose in his hand.

I think I'd write that ending instead of the story about Fort Bridger and religioius persecution in the United States. Why not write that and not mess with it, hey?