Sunday, August 23, 2015 Sheridan, WY trip odometer approximately 5,300 miles
Yesterday was mostly spent in Yellowstone.
Instead of another morning of the truly horrible continental breakfast the
hotel was providing (at the price I was paying I expected a champagne breakfast)
I drove three blocks to The Branch restaurant. Here, once again, I encountered
the phenomenon that students with special summer airfares love to come and work
in America’s parks. That was so yesterday in the Park stores and restaurants,
and this morning’s breakfast was served by an enthusiastic Japanese girl. “My
second day,” she confessed, and she bowed after the meal and said thanks for
permitting her to serve me. Well, that was different from my usual American
restaurant experience.
Because the Mammoth Tower road was closed for
repairs, I took the Canyon road to the northeastern part of the park. I can
tell you, never again. This section of road could use some repairs, too, and
winds up and down the canyon rim for over 20 miles, clinging to cliffs with a
precipitous drop an inch from the outer edge, and the Park Service apparently
does not believe in guardrails. Well, anybody who wanted to go over 20 (at
most) just had to pass me.
Once that ordeal was over, I was in the
northeast part of the Park, my favorite. It’s the least populated with tourists
and wildlife abounds. Twice I was slowed by bison on the road. The open habitat
is perfect for them. There is also some of the best fishing in the Park in the
Lamar River watershed. However, you could not prove it by my experience fishing
it in mid-day. The guide who was leaving with his client as I arrived at a
fishy-looking area of Soda Butte Creek said they had caught nothing, and
neither did I. I got a couple of unenthusiastic hits on a dry fly and one on a
stonefly nymph. So I was not fated to improve on my wonderful evening on the
Gallatin, but I did savor wading this section and enjoying the sensation of “Hey,
I’m fishing out west!”
There is no substantial town at the Northeast
Entrance of Yellowstone, just the charming village of Silver Gate, which has NO
structure not made of logs. Because I had planned to exit at the East Entrance,
all the geocaches I’d downloaded were useless to me, so it was an uninterrupted
ride to Lovell, Wyoming. It was 4:00 when I reached there, the last town before
entering the Bighorn National Forest. Counting on my fingers, I figured that I
wouldn’t reach Medicine Wheel before sundown, and it would probably be closed;
and the next place I could reasonably expect lodgings and gas was 70 miles
further.
I stopped the night in an unpromising place
called the Horseshoe Motel, but knew I was OK when a large Siamese tomcat
jumped up on the counter and gave me a noisy round of much-needed purr therapy.
The room was large and well-appointed, and it was a great place to stay even
though the shower plumbing needed some attention.
This morning I got a late start and grabbed a
single cache just before entering the Bighorn. Now my pilgrimage, for so I
thought of it, was truly beginning. Off to pay a visit to Medicine Wheel,
sacred place of my Cheyenne ancestors, almost 7,000 feet higher than where I
started. The roads were understandably steep, again with those precipitous
drops, but there was a lot less traffic here than in Yellowstone and I could go
at a speed that pleased me. Besides, there were indeed guardrails.
After only a single wrong turn, a dirt road off
to the left was signed: “Parking for Medicine Wheel, 1 ½ miles. Medicine Wheel,
3 miles.” The dirt road was freshly graveled and thus slippery, narrow, and… Hey!
Still climbing up and switchbacking! I’d been warned about this road by friends
who had taken the same pilgrimage, back in the 80’s. It has not improved since
then, except the Forest Service has had the sense to close the last mile and a
half of what, by then, has narrowed to a rocky, dusty trail barely wide enough
for a car. And featuring those sheer drop-offs. Not long before reaching the
parking lot, I spotted a truck coming down and figured I’d back into the
pulloff I’d just passed and let him by. When I put the car in reverse, it kept
going forward. Weird. When I arrived at the parking lot, I discovered that the
car would also not go into Park or Neutral. When my front bumper hit the log
defining the parking space, I quickly pulled on the emergency brake and shut
off the engine. With no way to get the car actually into Park or Neutral
(although the shift lever moved fine) I couldn’t restart the car. Nor did I
relish going down that 1 ½ miles of gravel road without a Low gear, not to
mention the twenty-odd miles getting down from the mountain on the paved road.
A nice family from Texas volunteered to take
me down to a lodge where there was a phone, but it turned out the Ranger at the
station there had a hand-held radio and was able to relay my problem and AAA
information to his boss down the mountain a ways, and he phoned for a tow.
Coming all the way from Sheridan, the ETA was at least an hour and a half.
Unable to do anything more, I decided to do
what I’d come there for. Slinging on a backpack with a bottle of water and my
crudely-carved rabbit (my offering, if it was allowed), I grabbed my walking
stick and was off on the final mile-and-a-half of my pilgrimage. As I walked, I
reflected that it was only right that something so meaningful should be
difficult. A sacred place should be
approached on foot, with humility. I looked at the earth, the reddish rocks in
one section, the grey ones higher, checked out the tracks in the road and the
few game trails heading uphill. A few pitch-pines had taken root in a couple
spots, and in the shade of them were traces of the most recent snow. Medicine
Wheel, known to the natives as “Where the Eagles Land,” is at 10,000 feet
elevation, and nights here are cold enough even in mid-summer for precipitation
to fall as snow.
I find it hard to believe that members of
many different tribes would climb up here and stay four days without food or
water. The descriptions of what thunderstorms and windstorms were like up here
are frightening, but… imagine how the stars would look at night! I thought of
my dad on his teenage trek up to this spot, and wondered what he did, although
I’m pretty sure I know what he felt.
The last 200 yards were especially steep, and
at this altitude, I did indeed have to stop and breathe, and my respiration was
very, very slow to return to normal. Then it came into sight: The post-and-wire
fence the Forest Service built to keep casual tourists from damaging the site.
(As if a ‘casual’ tourist would come here. Everyone I saw had a serious
demeanor, and there was little talking, and no
cameras. My feeling that taking photographs here would be wrong somehow was obviously
not unique.)
I took it in. We were at the top of the
world, nothing but sky around us, and other, lower, mountains far away. There
was nothing to be close to, except the Creator, and there was a feeling of…
presence. Approaching the circle itself, one’s eyes were caught by the
thousands of fluttering offerings on the fence: Bandannas, scarves, pendants
and bracelets, pouches of cloth or buckskin, dream catchers, feathers, even a
couple of jawbones that looked like bear. On the ground under the posts,
objects ranging from a lovely Spirit-Bear carved stone to a pouch of Red Man
were laid out. I could feel the wishes, prayers, or just general feeling of
reverence of thousands of people going back hundreds of years. It was like
many, many whispering voices… or possibly the wind.
The circle is laid out with grey stones, and
four grey stone cairns are built at the airts, and one in the middle.
Twenty-eight lines of stones make ‘spokes’ to this wheel, although no one has
suggested a reason for their number and placement. I walked slowly clockwise
along the path outside the fence; A prominent sign warns people from going the
other way, not that I would have. I was listening, looking, feeling with my
senses. Several times I bent over to feel the earth.
Then a cairn caught my eye, and I heard a
voice: “Wandering Woman, you are welcome here. This is your place.” It was the
east-facing cairn, not that it would have made any difference. I’d been told:
This was the place to make my offering. I carefully positioned the wooden
rabbit I’d carved myself at the base of the post, looking east. I continued my
slow, meditative walk until I’d completed the circuit.
Then, no matter how much I longed to linger,
I had to trudge back to the parking lot where my car awaited, for the tow truck
would be there shortly after I could get there. This proved to be the case.
They determined it was not an expensive problem, but that the clutch linkage
had broken. Even so, there was no driving it to Sheridan, so I rode there in
the back seat off the rollback’s trailer. I am sooo glad I didn’t have to drive
that road myself. As it was, I kept my hat brim low and concentrated on a roll
of electrical tape on the floor, successfully ignoring the hairpin turns and
steep drop-offs.
So here I am at the Mill Inn, one of
Sheridan, Wyoming’s most historic buildings, because it was within walking
distance of the repair shop. I could only carry a limited amount, so I have my
laptop and my “drugs and toiletries” bag. No pajamas or change of clothes, no
diversion in the form of my knitting or novel. I have a delivered sandwich, a
bathroom, a place to sleep, and am golden! Four aces and ridin’ high, as they
would say around here. At least I will be riding, tomorrow morning when Bruce
is road-ready again.
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