July 29, 2006: Libby Flats

We’ve set up camp on the flats below the peaks of the Medicine Bow range. In front of camp is a view of the peaks, a couple of miles distant, still with a fair amount of snow; behind our camp is a lateral moraine that is composed of little hills and ponds. The hills are piles of quartzite boulders and chunks of some very old, tan sandstone covered with bright orange and green lichens. Some of the ponds are homes for frogs and tadpoles; all of them have footprints around them from elk, deer, and the little pikas that watch our coming and going from the tops of the hills. The flats are open meadow, but scattered about are very decayed old trunks that are the remnants of a forest that once grew here. The occasional patches of fireweed suggest that the forest burned, perhaps around the time of Lewis and Clark.

I wander among the round boulders, noting how thousands of years of freezing and thawing have caused the larger ones to break up in interesting ways. Some are broken in three or four pieces, while others have spalled in layers, like an onion.

I am thinking about a conversation I had yesterday with a ranger. I had mentioned that our plans are to eventually drive north, from Rawlins to Lander, across the Great Divide Basin. Last time I crossed the Basin, via Oregon Buttes Road, I saw a number of wild horses. I mentioned this to the ranger, noting that the horses occasionally loitered near some of the many gas wells in the Basin. I asked her about the on-going controversy between ranchers and oilmen, focusing on the lowering water tables apparently caused by pumping out gas.

“It’s gotten a lot nastier since you were here several years ago,” She said. “No dialogue any more. It used to be that they didn’t drill or do any exploration during the winter, during the elk migrations. At a public a meeting few weeks ago they informed a group of ranchers that they had the mineral rights and would do ‘whatever they want, whenever they want.’”

“Of course,” she noted, “you know who is in charge now!” We both knew to which Wyoming politician she referred.

I am sitting on a comfortable rock, atop the highest of the little hills, staring absently at the mountains, seeing shapes in the snowfields. The one that looks like a man with outstretched arms, which I photographed for an earlier blog entry, is still there, his left arm now mostly gone. I imagine the great river of ice that once flowed between where I sit and the distant peaks. Then I see our screen tent, bounding across the meadow with the breeze like a beach ball at a rock concert. I cover the ¼ mile between it and me in fairly good time, considering the altitude, and haul it back to the campsite. Still a few things to learn about making camp.