One of my favorite alone spots is a magical place where I like to go tent camping. Here in Wyoming, we don’t have many people, so there are lots of nice places to choose from for camping… But, this place is simply magical.
The drive starts along a sheepherders trail that you can see winding into the distance ahead of you for miles and miles and miles. Looking out, the scenery is mostly low scrub brush, brilliant green rabbit bush, and various scattered wildflowers. There’s some low hills here and there that the road curves around, and beautiful mountains way off in the distance.
You follow this road until you see a faint cut-off that looks like it was made by some uncaring hunter’s years ago – faint tire ruts that seem to go into a small cluster of junipers along the edge of a hill. Hunters here go off-roading to pick up their animals without any thought to how long it takes those ugly tire tracks to disappear from the landscape.
Smiles! This is my magical place. After you turn onto the faint little trail, the junipers become HUGE just out of sight from the sheepherder trail. These junipers must be between 300 and 400 years old. They tower over you in haunted-house poses with their limbs growing in strange contortions towards the sky. Many have been hit by lightening over the years, but all range fires have somehow missed these wise old trees.
The ground is fluffy sand, similar to what you would find on a beach; it’s not just ground, it’s a lizard’s play-yard… with footprints from all kinds of animals that pass through. The birds believe that this grove of trees is a sanctuary; the generations have always nested there… There are so many birds. And they don’t have a huge fear of people. These birds will sit still and chirp at you while you take their pictures.
Off to one side is the view of a valley, as you stand along the edge of the cliff of rocks that drops off there. Waaayyyyy off in the distance you can see a train going by once a day like a snake slithering across the landscape. The side of the cliff is all interestingly shaped rocks with lots on nooks and crannies for animals to live in. If I get there at the right time of the year, there’s an active hawks nest that you can look down into to watch the baby.
The ground is littered everywhere with tiny slivers of colorful rocks that glisten in the sunlight. Every color of the rainbow is represented. They are not all rocks that are native to this area of Wyoming. These rocks were left there over a period of many years, by the last people who found my camping place magical as they chipped their arrowheads and later watched the people making the train tracks through the valley.
There are bits and pieces of grinding stones here and there, and what I call fire rocks. After some rocks have been burned for awhile, they turn red. This means that my magical spot once had happy children playing in and around the weird shaped trees while Mom was making dinner.
I have a campfire ring there, and always leave a pile of juniper sticks near it in case somebody else comes stumbling in; I’d rather that they don’t start chopping down the trees near where my tent goes. There’s a family of lizards living in the wood pile.
When you light your fire, they come over and sit on the rocks around the fire and look at you. I used to freak about them getting burned, but now I know that this is just what the lizards do. They like the fire.
Wyoming is where oil regulations are being lessened so that America can have its oil. We have rigs going in everywhere; in a few more years nothing like my magical place will be left in the area that I’m talking about. But, for now it’s still mine. It's a place that stays in my heart daily; my little oasis.
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