Chuck Hassler

If you feel the need to get away from the constant barrage of crazy talk, I suggest a short road trip up to the top of the bench. Park your car and shut the motor off where the tipi rings overlook the valley. Get out and leave your phone in the car.

There you have it!

The town. The sewer lagoons. The center pivots. None of it looks that consequential against the ancient landscape and giant skies.

It’s consequential only to those of us who live here and only while we’re here.

But over to the west rises the towering wall of the Line Creek plateau and the rugged Beartooths beyond, with the Clarks Fork Canyon slicing through it all as if cut by a knife.

That most recognizable icon of the valley, Heart Mountain, is a reminder that something can be both familiar and unknowable, common and sublime, at the same time. Its improbable-sounding story about being a giant chunk of rock from the other side of the Beartooths that migrated over to our neck of the woods in an afternoon is a wild one.

But so is the story of the bench you’re standing on. My understanding is the bench is essentially a gravel bar from the ancient Shoshone River. It’s divided into two different ages, one with lots of large animals and plants, and the other dominated by much smaller animals and a paucity of plant life. Good times with plenty to eat and tougher times with less resources.

If you gaze across the valley southward, you see the McCullough Peaks in a way you can’t from town. You can see the part of the Peaks that is grassland, especially at elevation. Over on that grassland side stand the remnants of the stone barn and a long gone house.

One of the few springs in the Peaks supplies water to that lonely, long-abandoned homestead and explains why the homesteader selected the site. He intended to keep a quality stud horse and run brood mares in the Peaks.

The Peaks is also where a young sheepherder froze to death and years later a young ATV rider rolled to his death.

A lonely place to live or die.

Jim Bridger’s ox cart trail traverses the Peaks on the eastern flank before descending to cross the Shoshone near Penrose. There was one particularly steep part of the trail where an ox cart wreck reportedly left a bunch of broken crockery scattered across the bottom.

Off on the eastern horizon from where we’re standing, we are line of sight to the Medicine Wheel. People have been celebrating summer solstice up there since well before the Declaration of Independence.

Let’s get back in the car and out of the wind, and I’ll tell you why I think it’s good to come out here. First of all because we can!  Public lands!  In Texas, you can’t go anywhere or do anything because it’s 93% privately held.

Secondly, if you have the radio and the phones all shut down and there’s any kind of wind or breeze, crack the windows so you can hear the wind blowing through, and be really quiet. If you’re sufficiently quiet and settled, you’ll hear their voices. All the people you’ve ever loved and who’ve now passed. Whisper quiet, but crystal clear. If you’re too deaf to hear, they’re mostly telling you they love you!

Now if you wanna get out and look for a few agates or a horny toad or a little prairie rattler action before we roll back to town, I’m game!  

But don’t get bit by a snake and if you pick a horny toad up, be forewarned: he/she will likely bleed out of the eyes. Just sayin’.