Sunday, October 9, 2011

Overland Journeys



With the first snowstorm of winter came the necessity of stocking up our supplies, lest we be snowed in at some point in the future. Every town with a grocery store is two hours from my mountain home, and so yesterday I set out in my modern covered wagon for Rawlins, Wyoming.

Rawlins is a funny little town- only 10,000 people, yet it feels like half that. Old buildings that have never been updated and trailer parks line the few streets, and there are no big box stores aside from Pamida (the poor man's K-mart, it's been jokingly referred to). Downtown was paused-- it appeared that once the railroad money left the original "Raw Town" near the turn of the century, things continued along with the only change being the position of the hands on the clock face. Perhaps even those stopped by 1950.

The thrift store was bustling, in an old general store with high windows and ceilings. The old floor-to-ceiling shelves still covered the walls. The patrons were self-important, and all knew one another, as they would've in 1910. The man who ran the Army Surplus was obviously an ex-Civil War soldier, and may have been an outlaw at one point as well. An incongruous bright spot lit Main Street, in a little home decorating store full of tasteful knick knacks that seemed far more appropriate to the Eastern Front than to the wild west.

The huge, Romanesque buildings of the Wyoming Frontier Prison loomed at the north end of town, presiding over all that lay below it. The buildings were grand, forbidding, stern, and utilitarian all at once. The prison was once known for its modern methods of reform: prisoners worked out on county projects, at a prison farm, and in a privately-owned shirt factory. By the 1950s, silence was the rule and reform was a thing of the past. The prisoners rioted, which brought about some change, but the facility was closed by the 1980s and moved to a modern building near the freeway.

The sleeting snow and oppressive grey clouds made imprisonment feel like the by word for a Wyoming winter. On the drive home, I watched a herd of wild horses near the Overland Trail and was thankful for my cabin in the unsettled country. I would willingly take my chances against the odds of a snowbound winter at 7000 feet, over the forced confinement of a city on the plains.

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