Rock Springs, WY

I ran out of water 14 miles before I got to Rock Springs in the heat of it. Hole in water tank, and one tank split totally. Not Good in unsettled southwestern Wyoming. A blizzard in Flaming Gorge held me in snow cave with my tent as a liner...for three days under 18 inches of snow...plus more snow falling every minute; falling that made the tree which held my food a treasure hunt to find. That was a very long road ago as I walked among wild horses whose curiosity brought them remarkable close except for the black stallion that reared and cantered in circles two hundred yards out on a barren table of red earth.
Several storms have been on me with each mountain pass, making me tired of the deep white cold of it--and yet recharging my eyes with a unique beauty that drenched my soul.....and feet. I have walked the saddles taken by mountain men, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, better understanding their ability to lose a posse' time after time.
Never have I arrived in a town while being this filthy (the promised rivers were not), this depleted of food, water, and self. My pants are oil cloth I can fingernail a cloud into. My face is sandpaper adhered by the sharp bite of salt I replace on my tongue with sea salt from a vial I keep in my pouch on my waist, along with a stick of grease for my shattered lips, a gratitude stone that is half a flint spear point, and several beads I can't send away. Everything has gone from pale sand and rock to the industrial blue-gray of factories and fields of pipe. I am on the outskirts of Rock Springs. This is all I see. I see no springs with swimmers drying on boulders, boulders that squat in the unbridled sun. I see angles drawn by man, and earth being moved to be moved again so that it is in all of my mouth each time I breathe. I am a horse promised a stable after a hard 75 mile ride, only to see torn canvas feathering from an old wooden frame set out by broken tractors and barrels that can't hold water anymore. In a day I'll be regrouped from the hard walk from Vernal, for there is again nothing fore 60 miles before me, all the while the mercury rises. In two days I will not crumple the map and sigh into my cravat. In three days I will be wearing new shoes, smiling over a contented stomach, and not dreaming about ankle deep water softly talking roundness into stones. In days I will blink into a new morning with the draw of adventure eagerly waiting under the laces of my shoes.