Over the past couple of blog posts are pictures of our trip to Meeteetse on Christmas Day.
A trip to a very small and very isolated Wyoming town is always quiet, but a trip to this same town on a sunny and freezing cold Christmas Day is absolutely silent.
There are only a few active businesses in Meeteetse, and none of them were open on this day.
There was nobody walking through town except me and LC.
No traffic on the roads.
Nothing and nobody and it was all very good.
The sky could not have been bluer if it tried. It was freezing cold. And we walked slowly down one side of the main road through town, jaywalked across to the other side, and as I snapped pictures LC and I simply enjoyed the slowness of the day.
There are small touches throughout this town that make Meeteetse a very special place.
Rifle door handle on the outside of one of the burger bars. An elk painting on the outside wall of another. Covered wooden boardwalks, hitching posts, cowboy signs.
As we headed back towards the truck I impulsively decided to walk down to the next road and take pictures of some of the wagons that I knew from a previous trip were parked next door to one of the small and free museums in town.
I heard the truck before I saw it and turned to smile and acknowledge my Mountain Boy, before turning back to take more pictures................
If you click on this page it will enlarge.
To the side of the white shed are four deer.
LC and I were slowly driving down side roads in town, and while I was talking to my youngest son Chris on the phone these deer suddenly appeared out of someone's yard.
Still on the phone I scrambled to reach for my camera, all the while watching these four beautiful creatures joyfully four-foot-hop their way through the snow and down the side of the road.
I snapped this one quick picture before they disappeared behind the shed...............
Heading out of town and back towards Cody, LC unexpectedly pulled off the highway and onto a snow-covered dirt side road, again curious to explore one more up-til-now unexplored road................
We drove a little further, ploughing the snow as we went.
Eventually we came to an open gate, and multiple signs told us that we were now entering Marathon Oil land.
The signs warned us that travel from this point forward was for gas employees only.
We continued driving anyway.
No far. We were simply looking for a place to turn the truck around.
That was our story and we were sticking to it..................
There was nobody around to tell our "story" to.
It was Christmas Day for goodness sakes.
Less than a mile beyond the "employees only" sign LC pulled the truck over to the side of the road, we climbed out, and stood in the freezing cold looking out over a never-ending world.
BLM land for half a year is a world filled with sage and varying shades of brown and beige.
The sheer magnitude of the space is stunning in that context.
But in a world that contains only white, the scene in front of me left me speechless.
Snow covered mountains in the distance.
Endless snow covered hills around me.
And white, clean, pure, endless space everywhere I looked.
I had needed to move on this Christmas Day, but suddenly, standing in the middle of stunning and blank and beautiful nothingness I knew that in that moment this very place was where I was supposed to be.
I was supposed to be standing in the pureness of this snowy place on Christmas Day 2012.................
And this man was supposed to be here with me.
Watching me. Loving me. Watching over me...............
Christmas will not ever be the same.
Not ever again.
But on this Christmas Day my beloved Mountain Boy and I spent at least the morning wandering the world in the cold and the snow.
And that was OK.................
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