The Wild Wild West and how tame it has become

I have been doing a lot of thinking the last few days about the west, make that the West with a capital W. Part of it is because I have been reading The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie Jr. (I think I said Arlo in my last post...Arlo is the folk singer, Alfred B (Bud) Guthrie won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1950 for The Way West.) I am more than halfway through the book and Boone Caudill, the hero, has just arrived in Jackson Hole. He ran away from a harsh father in early 19th century Tennessee and ended up working on a keel boat headed west. Long story short, he teamed up with a mountain man after Black Feet Indians killed most everyone on the boat. They have gone to Jackson for a rendezvous in 1837. Jackson Hole, Wyoming, used to be called the Hole in the Wall. This is a place I used to know, but I don't know it any more. It's just not the same place it was when I was a kid, or the same place it was in the stories I heard as a child.

Ah...the romance of the old west. Excuse me, Old West. It was a place of heart as much as a place on the earth. The mountains are large, so big I have known Easterners that were afraid of them, that were sure they would crumble of their own weight. I grew up with a view of the Grand Tetons from our living room picture window...on a clear day. We had lots of clear days in Idaho Falls, but they would disappear for weeks at a time during the winter. Now, it is true that they were far away and very small, not at all close like Taylor Mountain, where we could see the lights for night skiing every night, but they were there and they colored my childhood. On the Fourth of July, like as not, you would find us in the car driving over Jackson Pass to Jackson Hole and the Tetons. The little kids (I was the oldest of this group) would have new cap guns and small cardboard boxes full of rolls of paper caps. No shooting was allowed in the car, but once we were out of the car, we could shoot as much as we wanted. I have seen the meadows with elk and the marshes with wild swans. I have seen the majesty, the grandeur of those tall tall mountains. I grew up on stories about my grandfather driving a team of horses and a freight wagon over Jackson Pass before it was paved. The switchbacks and hairpin turns went almost straight up when I was a girl and my father told us they were nothing compared to what they used to be. The thought of driving horses up there in all weather on unimproved roads made my grandfather into a hero.

A few years ago my husband and I went to a family reunion not far from Jackson. Richard asked if I wanted to go to Jackson. I didn't want to go. We had been there about 20 years before and I didn't recognize the place. I have heard that it has become artsy and a tourist trap, the last outpost of the Old West. And now I am reading about a rendezvous there in 1837, and somehow, that seems closer to Jackson than than place I last saw. Wild country and wild men. Indians and fire water, warm and willing squaws. No white women, no permanent citizens, just lodges thrown up for convenience and a fort. The true West, with the elements untamed by cozy fires and hunger slacked by "buffler" liver eaten raw, not a Big Mac. That's where I want to go. Somewhere open and wild, untouched. I would dress in men's clothes and just sit in the background and watch. Ah...but then reality sinks in. I would not like everything I saw, for much of what went on there was completely wild. Fights to the death over simple insults, men drunk on seeing women after months in the hills as well as liquor, gambling that got rough...and they called it a "frolic". Maybe just out in the meadows or in the mountains would be more to my liking...like the honeymoon in Owen Wister's The Virginian.

The point of all this is that the West just isn't what it was. It's been tamed and broken to man's hand like a horse. Even the environmentalists can't stop the progress, and in my heart I know that it's probably for the best. The mountain meadows of the past feed scores of people with their winter wheat. I just find myself being more and more attracted to the idea of the Old West, to rodeos and cowboys and teamsters who can handle any team under any circumstances. Going back to my roots. Deep in my heart, I am a cowgirl and I am glad to live in Idaho.