The Wonderfully Lonely Land of High Plains Wyoming

There are many seemingly desolate stretches of land in western North America, but a few forlorn locations actually make these seem to be lush and abuzz with activity.  So it is for southeastern Wyoming, an area that boasts an urban corridor not far to the south (Denver-Fort Collins) and a city of its own, Cheyenne, and yet remains as open and unbroken as in the days when it was resided in by the Lakota and Cheyenne peoples.  Little remains of their world outside of the reservations, and truck stops and hydro towers have since reminded travelers that even here in the open, the modern world is not far away.  Then again, sometimes that old world does make an appearance.

I-25 northbound looking east, barely into the state of Wyoming.  An interstate, fences, and transmission lines working together could not diminish the glory of this moment and landscape.

Now understand something: I have been across the continent many, many times.  Not once until and since this time have I seen a buffalo (Bison Bison).  There it was, though, grazing on the High Plains, surrounded by signs of modernity, and yet it still managed to make the location look wild and free.  In a few miles, I-25 would head through all four and a half miles of Cheyenne, but then almost immediately, the plains would open back up and a herd would come to watch the few passing cars.

I-25 northbound looking east, about 20 miles north of Cheyenne.  

The proghorn (Antilocapra Americana) fared far better than the buffalo did, and these days there are many herds of them in Wyoming.  They congregate here perhaps because the land is a bit less fenced in.  While I did notice a little bit of barbed wire here and there, the land generally still felt wild and free.  I suppose that if anyone wants to get a feel for what the High Plains were once like, they would do well to visit eastern Wyoming.  Such a trip would be good not only to experience the essence of the shortgrass prairies, but also helpful in debunking any myths about the land being a flat barren country.  

I-25 northbound, 25 miles north of Cheyenne, looking towards Laramie Peak, which rises 5,000 feet over the surrounding shortgrass prairie, topping off at an altitude of 10,200 feet.  The peak is 40 miles distant from this point.

The land is anything but either.  It is dotted in bluffs, buttes, cliffs, rolling hills, and covered in lush grasses, cacti, yuccas, and the odd pine and juniper that descends and survives from higher ground. 

I-25 northbound looking east, somewhere between Glendo and Douglas, Wyoming.

Still, the sky is bigger than the earth, the vistas seem to go on forever, and the land is an excellent place to forget about a lot of things and clear out the head.   Like northeastern New Mexico, it is a meeting place of grasslands, mountains, and high deserts, but the atmosphere here is different.  There are no large cholla cacti or Pueblo ruins, and there are no remains of a Spanish culture in this land that was far enough away to escape the dreams of empire.  The Canadiens did make their way through here, but as was the case elsewhere, they left little to memorialize their passing.  The snow stays on the ground here until well until May in some years.  Like eastern Colorado, the land here is where the east and west part their separate ways botanically, but this part of Wyoming lacks the dramatic rise of the Front Range of the Rockies, the great mountains instead having risen into relatively isolated peaks.  Whereas neighboring Colorado is dominated by the mountains which rise on the horizon even over 100 miles away, this is a land where grasslands and Rockies blend more subtly and smoothly, as if both were tranquilized by the serenity of the vast horizons.