Daily Darwin

[{"type":"text","text":"Everything was great until that truck came out of nowhere..."}]

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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Darwin: Tuesday, June 6, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Everything was great until that truck came out of nowhere....

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, June 6, 2023

 Everything was great until that truck came out of nowhere...

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Tourism

Will Grant still has the two horses, Chicken Fry and Badger, that he rode across Wyoming in the summer of 2019 when he retraced all 2,000 miles of the Pony Express trail. 

Chicken Fry was born in New Mexico, and no one knows for sure how old he is.

“He’s had some hard miles on him,” Grant said. “Not a hard life, but plenty of work. So we rope off them a little bit, but not too much, and they’re like trail horses.”

Some of those hard trail miles happened in a landscape that deeply respects its roots. Wyoming, Grant told Cowboy State Daily,  has cared for its Pony Express Trail better than other states.

“You can see it there,” Grant said. “It’s very well marked in Wyoming. Very well marked.”

Mosquitoes in Jeffrey City are particularly bad, while South Pass can be freezing cold even in July. 

That’s left Grant wondering how Pony Express riders kept their feet and their hands warm, given that they were riding through South Pass in January of 1861.

“The winds through there are no joke,” he added.

These are just a few of the gritty details Grant learned about Wyoming as he rode through it on the back of a horse, surrounded by a vast, windswept sea of sagebrush. 

He had known from the outset that he would face the same brutal elements the pioneers did — shifting mud, relentless wind, desert conditions, mosquitoes, and the like.

But, as he wrote in his book, “The Last Ride of the Pony Express,” thinking about the hardships ahead of time and experiencing them firsthand are two very different things. 

That point became starkly clear under the flash of a sudden Wyoming summer storm. Grant and his two horses, he realized immediately, were the highest point on the landscape. They were walking targets clad in iron horseshoes. And there was nowhere for them to take cover. It was just miles of open sagebrush in every direction, as far as his eyes could see.

The crack of thunder overhead filled him with dread as he rode across the land in that gathering storm. He also gained a new appreciation for the 1860s couriers who wrote of learning to read the landscape in between blinding pulses of lightning strikes.

“I learned that the Pony Express as a mail service was a really impressive display of American entrepreneurship,” he said. “There’s no other country in the world that could have done the same thing given the same environmental parameters. There were no horses out there. There was no infrastructure on which to set up a fast horse mail relay over 2,000 miles to deliver a letter in 10 days.”

There were wild horses, and they were a huge danger to a lone rider managing two horses. Grant writes about that in his book, how careful he was to avoid either inciting an attack or losing his horses to that stallion’s wild harem.

The Mongols and the Romans and the Persians did have ancient horse relays to quickly traverse their kingdoms. But these were created in already civilized areas that their empires controlled, and those relays were fed and maintained by the full resources and might of those empires. 

America’s Pony Express was a business venture started completely from scratch, with no empire behind it at all, traversing a vast and empty land that was openly hostile. There were no resources from a surrounding empire to help them through all the places that lacked food, water and shelter. 

Pony Express riders didn’t wait for perfect conditions, though. They rode in all kinds of weather, making a 2,000-mile trip in a just 10 days. 

Grant took his time, compared to them. His journey lasted 142 nights.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Modern-Day Station Masters"}]

He also had something else the original 1860s riders didn’t. Wyoming ranchers — many of them descended from original homesteaders — who helped him all along the way, as did members of the modern-day Pony Express riders. The ranchers, in particular, were an informal network of modern-day station masters, ready and willing to help him all along the way.

Time and again, just as weather threatened to overwhelm him and his small string of horses, Grant would ride up on a private gate to find it already opened to him. The rancher before had let the next farm know he was on the way and to watch out for him.

These ranchers didn’t just grant him passage through their land. They would actively pull him out of a storm, offering secure pasture space and protection from the elements. There were often hot meals and a dry bunkhouse were included, as well as their stories.

“The traveling horseman still finds a lot of hospitality in Wyoming, I’ll tell you that,” Grant said. “People were good to me. Opening pasture gates, no worries. Really good people all along the way.”

There was the time a well-meaning rancher tried to talk him into taking an ornery mule with him … 

But warm hospitality and cheerful dinners and storytelling were more common. It was a powerful reminder that while the physical shelters of the 1860s may have crumbled, the human infrastructure of mutual aid remains intact across the Wyoming plains. It’s been actively kept alive behind the closed gates of modern cattle ranchers, many of whom are still living by the unwritten code of the West, handed down from one generation to the next.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Write What You Know"}]

Grant’s Pony Express ride wasn’t just a history fascination for him. He found in the ride a perfect intersection for the two halves of his life.

“I’m a journalist, and I mostly have been writing for magazines,” he said. “What I really wanted to do is write a book. The Pony Express emerged as a topic that I thought I could shed some light on because I worked as a horse trainer and a cowboy.”

Grant, born and raised in Littleton, Colorado, spent his summers cowboying on a ranch between Chugwater and LaGrange in Wyoming, studying under a foreman named Tim Sussex.

“Those were good years for me because Tim really showed me how to handle horses in a lot of different ways, but really how to be quiet with a horse,” he said. “That is the best thing you can do, get a ranch hand job on the wide open prairies of Wyoming.”

His first degree program was forestry and geology in Tennessee, after which he went back to horses, breaking colts in Larkspur, Colorado, then working for a ranch in Texas. 

In 2008, he went back to school to study journalism at University of Montana School of Journalism.

“I needed it,” he said. “I’d been training horses and doing ranch work for like eight years. I had to use a different part of my brain.”

When he went hunting for a book idea, the old writer’s advice — write what you know — stuck.

“I saw the Pony Express as a way to overlap my expertise with horses and write what you know,” he said. “I decided to dive into the Pony Express and I thought, ‘Well, obviously, I’m gonna have to just ride it. Travel it by horseback.’”

That, he added, was the “best summer of my life.” 

Even if it was the summer of 2019 — not the summer of ’69.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Trail Logic And Life"}]

Spending five months on the back of a horse gave him new perspectives on hardships and life. 

“When things are bad, you can expect they are going to get better,” he said. “If you have a bad camp, then the next night is almost certainly going to be better. And if you have two bad nights in a row, then your odds are even better that you’re headed for greener pastures.”

That simple trail logic helped him keep his morale intact through the inevitable stretches of cold and wet, hot and thirsty, tired and hungry all along the way.

He also learned more about his horses than he expected.

“I’ve been around horses my entire life,” he said. “But I learned a lot about their nonverbal communication. I learned you can tell a lot about a horse by listening to the way they walk.”

Any discomfort comes out in the sound of the hooves striking the ground.

He also noticed things about humans as well, including that they seem to care more about someone who is riding on the back of a horse than they do about someone who is on foot.

“They’re more likely to offer support because of the horses,” he said. “People cared about the wellbeing of the horses more than they cared about the wellbeing of me for sure. Having the animals with you opens up a lot of doors.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Next Book"}]

These days Grant lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Chicken Fry and Badger have the run of the place, and Grant spends more time “wrangling sentences” than he does cattle.

He’s already knee-deep in his next book, which is about the ancestry of the American cowboy.

The research has already taken him to Mexico, Spain, and soon Morocco. Next summer he’ll tackle history that’s “closer to home.”

Whether that brings him back to Wyoming remains to be seen. But Wyoming will have its thread in the book regardless.

“I’ve got a lot of good Wyoming material built up over the years,” he said. “Horsebacking it across Wyoming for the Pony Express gave me a pretty good look at the country.”

And being a wrangler near Chugwater was a whole other dimension of the state and its cowboys.

After riding the Pony Express across Wyoming and sleeping under its stars, Grant may have left tracks that already blew away. But the stories Wyoming whispered to him in the night still live on, indelible memories that explain the code of the West in ways words never could.

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<title>Cowboy Rides All 2,000 Miles Of Pony Express, Says Wyoming Weather Overwhelming | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Cowboy and journalist Will Grant rode all 2,000 miles of the Pony Express trail on horseback. He said the trip gave him a newfound respect for Wyoming weather. Mosquitoes in Jeffrey City are bad, while South Pass can be freezing cold even in July. 

Cowboy Rides All 2,000 Miles Of Pony Express, Says Wyoming Weather Overwhelming

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

A GMC Yukon is smashed against giant boulders in a ravine off U.S. Highway 14-16-20 between Cody and Greybull. It’s been there for two years and could be there for many years longer.

, Suzanne Marie Cole drove the 7,000-pound SUV off the highway in what she claimed was a carjacking. She was arrested on two misdemeanor charges of probation violation, as it was determined she was intoxicated at the time of the accident.

Cole’s case has long since been resolved, but her Yukon is 

. Its windows and windshield are gone, anything of value inside is long gone, and it's riddled with bullet holes.

Pere Davison saw the Yukon while hiking in the Oregon Basin this past week.

“I hike up along that ridge all the time, but I have to go down and look over an edge to see the car,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “It is hard to believe it got down to where it stopped. It had to go over some pretty big boulders.”

The Yukon is likely to become one of dozens, possibly hundreds, of vehicles left abandoned in remote, hard-to-reach areas in Wyoming. It’s just not worth the effort to recover it.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Fruitless Effort"}]

Zac Beardall of Zac's Towing and Recovery in Cody knows exactly where the Yukon is. After Cole’s accident, the Park County Sheriff’s Office contacted him about recovering it.

Beardall isn’t one to be intimidated by a challenging recovery. He knows he could recover the Yukon, but as a business owner practicality takes precedence.

“There's no reason for it other than it's basically a fruitless effort,” he said. “Trying to devote an entire day and an entire fleet of equipment to a non-paying job is not exactly the best business decision.”

In these incidents, the owner is usually responsible for recovery costs. According to Beardall, that wasn’t an option for Cole.

“The owner didn't really make that choice,” he said. “It's more that they had no other option because they didn’t have the money or insurance to cover the operation as it stands. It’s not like breaking down on 1000 Wyoming Street and getting towed for $100.”

Because the State of Wyoming doesn’t cover recovery expenses, Beardall would have to cover it himself. It wasn’t worth it then, and it’s even less so now.

“That Yukon will never be roadworthy again,” he said. “It launched off a cliff and bounced up three boulders. The very second it lost momentum at the bottom of that cliff, it was never going to be roadworthy again.”

Two years later, the Yukon is in ever worse condition. It’s full of holes, created by rust and dozens of bullets, indicating it’s been used for target practice more than once.

When Beardall’s on the hook for a difficult recovery, he can recoup some of the cost by scrapping the vehicle. Even then, recovering the Yukon wouldn’t be worth it.

“The recovery’s not worth the scrap value,” he said. “Even the best scrap value on it wasn't ever going to be worth the recovery effort.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Live And Let Live"}]

Given the Yukon’s location, it’s under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The agency might decide that recovering the vehicle is worth the expense.

But will it? Beardall thinks it’s unlikely, especially because it’s not doing any harm where it is.

“For the BLM, it falls under the same purview as trash and litter,” he said. “It's not hurting anything where it's at. It's not obstructing a roadway or hiking path, and it’s not causing some huge environmental friction. Nobody’s going to pay a huge amount of money to get a vehicle out when it’s not doing anything.”

That’s what Beardall described as something that’s “been the establishment” since the invention of motorized vehicles. Sometimes, they end up where they shouldn’t be and remain there.

“They're big chunks of steel that take a lot of effort to move,” he said. “Sometimes, they’re in an area where it’s not really worth trying to move them, so we leave them.”

That’s nothing new. Beardall knows of “about 50 different vehicles in the area” that ended up in similar predicaments and haven’t moved or been recovered since. Many of those are older than one might expect.

“I can take you out to places where there's Model A’s in canals,” he said. “They’ve been there since they went there, and nobody's moved them in the last 100 years.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Like, Share, Subscribe?"}]

Unless the BLM decides to pay Zac’s Towing and Recovery or some other company to get the Yukon out of the ravine, Beardall expects that it’ll stay where it is. It’s so far away from U.S. Highway 14-16-20 that it can’t even be seen from the road.

There was only one scenario where Beardall might find the Yukon worth the time, effort, and expense. That would require more social media savvy.

“I could be like some of the YouTube guys and publicize the effort to make money off it,” he said. “Maybe one day I'll have a YouTube channel set up, where we're getting paid for views recovering vehicles from canyons and sinkholes, but that’s the only way it would make any sense, financially.”

If that ever happens, Beardall doesn’t anticipate becoming a social media star anytime soon. Business is busy enough without the extra clout.

“At this time of year, especially, we're ‘all hands on deck’ trying to operate and pick up cars, motorists, and anybody else who might be stranded, broken down, or wrecked,” he said. “Taking a full day to recover that Yukon just isn’t worth it.”

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<title>SUV That Went Off Wyoming Cliff 2 Years Ago Still There With No Plans To Recover | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Two years ago, a GMC Yukon flew off a highway in Park County and bounced off giant boulders in Wyoming's Oregon Basin. It's still there and likely there to stay because recovering it would be a fruitless effort, said the owner of a local tow company.

SUV That Went Off Wyoming Cliff 2 Years Ago Still There With No Plans To Recover

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Wyoming Life

Crime & Courts

A Kinnear man has spent years helping people convicted of crimes figure out what comes next when they leave prison.

Clifford Fewel runs Stay Free Forever, providing courses for people involved in the criminal justice system in Wyoming and Colorado. 

Some are still incarcerated. Others are on probation or parole. Many are trying to find work, rebuild relationships and adjust to a life outside prison that's far more complicated than simply walking through the gates.

The name of his company comes from something Fewel used to tell inmates while working in corrections. When someone was preparing to leave prison, instead of saying, "Don't come back," he would offer a more positive sendoff: "Stay free forever."

His courses cover employment, financial skills, digital literacy, reentry and self-awareness, but Fewel said the work often goes much deeper than teaching someone how to write a résumé.

It can mean helping people understand why they keep making the same mistakes, how their upbringing shaped them and how to move past the shame that can follow incarceration.

"I'm not a therapist," Fewel said. "I'm just a coach. I'm just a mentor. I'm just a guy who provides classes."

Sometimes, he has found, the first step toward finding and keeping a job is getting someone to believe they are capable of doing it.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Unlikely Career"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Fewel did not plan on a career in corrections."}]

After losing a newspaper advertising job and moving to Arizona, he needed work with benefits and reluctantly applied to the state prison system.

He knew prison guards when he was bartending in Folsom, California, and they did not exactly sell on the profession. But the prison job offered health insurance from day one, so he took it.

He worked as a corrections officer, joined the training cadre, became a programs officer and eventually moved into parole. One of his strengths, he said, was being able to relate to inmates without feeling superior to them. 

"I just don't believe that any one of us is any better than the others, despite what we may have done wrong," he said.

Working inside a prison also changed his perception of incarceration. Most days, he said, aren't filled with the violence and chaos depicted on television. Corrections officers and inmates might spend part of a shift talking about football, movies or the job market.

Fewel came to see his role differently, too. The inmates had already been judged and sentenced. His job wasn't to punish them again.

Eventually, he became increasingly interested in programs aimed at helping people succeed after release. He later moved to Colorado to provide those courses and added Wyoming to his territory after marrying and settling in Fremont County.

Fewel remembers teaching classes inside prison and asking inmates to physically choose sides of a room based on their answers to different questions.

[{"type":"text","text":"Ford or Chevy? Xbox or PlayStation? Chocolate or vanilla?"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Then he'd ask: When I got sent to prison, did I abandon my family?"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Most chose yes."}]

Fewel would challenge them to consider whether abandonment was actually what they'd intended. They might have intended to sell drugs, steal or engage in whatever behavior ultimately landed them in prison, but he didn't believe most woke up that morning planning to abandon their children, spouses or parents.

Sometimes seven or eight out of 10 would eventually stand up and move to the other side of the room.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Self-forgiveness is huge,\" Fewel said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Job Is A Job"}]

The former tribal judge was convicted on federal drug charges and served six months in federal prison. When she was released in June 2021, she returned to Wyoming through a halfway house in Casper.

Her sister picked her up at the airport, helped her get clothes and supported her while she worked to get back on her feet.

[{"type":"text","text":"One of Smith's requirements after prison was taking a course from Fewel."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Another was finding a job."}]

Smith had bachelor's and law degrees, but her first job after prison was housekeeping at a Casper hotel. She remembers making about $10.25 an hour.

"It was very humbling," Smith said. "It was the hardest I've ever worked for a job for the least amount of pay, but it was great."

The experience now informs what she tells other people leaving prison: "A job is a job."

For people whose criminal behavior was connected to substance use, Smith said employment provides more than a paycheck. It provides structure.

"If you have all this time on your hands, you're gonna go start using or start doing things you used to do before," she said.

Having somewhere to be every day gives people money, responsibility and routine.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Tripwires All Over The Place'"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Leaving prison doesn't necessarily mean unrestricted freedom."}]

People on probation or parole may still have rules about where they can go, what they can do and whom they must report to.

"There's freedom, yes, but not freedom like you and I enjoy," Fewel said. "There are tripwires all over the place."

For people who have spent decades behind bars, another challenge can be simply learning how the modern world works.

Fewel has worked with people who went to prison when phones were still attached to landlines or when mobile phones were bulky devices with antennas, only to emerge into a world run through smartphones and apps.

"Now they're flat-screen mobile computing units with television and movies and sports 24/7," Fewel said.

Learning to navigate everyday technology is a big piece of reentry, which is why digital literacy is among the courses he offers.

Plenty of hurdles await in the real world, Fewel said, and even with preparation and support, not everyone is guaranteed success.

Fewel still thinks about a former inmate named Cody who worked as a porter in the programs office at the Arizona prison. He remembers him as clean-cut, hardworking and creative.

Cody once led a group of inmates in building a detailed three-quarter-scale replica of a 1936 Ford pickup entirely from cardboard, complete with a stick shift, working gas cap and removable dipstick. The truck went on to win first place in a Fourth of July parade.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"He was a dynamo,\" Fewel said."}]

When Cody left prison, he planned to work as a diesel mechanic, but Fewel said a local restriction prevented him from doing so because of his felony record. He took another mechanic job instead, got married and initially seemed to be doing well.

About a year later, Fewel called to check on him and learned Cody had started drinking again, left his wife and moved away. She didn't know where he was.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It was heartbreaking,\" Fewel said. "}]

Fewel said many offenders benefit from the structure and "guardrails" of prison. Outside, "old instincts, old patterns" can take over. 

Smith has seen those setbacks, too, but she doesn't necessarily consider them the end.

One client she worked with returned to custody three times before joining her program and trying again. On his fourth attempt, Smith said, he began working and earned his commercial learner's permit.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Words Of Encouragement"}]

Today, Smith is the administrator of the Northern Arapaho Reentry Agency, a Wind River Reservation program that helps people returning from prison find employment, housing, treatment and other services needed to rebuild their lives.

She helps people find jobs, complete applications, prepare résumés and get to interviews.

[{"type":"text","text":"Her work has also brought her relationship with Fewel full circle."}]

Smith knew Fewel when she worked as a tribal judge. After prison, she became one of his students.

Now, some of Smith's clients on federal probation are required to take Stay Free Forever courses, and when they do, Smith may serve as their life coach.

[{"type":"text","text":"She now considers Fewel a friend."}]

Smith said her own experience is valuable when she's sitting across from someone who feels hopeless.

She can tell them she, too, has been to prison. She has struggled with addiction and had to rebuild her own working life from the bottom.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then she can point to others who have done it."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I know you can get a job,\" she tells them."}]

That kind of encouragement may be something some of her clients have rarely received, she explains.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Staying Free"}]

Fewel wants people to find work, but he doesn't want them to stop dreaming once they get their first paycheck.

One man he worked with loved motorcycles and told Fewel he wanted to own a Harley-Davidson dealership.

Eventually, he landed an entry-level position polishing bikes, which led to mechanical work and, later, a position as an assistant general manager.

Another man developed landscaping skills in prison and later went into the landscaping business with his brother.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"They're light years from where they were when they were,\" Fewel said."}]

Fewel said what keeps him doing the work is seeing someone's attitude change.

Finding the first job is important, but so is learning how to manage money, rebuild relationships, and recognize old patterns before falling back into them.

The larger goal for Fewel is helping people realize they don't have to be the same person they were when they were sent to prison.

Felony jobs Browning kitchen inset 8 9 26

<title>From Prison To Paycheck: Wyoming Man Finds Jobs For Felons To 'Stay Free Forever' | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Finding a job after prison is hard, and keeping it is harder, says one Wyoming man who knows the corrections system and helps felons get jobs. Clifford Fewel says new freedom has a lot of tripwires and his goal is to help these people "stay free forever."

From Prison To Paycheck: Wyoming Man Finds Jobs For Felons To 'Stay Free Forever'

One More For The Road

Bill Sniffin and Andrew Rossi are still working out a few kinks in their newly founded trucking company....

One more for 8 9 26

<title>One More For The Road: Sunday, August 9, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

One More For The Road: Sunday, August 9, 2026

Wildlife

As hunting season settles over the mountains surrounding Snyder Basin in Sublette County, the moose begin drifting toward a Wyoming woman's ranch. Sometimes alone, and sometimes with calves.

[{"type":"text","text":"To Pamela Chrisman, their arrival isn't surprising."}]

For nearly 40 years, generations of wild moose have returned to Fish Creek Ranch near Big Piney, Wyoming, where they trust Pamela Chrisman so much she can walk up and pet them. "This is kind of a safe haven for all those guys," she said.

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, June 6, 2023

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