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[{"type":"text","text":"You know this is going to turn out well...."}]

You still here 3 30 24

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

<title>You Still Here? Saturday, March 30, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

You know this is going to turn out well....

You Still Here? Saturday, March 30, 2024

 You know this is going to turn out well....

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

Andrew Rossi

Business & Tourism

Tourism

The Maverik gas station in Montrose, Colorado, can’t sell any diesel after someone dumped an RV’s waste tank into the station’s underground diesel supply.

The incident happened sometime on Monday, and a woman who answered the phone at the Montrose Maverik station on Tuesday confirmed that someone had dumped an RV waste tank into its underground diesel storage tank.

She said the pumps “are shut down right now,” that the store was busy, and hung up.

Cowboy State Daily hasn’t been able to confirm the status of the situation at the Montrose Maverik since that call. Subsequent calls weren’t answered.

Evan Peters shared details of the incident in the Facebook group Montrose Message Board.

“They dumped into the large manhole covers near the road directly into the diesel tank,” he wrote. “They have a dedicated dump at the larger pumps, but I guess someone decided to undo the manhole and dump there.”

To add insult to injury, Peters said a cashier at the Montrose Maverik told him the station had “just gotten a new delivery of diesel.”

Now, they’ll have to pump everything out of the tank and thoroughly clean it before it’s operational.

That’s what happens when someone’s No. 2 becomes someone else’s No. 1 problem.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Necessary Evil"}]

Bill Sniffin, an avid RV enthusiast and Cowboy State Daily columnist, said emptying an RV’s waste tank is “a necessary evil of RVing.”

“Let me tell you, it’s not fun,” he said. “It's usually a two-person operation, and it’s pretty darn rank.”

When Sniffin heard about the incident at the Montrose Maverik, he said it was “almost unbelievable.” 

He couldn’t see how anyone could confuse an RV dump station for the portal leading to a diesel fuel tank, regardless of how the gas station is situated.

“The dump stations are very obvious,” he said. “They’ll have signs all over the place, and it’s very self-explanatory.”

When people rent or buy RVs, they might not anticipate that anything that’s flushed down the on-board toilet needs to be emptied, usually every week or so. It’s the least glamorous part of traveling via RV.

“You can’t hire anybody to do it for you,” Sniffin said. “Luckily, I've got a wife who's a pretty good sport about it, but I have to admit that I have many pictures of her standing over the tank, holding her nose, and trying not to yuck.”

When discussing the Montrose incident, Sniffin kept referencing the 2006 film “RV” starring the late Robin Williams. In the movie, Williams plays an oblivious dad who rents an RV for a fun family vacation.

There’s a particular scene where Williams’s character has to empty the RV’s waste tank. Williams used his comedic genius to make the most of the all-too-relatable moment.

“He doesn’t know how to do it, so of course it explodes into a brown Old Faithful,” Sniffin said. “Anybody who's ever been in the RV business looks at that scene, cringes, and says, ‘For the grace of God, go sweet, those hoses better not pop loose.”

Sniffin has never had an incident as severe as depicted in “RV.” His worst experience was when one of the hoses he used to empty the waste tank split in the hot sun.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It was a helluva mess,” he said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Black Then Gray (In That Order)"}]

RVs have two notable tanks that need to be emptied regularly. The gray water tank holds the water used for sinks and showers, and the black water tank holds the smelly stuff.

According to Sniffin, an experienced RVer knows they need to empty the black tank before the gray tank.

“You have two valves and one hose,” he said. “The routine is to do the black valve first, so all the really bad stuff is gone, then you do the gray valve to rinse out all the stuff as it goes down.”

Where can you empty the black tank? It can be more logistically challenging than many people, especially first-time RVers, realize.

Most RV campsites have waste tank dump sites, either a singular designated spot or one at each hookup, if it’s a full-service site. RVers on the road can empty their black water tanks at fairgrounds, truck stops, and water treatment plants, usually for a fee.

Some gas stations, including Maverik, have dump stations available for free. 

They’re usually clearly marked, with lots of signage telling RVers of all stripes exactly where to back up and bail out their black water tanks.

That comes with a certain risk, as the Montrose Maverik discovered this week.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Everyone Has Stories"}]

Andrea Wood, general manager at the Devils Tower/Black Hills KOA campground, has an RV waste tank dump station at her campground. However, it’s only available to “registered campers.”

“They can reserve a water and electric site, which means they use our dump station, or they are in a full hookup site, which means they hook directly to the sewer system.”

Anyone else who asks to swing in and use their dump station is directed to the Crook County Fairgrounds in Sundance. It’s best not to take chances.

“Anyone who works at a campground will have fecal matter stories for you,” she said. “It is not a daily occurrence, but it happens with frequency, without question.”

Wood couldn’t recall a particularly “exciting” incident at the Devils Tower/Black Hills KOA campground, although there’s nothing exciting about it.

According to her, the most common problem is people “emptying their black water tanks into whatever hole they can find.”

“Not only is it inconvenient and gross, but it's a biohazard,” she said. “The cleanup is never much fun, but it's also a safety concern.”

That said, there’s a particular demographic that’s the most problematic. Nearly every incident Wood could recall involved inexperienced RVers who were “unaware” of what they were doing.

“Lots of people buy or rent campers thinking it's going to be a fun vacation thing, but they don't truly grasp the maintenance and what's required to take a rig down the road,” she said.

Sometimes, people dump their black water tanks in the first spot they find. Sometimes, they don’t even wait for a promising pipe.

“Some people don't bother to put their black water tubing into the sewer hole, and have dumped it straight onto the ground,” Wood said. “Other times, they found something alongside the road that looked like it might work for them and pumped their things into that. 

"It's always amazing to us where they choose to dump, because it's really, it's quite simple.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Unbelievably Newbie'"}]

Sniffin’s guess was that whoever was responsible for the incident was “unbelievably newbie.” They would have had to unscrew the lid to the subterranean fuel tank, insert their hose into it, and let ‘er rip.

“It’s almost unbelievable,” he said. “The whole process is so unpleasant that it's bad enough, but then doing it in the wrong place is just unbelievable to me.”

Wood shared the assessment that the perpetrator was probably a first-time or inexperienced RVer. However, she added that many RV mishaps are caused by foreign tourists who have even less experience with RVs than the average American.

“We get lots of German and French travelers that travel with Cruise America, and they are frequently very unfamiliar with the RVs,” she said. “It's just about knowing and understanding the rig that they're driving and being able to use it the way it's meant to be used, which many don’t.”

Regardless of their experience or ethnicity, the person who made the mistake in Montrose just made their vacation a lot more expensive.

Sniffin, who used to work at a gas station, knows how laborious and meticulous it is to maintain fuel tanks. Correcting the mistake at the Montrose Maverik will be costly and time-consuming.

“I can't imagine the process they're going to have to go through to clean that tank out,” he said. “The whole process of dumping fuel into a fuel tank is very antiseptic. 

"The people driving those trucks make sure not a speck of dirt or anything gets into the tanks or the hose there because that could ultimately mess up a car.”

The Montrose Maverik will have to empty and thoroughly clean the underground diesel tank, along with all the associated filters, pumps, and hoses, before refilling it.

“It's going to be very expensive,” Sniffin said. “If you make that kind of mistake, you are in an unbelievable world of hurt.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Never Never Land"}]

Most people don’t have issues emptying their RV’s black water tank. Wood thinks it’s incredibly simple.

“There's literally only one spot to do it, and all that’s there is a PVC pipe with a cap on it,” she said. “You take the cap off, put your sewer hose in there, and that's where it goes.”

Wood could believe that someone would mistake a fuel tank for an RV dump station, as incredulous as she was that anyone could get that far without realizing what they were doing. 

For her, it’s a reminder that people need to understand RVs before renting or buying one.

“If you're going to use the bathroom in your camper, that goes somewhere,” she said. “It doesn't just disappear into Never Never Land. All of that raw sewage has to go somewhere, and it’s your responsibility to do that the right way at the right spot.”

RV and Montrose Maverik 5 27 26

<title>RV Driver Empties Waste Tank Into Colorado Gas Station's Diesel Supply | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Colorado Maverik station can’t sell any diesel after someone dumped an RV’s waste tank into the station’s underground diesel supply tank this week. One avid RVer said the mistake is “almost unbelievable … the dump stations are very obvious."

RV Driver Empties Waste Tank Into Colorado Gas Station's Diesel Supply

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's managing editor, Greg Johnson.

Greg Johnson

Crime & Courts

CHEYENNE — For those wondering how a dog could pull off shooting a woman with a shotgun while stopped for gas in Nebraska, the answer is simple — it pulled the trigger.

That’s the only way a loaded, properly functioning shotgun could go off, said Arthur Huckfeldt and Ryan Allen at Frontier Arms and Supply in Cheyenne.

[{"type":"text","text":"Simply bumping or jostling a shotgun won’t set it off, said Huckfeldt."}]

“That’s impossible. The trigger has to be manipulated,” he told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday while demonstrating with a shotgun in the East Lincolnway gun shop.

If someone were to say their shotgun went off because it was knocked over or kicked around by a dog, “that someone is lying out their ass,” he added. “That wouldn’t do it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Heard A Shotgun Blast’"}]

Huckfeldt and Allen, who owns the shop, were weighing in on the question people are asking after a Saturday incident when a dog shifting in the back seat of a truck parked at a convenience store fired a loaded shotgun.

The blast put a hole through the front passenger door of the truck, and a single pellet traveled to a nearby intersection, hitting a woman in a car parked at a stoplight.

“The owner of the truck had pulled into the convenience store to purchase merchandise,” says the Scottsbluff Police Department in a statement about the incident.

“While the passenger of the truck was standing near the front passenger side door, a dog in the back seat moved from one side of the vehicle to the other,” the statement says. “During that movement, the dog triggered a shotgun that had a live shell in the chamber, causing the firearm to discharge.”

Craig Grass owns the Short Stop gas station and convenience store, and was working when the dog fired the shotgun. He told Cowboy State Daily that he heard the blast and knew right away what it was.

“The people (who came in the truck) were in the store shopping and the wife went outside,” he said. “They thought they heard a shotgun blast, but nobody really knew for sure. Then they saw the door had a hole in it.”

The blast through the door was toward the gas pumps, Grass said, adding that he wasn’t worried pellets from the shotgun would touch off an explosion.

“The pumps are safe and really well-built,” he said. “It’s not like in the movies where you touch it and it blows up. There’s a lot of safety built into those pumps, they cost a lot and there wasn’t really any danger.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Put It In The Case’"}]

While answering how a dog can fire a shotgun is easy — pull the trigger, remember? — there are a lot of missing variables in the Nebraska scenario, both Huckfeldt and Allen said.

The Scottsbluff Police Department didn’t respond to a Cowboy State Daily request for more information, like the breed and size of the dog, model of the shotgun, and whether the gun had a safety that was activated.

While they have no clue about those first two nuggets of information, Huckfeldt and Allen both said if the safety was on, the gun wouldn’t have gone off.

“If a 60-pound dog engaged with that trigger, it’d go off, like if it catches a claw or pad in that trigger guard,” Allen said.

[{"type":"text","text":"It would only take about 3-5 pounds of pressure, added Huckfeldt."}]

Even then, “I would think it would be really hard for a dog to shoot a shotgun,” he said. “The dog would have to have a small (paw) pad, unless it was a small dog. But that’s just a lot of conjecture.”

Both agree that what happened Saturday at the Short Stop in Scottsbluff was “very unusual.”

[{"type":"text","text":"“But Nebraska’s weird,” Huckfeldt added."}]

While it’s fun to joke about a dog shooting a shotgun, it’s only so because nobody was seriously hurt. One thing the Cheyenne gun experts said they know for sure is that if the shotgun had been stored properly in the back seat of the truck, it wouldn’t have fired.

“If you have firearms, they should be secured, put it in the case or in a rack,” Allen said. “Not haphazardly lying around in the back seat.”

He said the lesson here is, “Don’t be a dum-dum, or as my dad would say, don’t be a shithead.”

Shotgun pressure Frontier Arms and Supply 5 27 26

<title>Dog Shoots Woman With Shotgun At Scottsbluff, Nebraska Convenience Store | Cowboy State Daily</title>

For those wondering how a dog shot a woman with a shotgun in Nebraska this past weekend, gun experts say it pulled the trigger. If someone says the shotgun went off because it was knocked over or kicked around by a dog, they are "lying out their ass."

Dog Shoots Woman With Shotgun At Scottsbluff, Nebraska Convenience Store

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

Renée Jean

Government & Politics

EVANSTON — Prometheus Hyperscale laid out a vision for its massive 1.2 gigawatt data center campus on a ranch east of town owned by native Trenton Thornock. It’s a place where cattle still graze and the residents prize open country and sky.  

That includes Thornock, the fifth-generation ranching family member told a packed room of Uinta County residents, many of whom are wary of becoming the next front in Wyoming’s data center boom.  

“Our family ranches here, and my great-great-grandmother homesteaded here down Bear River back in 1869,” Thornock said. “I started the company because I saw two things that were wrong with the data center industry. 

"They’re using way too much power for the amount of compute that they’re getting out and they’re using way too much water for cooling.”

Thornock said he started his company in 2020 with the idea of first innovating water cooling systems and doing things in a more sustainable way and second improving the economy of his home state.

Wyoming has struggled with outmigration of its youth, losing most of them by age 30 to other states. 

It’s a dynamic Thornock, as an Evanston graduate, said he's all too familiar with. He knows plenty of his Wyoming classmates who wanted to stay in Wyoming, but couldn’t find high enough paying jobs to support a family.

His thought was that data centers could be part of a new story that changes that dynamic.

That’s one of the reasons he settled on a “bring-your-own-power” approach. Because of severance taxes paid on every molecule of natural gas used, that would be the best way, he figured, to support the state.

“Instead of exporting all of this economic value from the gas that’s produced here in Wyoming like we’ve always done, the point is to consume that here, do the compute here, have the property taxes from these facilities here to support our tax base, to support our schools, and all the other county services,” he said. “That’s my reason for doing this project.”

Thornock’s data center would be built on family-owned ranch land near the Silver Eagle refinery.

This, he added, is not a case where some billionaire from far away is coming to buy up Wyoming land. This is a born-and-raised Wyomingite, wanting to make a difference for his home town.

Prometheus Hyperscale has faced a rising tide of opposition against data centers amid broader concerns gripping the state, following a surge of as many as 70 data centers headed for Cheyenne. 

The meeting Tuesday was informational to answer questions from Uinta County residents about the company’s plans — and they had plenty.

It wasn’t just the usual gamut of water and power use issues. 

People wanted to know who the tenants were, who would be minding the man camps and policing any crimes, whether public officials have signed any non-disclosure agreements, and whether there are any federal, state, or local subsidies, tax abatements, or special utility deals. 

As far as tenants, Thornock said he’s not able to reveal the tenants just yet because they’re not yet ready to go public.

However, he would say that he’s signed a binding agreement with a tenant that restricts future owners of the facility.

“It will not be sold to certain types of entities,” Thornock said. “And there are at least five Chinese names on that list.”

Thornock revealed that he’d gone through a full-blown process early on to bring in a tenant, and ultimately had to reject the contract when he learned that the tenant would have been Chinese-owned ByteDance. 

“So we’ve waited two more years to get to someone we think is the right person to have in this county,” he said. 

 ties to the World Economic Forum, as well as his ties to Blackrock, his involvement in environmental, social, governance (ESG) measures during his tenure as CEO of BP.

Thornock had to say, more than once, that he hasn’t requested any abatements, nor is he accepting any government funding. Looney, he explained, made a better CEO than himself for the sake of name recognition.

“No one knows who Trenton Thornock is on Wall Street,” he said. “They don’t care who I am. The CEO of the company, Bernard Looney, everyone knows him. Jamie Dimon knows him. The head of Blackrock knows him. He’s the reason we had a CEO change, to go raise the money for private markets.”

All of the equity, all of the debt, will be raised from private investors using a bond offering that will be managed by Morgan Stanley.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not Remote Jobs"}]

Uinta County Commissioner Mark Anderson told Thornock and his team that he’d been engaging with local residents for the past two weeks, and that he had a long list of questions from them. 

Chief among them was whether the 200 long-term jobs the data center projects it will have once operational will be actual jobs for people residing in Uinta County.

“Or will these be jobs created for somebody to sit and operate remotely?” Anderson asked.

The jobs will not be remote, Anderson was told, and the company is taking extra steps to try and hire as many people locally as possible.

“The way we’re going to do it here is that we’re first going to post all these jobs locally so that we can pull all the talent that’s here or people who are interested in getting a job there,” Thornock said. “And I can tell you what the wages are, because they’re kind of the same across the industry. 

"These 200 jobs range from $75,000 a year on the low end to about 150 on the high end. They’re good jobs … and these jobs will come with all the benefits. You’ll have bonus, you’ll have overtime, vacation, full healthcare, 401K — all the things that you want that I don’t have working for a startup.”

The data center will bring “a lot of advancement in the learning and the workforce,” Prometheus Head of Construction Ahmed Anwar said. 

“When you talk about direct construction, we’ll need electricians, we’ll need pipefitters, we’ll need ironworkers,” he said. “Pretty much any trade that supports an oil and gas field, any type of power plant project, those are the same types of trades that we’re looking for as we build data centers.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Minimizing Water Use"}]

In a state where ranching and water rights are existential issues, residents pressed hard on water use and power use. 

Thornock spent the most time addressing questions about those issues, explaining that his data center will use a closed-loop, liquid cooling system similar to the radiator of a car.

Unlike the radiator of car, the cooling loop for the data center will be filled with a propylene glycol water mixture referred to as PG25. 

Propylene glycol is an additive that’s been generally recognized as safe by the Food and Drug Administration for food, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. 

It has a variety of uses including as an anti-caking agent, as well as an emulsifier or stabilizer. It’s also useful as a humectant — absorbing and retaining moisture — which helps keep baked goods fresh and soft.

PG25 is good for around six years, after which it requires recharging. That will be done off-site by a chemical supplier, which will manage trucking the fluids in and out of Wyoming. 

The spent fluid will not be released into local well water. It will be drained and sealed into 1,000-gallon drums or containers and shipped off either for recycling or disposal in a Class VI well.

The only well water the site will use is for domestic uses such as employees washing their hands when they use the restroom.

The company also promised it would report daily water extraction from its wells on a portal, so that residents can track usage.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Staying Off Grid"}]

As far as energy, Prometheus is proposing a fully off-grid power strategy that will be built around on-site natural gas generation through the Kern River pipeline, which already loops through that area.

“Because we’re not connecting to the grid, there’s zero impact on your rates, because we are not connecting to Rocky Mountain Power,” he said. “The rules in Wyoming are such that we can consume our own electricity on site, and we’ll have to abide by all regulations.”

The type of power generation will be natural gas reciprocating engines, which Thornock said will use very little water. 

“We’re talking about, on a per engine basis, a couple of Yeti cups per day,” he said. “So it’s not significant. And when we get to the larger turbine generation, those will be cooled with dry coolers, similar to the data center, so there’s no water consumption there either.”

Thornock further committed to paying for municipal fire protection, road maintenance, and emergency service responses required by the facility, and said the company will be working with Target Hospitality to provide workforce housing to avoid affecting the local housing market.

Wyoming’s abundant gas resources and existing gathering systems, meanwhile, mean that production can increase with demand without dramatically spiking prices for that resource, while simultaneously supporting the state through severance taxes. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Why Data Centers Matter"}]

Swipe a credit card, and you’re interacting with a data center somewhere. Go to a gas station and use a preferred shopping card, and you’re interacting with a data center somewhere else.

“Our health care rules have been focused around the fact that all the records are in data centers,” Prometheus Hyperscale Head of Global Infrastructure James Faccone told the standing-room only crowd at Evanston’s Roundhouse on Tuesday. 

“So, as much as we think we might be trying to avoid data centers, they’re here to stay,” he said. "They are very much part of our life, and they bring us a lot of value.”

That frames the Evanston project as part of a broader shift in “critical infrastructure,” akin to things like hospitals, military installations, and other complex facilities that require operations, maintenance, and security personnel to run safely and reliably.

Inside these data centers, there are hundreds of computers sitting in rows on server racks, supported by intricate systems that require skilled jobs and long-term technical capabilities who both work and live in their host communities. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Overall Economic Impact"}]

An economic analysis commissioned from the University of Wyoming projects a $3.1 billion economic impact in Uinta County through 2032, with hundreds of permanent jobs and hundreds more indirect positions once the campus is fully built out.

Statewide, the economic impact for Wyoming is $184 million through 2029, Thornock said, with a $40 million impact to Uinta County over the same period.

Once operational, it will be good for $53 million annually to the state, largely from severance taxes on natural gas consumed on site, and roughly $13 million per year in county and sub-county impact, which includes property taxes. 

These revenue streams would help stabilize a county whose tax collections have been buffeted by swings in oil, gas and coal, Thornock said.  

The biggest beneficiary will be school districts, he added, followed by fire districts, roads, infrastructure, public safety and county government. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Continued Engagement"}]

With opposition to data centers rising across the Cowboy State, residents have voiced concern that Prometheus’ data center campuses are large enough to still put pressure on local water supplies and the regional power grid even with these efficiency measures in place.

Along with the Uinta County project, the company also is moving forward with a data center in Natrona County.

They’ve had a long list of growing questions from residents, ranging from what the campus will look like on the ground to how it might affect everything from housing and traffic to emergency services. 

Prometheus has promised to engage with those concerns directly through community benefit agreements and local-hiring priorities through a broader “Build Wyoming” message that pitches data centers as a tool to fight the state’s brain drain and keep more young people working at home.

Company officials have said construction is expected to begin on the Evanston data center within six to nine months, with an eye to starting operation sometime in 2027.

Tuesday’s informational meeting was the latest opportunity for residents to weigh those assurances, ask detailed questions about water and power use, and help shape how this ambitious AI campus, if built, fits into Uinta County’s future.

Evanston town hall 5 26 26

<title>Prometheus Faces Skeptical Crowd In Evanston Over Huge 1.2GW Data Center | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Fifth-generation Wyoming rancher Trenton Thornock pitched a huge 1.2 gigawatt data center on family land to a skeptical Evanston crowd on Tuesday. The project is facing a rising tide of opposition against data centers locally and across Wyoming.

Prometheus Faces Skeptical Crowd In Evanston Over Huge 1.2GW Data Center

Leah Veress

Outdoors

[{"type":"text","text":"“Leah, get up. The horses got out.”"}]

I burrowed my head deeper into my sleeping bag against the cold, feigning sleep. Outside my synthetic-filled cocoon, my tentmate was shuffling around, unzipping her sleeping bag.

In the distance, a creek was roaring, and horses were whinnying, and dull bells were ringing.

“You put the bells on the mares,” Matt, a contractor who grew up locally, explained to me the previous day. “They’re the trouble makers. If they get out, the rest will follow.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Like a queen bee, I had thought."}]

Suddenly, I was fully awake. Shit, the horses got out! Deep in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, dozens of miles from the nearest road, two days into a five-day trip, the horses and mules were our only way to pack out our camp.

I threw open my sleeping bag, pulled on my jeans, grabbed my headlamp and bear spray, and crawled out of the tent.

Despite the darkness, camp was alive with motion. Tent doors flew open, riding clothes were thrown over sleepwear, and saddles were slung on the remaining horses. I clicked my headlamp to the highest setting, blinking hard to adjust my eyes to the low light and shake the sleep from my mind.

Two horses and two mules came into view, tethered to trees by their lead ropes. That left eight animals missing. Lights scanned like spotlights as horses whinnied and the mules brayed, casting an eerie, wail-like sound into the darkness.

As Matt and Antonio, a seasonal outdoors worker, mounted their horses to track the escaped equestrians, the outfitter turned to me.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Stay here and watch the animals in case any trouble comes.”"}]

Suddenly, I was fully awake. The horses got out! Deep in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, dozens of miles from the nearest road, two days into a five-day trip, the horses and mules were our only way to pack out our camp.

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