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<title>Bonus Video: Thursday, May 30, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

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Mac Watson

Daily Video News

It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Wednesday, May 27th.  I’m Mac Watson.

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Fifth-generation Wyoming rancher Trenton Thornock pitched a huge 1.2 gigawatt data center on family land to a skeptical Evanston crowd on Tuesday. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that the project is facing a rising tide of opposition against data centers locally and across Wyoming.

“Prometheus Hyper Scale, unlike a lot of the other data centers, you know, they have made that public commitment to community engagement, and so what this meeting was all about was answering the public's questions here in Evanston, it was at times an emotional meeting, a little unruly at times. There were some people in the audience, who just yelled out questions whenever, who would challenge answers and basically say ‘You're lying!’ There was one person who accused Trenton Fornock of being a sellout because he lives in Texas right now. For the most part, though, it was a pretty civil meeting.”

Thornock says 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 impr oving the economy of his home state. Wyoming has struggled with outmigration of its youth, losing most of them by age 30 to other states. 

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

A fire tore through an under-construction apartment building in north Cheyenne on Tuesday. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that one witness says the burning was so intense, the building was “a total loss” in minutes.

“He said within 10, 15 to 20 minutes it went from just seeing some flames to pretty much being a total loss, and it had been collapsing on itself. While it was burning, they could hear explosions coming from inside the building. Being under construction, there's all kinds of tanks and things with whether you're welding or paint or anything like that. So, whatever they had in there, he said they could hear it popping off.”

The under construction building is in the Ridgeview Apartments located at 2025 E. Carlson St. just off Converse Avenue between Sam’s Club to the south and Storey Boulevard to the north.

State Rep. Mike Yin argued against a proposal by Chuck Gray to ban political party changes after Jan. 1st in election years. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports Yin wants to know why Gray is making it harder for people. Gray says it’s an election integrity issue.

“So, what the committee majority, not Mike Yin and not a few others, decided was they're going to ask staff to draft a bill that is going to ban party changes for like three quarters, nearly three quarters of an election year, and so they did that. So now staff is going to build that draft, and then at a later meeting of the committee, probably September, people can come and comment, and they'll decide at that point or later whether they want to adopt the bill, which would give it an edge going into the 2027 lawmaking session, if they do.”

The Legislature in 2023 passed a bill banning voters from switching parties between about mid-May and the primary election in mid-August of each election year. 

Two hikers on a multi-day excursion were helicoptered to safety by Teton County Search and Rescue after becoming ill on Monday. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that one rescuer says,  “It sounded like they weren't prepared to hit as much snow as they did in the high country.

“In this case, it wasn't a lack of experience or preparedness. The group knew that they were going to be encountering snow in high elevation on the Teton Crest Trail, and planned to be there for several days, but there was more snow than they anticipated, and they didn't find water to replenish their stores, because getting water off of smelting snow pack is not a bad way to work around carrying water on a trail like that, but in this case, there was a lot of snow, and not a lot of readily available water.

At one point, the hikers even tried to boil snow to get water, but the National Weather Service says that one inch of liquid water is equivalent to 12 inches of snow, and even though they tried, they just didn't have enough to hydrate all four of them.

I’ll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.

After losing both of her siblings to a male grizzly’s attack last spring and then splitting from her mother at an unusually tender age, the young grizzly named Miracle hadn’t been seen this spring. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that all changed when the bear showed up at Colter Bay on Sunday.

“That's almost the exact same spot she was seen almost in exactly a year earlier, and I talked to a bear biologist up in British Columbia, who, who said, yeah, that tracks, because, especially with female bears, they'll establish a range and they'll establish routes to get around, and the person who took the video said it really seemed like she was, she was coming from from one wooded area, trying to get to another wooded area, in other words, she wasn't interested in hanging out in Colter Bay. She was just making that her route through, and the biologist said, ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’” 

Wildlife photographer Marcela Herdova tells Cowboy State Daily that the 2.5-year-old Miracle appears to be in good health.

A Casper man who admitted being a serial arsonist and starting numerous fires got 6-12 years in prison Tuesday. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that Dallas Smith sought probation instead of prison time, but the judge wasn’t having it.

“He apologized for his actions, said that he knew that he caused some people some financial pain, and he had said in an affidavit that he had started the fires to get rid of the pain. So he asked the judge, and his defense attorney asked the judge if he could get probation and serve time at a place in Sheridan, and the judge was not going to go along with that. She said, "First degree arson, we're not going to do any probation with that.”

Natrona County District Court Judge Kerri Johnson sentenced Smith to the six to 12 years, and he was sentenced to time served 270 days for three other counts of arson that were part of the plea deal.

Wyoming biologists say a wolverine that had a rare close-range encounter with a hiker in the Wind River Range mountains is the same animal they’ve been tracking for more than a year. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that the animal has a huge range, being tracked over 200 square miles.

“That's typical for wolverine range, 200 or even more. They are wide-ranging animals. The running joke, or the way I put it is, even a lot of wolverines isn't a lot of wolverines, because they are very typical, very typically solitary animals that have gigantic ranges and just don't have much to do with each other, so they're, they're not, it's not like elk, they're very widely dispersed animals, so it makes sense.”

The wolverine that Zachary Shifrel photographed from 

 is a mature, 28-pound male, who was collared back in 2025, so say biologists Dean Clause and Rusty Kaiser.

Wyoming meteorologist Don Day is skeptical about a popular weather forecasting website’s prediction of a wetter-than-normal summer. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that Day says Wyoming is a huge state for this kind of forecast.

“The website Open Snow published their summer 2026 forecast in terms of temperature and rainfall, and they have above average or above normal rainfall for the entirety of Wyoming and portions of 12 other states. So I spoke with Cowboy State meteorologist Don Day about that. First off, he was skeptical because it's open snow. He said that they can be very ambitious with long-range weather modeling.”

Day tells Cowboy State Daily that Wyoming isn't a one size fits all state, so even if some places do see above normal precipitation for summer, that doesn't mean it's a blanket statement that's going to cover every spot in the Cowboy State.

And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on 

 - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our 

 channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

News image play 5 27 26

<title>Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Wednesday, May 27, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wednesday's headlines include:
* ‘Miracle’ Bear Is Alive And Well
* Tense Data Center Meeting In Evanston
* Cheyenne Apartment Fire Is ‘Total Loss’

Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Wednesday, May 27, 2026

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

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

Greg Johnson

Crime & Courts

Public Safety

CHEYENNE — The fire was so intense, Paul and Alexandra Trujillo said it felt like they were standing in front of a blazing campfire.

They were instead in Paul’s truck on Del Range Boulevard just behind Sam’s Club in north Cheyenne watching from the road as a huge apartment complex under construction burned Tuesday afternoon.

In the next 15-20 minutes, Paul and his daughter were mesmerized by the intensity and ferocity of a fire that consumed the building, a garage next to it and sparked a grass fire.

“We literally watched it from the beginning,” Paul told Cowboy State Daily. “It was 15-20 minutes from start to collapse. It spread to the garage in between the two buildings, and it also started a grass fire.

[{"type":"text","text":"“That whole area, just stay away.”"}]

Paul said the in-progress apartment building is in the Ridgeview Apartments located at 2025 E. Carlson St. just off Converse Avenue between Sam’s Club to the south and Storey Boulevard to the north.

While he saw a window open from the inside in the apartment building next to the one that burned, Paul wasn’t sure if it was finished and occupied yet.

What he was sure about is that the fire burned incredibly fast and incredibly hot.

“Oh my gosh, we were back by Sam’s Club and you could feel the heat like you were standing in front of a campfire,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Window Opens"}]

“I was worried, because there are two sets of apartments there that they’re building,” Paul added. “We did see a window open, and when you see a window opening and that fire’s going on, I was worried somebody might be in there.”

He didn’t see anyone come out, “But we did hear some explosions coming from the building,” Paul said. “And the first thing we saw was the (construction) crews running around with their yellow vests on.”

Paul said he and Alexandra watched as firefighting crews started to arrive and search for fire hydrants to hook up to. But from what he saw, he didn’t observe any hydrants and watched as they fought with water from a ladder truck and a couple of pumper trucks.

Because the fire had spread so quickly throughout the unfinished building, it appeared firefighters were concentrating on nearby structures to keep the fire from spreading, Paul said.

“They were just trying to keep the fire from spreading, because that building was a total loss,” he said. “They were putting water on the other unit, and the garage, but the garage burned anyway.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I couldn’t believe how fast it spread.”"}]

Along with a heavy response from Cheyenne Fire Rescue and other agencies, the Tuesday afternoon fire also wreaked havoc with traffic in Wyoming’s capital city.

Cheyenne police and Laramie County Sheriff’s Office deputies directed traffic away from the area of the fire response, which also is one of the busiest sections of the city. That caused massive traffic backups around the Frontier Mall south to Pershing Boulevard.

“Road closures are in place … please avoid the area while crews work to contain the fire,” the Cheyenne Police Department in advised a statement about the response. The agency later added that the roads had reopened.

The firefighting effort was still ongoing at the time this story was published.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information is available.

Cheyenne fire 5 26 26

<title>"Total Loss": Witness Says Fire Ripped Through Cheyenne Apartment Building In Minutes | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A fire tore through an under-construction apartment in north Cheyenne on Tuesday, burning so hot and intense it was “a total loss” in minutes, a witness said. “You could feel the heat like you were standing in front of a campfire,” he said.

"Total Loss": Witness Says Fire Ripped Through Cheyenne Apartment Building In Minutes

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.”"}]

Two days earlier, our posse of five mules, seven horses, an outfitter, two contractors, a nurse, an outdoorsman, and a reporter embarked on an extended weekend pack trip.

New to horseback riding, having taken a multi-year hiatus from the backcountry, and largely unfamiliar with my companions, I was immediately overwhelmed with a deep appreciation for their company, keen to learn as much as I could.

Most members of the group had worked for the outfitter at one point, spending a summer taking dude rides or a fall guiding hunts in the Absaroka-Beartooth. Cumulatively, they had more than a century of experience. With no dudes on this particular trip, they were afforded a unique opportunity to let loose, exchanging banter and stories freely.

Food packed into Yeti coolers and Milwaukee Packouts, tents and personal items loaded onto mules, horses saddled, bridled, and ready to go, we set out on the 20-mile ride into camp around 11 a.m., three hours after our target departure time.

“I hope you all brought headlamps,” Hazel, a life-long outdoorswoman and practicing nurse, joked.

As the miles wore on, I got to know Cherokee, the 10-year-old paint I was riding.

The cadence of her stride set the pace of my day. As we passed lakes and paralleled streams, the reflection of the sunlight glimmered with every step she took.

I watched as her ears twitched and tail swooshed, shooing away early-season mosquitoes. I noticed the way her sides flared out as we rode up ridges, and the snorts she released to clear the dry, dusty air from her nostrils.

I sneezed in tandem. I learned to anticipate the way she leapt over streams, favoring dry land for the muddy trail most of the other animals trudged through.

As we rode in, the outfitter narrated, sharing personal and historical anecdotes about the route. He had been riding in these mountains twice as long as I had been alive. His stories chronicled the time Teddy Roosevelt spent in the wilderness, the history of resource extraction in the area, and childhood stories that echoed with the ring of universal human experience.

He led a string of five mules with one hand, and the reins of his paint gelding Cabaret and a Coors Banquet in the other. Every time the string would stall, he’d kick up Cabaret.

“I’m not even upset about the mules stopping,” he said. “I’m just pissed it’s spilling my beer.”

Packed in the panniers were three boxes of wine, and two 30-packs of Coors.

Matt rode ahead of the group, scouting the path where the trail fell out. When my borrowed Stetson hat blew off my head for the umpteenth time, and I started rolling my saddle getting back on after retrieving it, he looped back, ensuring everything was OK. He rode this way the whole trip, scouting and keeping everyone together, offering me horsemanship tips over the five days.

By the time we arrived at camp, nestled between a mountain ridge and a swollen creek, the sun had started to descend, and the air temperature fell.

As we dismounted and started to untack the stock, the outfitter walked over to me, his back bent permanently 10 degrees forward from a lifetime of riding, and showed me how to take off the bridal, the cinch, and the breast collar, hands on autopilot from decades of repetition.

“Always unbuckle from the left,” he said, looping and tying the cinch strap like a necktie. “And put your saddle blanket upside down on top of the saddle so it can air out.”

I nodded, making mental notes I later translated to my journal. In this same way, I learned how to tie the quick-release knot necessary to tether her lead rope to a tree (always at neck height or higher), and how to bridle and saddle Cherokee.

Any time I faltered, someone was there to help, offering demonstrations and heuristics.

Once the horses were brushed, untacked, and put to pasture behind an electric fence, camp was erected, illuminated by our headlamps.

Orange, yellow, and green tents stood in the conifer forest like presents under a Christmas tree, packed close enough together to provide perceived protection in grizzly country, but spread apart far enough to create a semblance of privacy.

By the time I crawled into my sleeping bag, the day had stretched over 18 hours. Stomach full of chili reheated over a camp fire, legs and back sore from riding, and my heart happy to be in the backcountry with good company, I drifted off to sleep.

Over the next three days, we cooked all of our meals over an open fire: Corn, potatoes, steak, eggs, hot dogs, pasta, Jiffy Pop. Blue and white enamel cookware was charred black by the soot and washed with murky water retrieved from the creek.

By day three, we had built a second ring. One for talking around, one for cooking over.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Less pressure on the chefs,” the outfitter said."}]

Stumps, cut from felled trees with hatchets, rocks, and a single REI pop-up chair surrounded the talking ring, each a chamber for smoke roulette.

As conversation drifted from shared memories to political beliefs and everything in between, laughter permeated the air, infectious and heavy. Hours passed this way, with the campfire burning steadily, fueled by a seemingly never-ending pile of deadfall, blanketing our dust-covered clothes in a comforting aroma of smoke.

As the week lumbered on, we trekked to nearby lakes, waterfalls, and ridgelines, riding single file, weaving through the landscape like a condensed centipede.

With no cell service and limited charging opportunities, our phones transformed from universal tools into cameras and jukeboxes. Temporarily entirely relieved of the worries and responsibilities a tower connection carried, I contentedly diverted my attention to the people, animals, and space immediately around me.

As we explored the mountains, valleys, meadows, and waterways, I found myself overwhelmed by gratitude. Gratitude for the head on my shoulders and the earth beneath my feet. Gratitude for the people around me, their humor, banter, and willingness to share their wilderness experience and expertise with me.

On day three, we rode to an alpine lake, dipping into willow-blanketed meadows full of bear claw-marked trees, before climbing to snow-covered lodgepole stands. For lunch, we ate sandwiches: PB&J, bologna, turkey, Velveeta, and drank filtered river water.

I watched as Larry, who had moved to Montana from New Hampshire a decade ago and never looked back, and the outfitter fished for cutthroat, one brandishing a spin rod and the other a fly rod.

“I’ve caught eight,” Larry touted, less than a minute after hitting the water.

“That’s OK, pal,” the outfitter called back, holding his spin rod. “One of these days we’ll teach you to count.”

As they fished, Hazel and Antonio read, lazily sprawling out on dried grass.

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.

Bonus Video: Thursday, May 30, 2024

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