August is a great time, in prescient words emailed to me recently by a reader, “To work the knots out of your rope.”
I really like that image.
He was responding to a column I wrote that ended with me gazing into the campfire, and realizing that a spike buck was gazing back at me from the edge of the woods.
“It's great to be back,” I wrote at the end of that column.
Back in the woods, working the knots out of the rope. Not TAKING the knots out of the rope. That would be way too easy.
We're talking about the tight, stubborn knots of modern life, previously intractable problems, head scratchers, cans of worms.
We're talking about finding the uninterrupted time, sitting beside a river, or looking down from some high point, or gazing into a campfire, to come to some logical conclusions about what's important, what isn't, what to do next, and maybe most important, what to quit worrying about.
Fellow columnist Bill Sniffin wrote recently about finding just the right rock, in his fabulous surroundings up in Lander, on which to sit for a spell, maybe take your hiking boots off, and watch the world go by, doing perfectly well without any interaction on your part at all.
It was part of an excellent column he wrote about getting out into the wilderness with his young son, years ago. And it reminded me of taking my son to Wyoming for the first time, just the two of us – no Mom, no big sister coming along.
He was so excited that he slept the night before fully clothed, even wearing his little hiking boots to bed. Still makes me smile.
There was no way he was going to miss our trip together. He was finally old enough to go. You can work a lot of knots out of your rope on trips like that, spending precious time together, deciding what's important, and creating memories that last a lifetime.
Back when I lived in Laramie, former University of Wyoming football coach Fred Akers was quoted in the Laramie Boomerang (my alma mater) that he did his best thinking “on the back of a tractor.”
Time for a busy coach to think. Put things into perspective. Make decisions. (Akers' tractor thinking would ultimately lead him to leave Wyoming and head to Texas, but a lot of coaches left Wyoming in those years. We were a stepping stone.)
I don't have a favorite rock on which to watch the world go by like Bill Sniffin, or a big tractor like Fred Akers had.
But way out back of our place, along a trail I cut through the prairie grass years ago, is an old bench, facing south, about a hundred yards from the main line of the Union Pacific Railroad. (An old friend who gave up drinking, looking for something to do in the evening, built the bench out of scrap lumber. Today it is the essence of “shabby chic,” and I love it.)
Twice each day, my dog Mitch and I head out to that bench, and watch 4,500-horsepower locomotives, sometimes as many as seven of them lined up at the head end of a single train, make their way up Archer Hill.
They're hauling our nation's freight – oil, coal, grain, new cars, lumber, and endless containers containing God knows what - facing the long stretches of emptiness in Nebraska to the east, or most of Wyoming to the west.
Great place to watch the world go by, in a country that sure appears to be thriving. Mile-long trains make the point that our country, despite all of it's problems, is still very much open for business.
Out beyond the railroad tracks is Interstate 80, the trans-continental highway, and years ago, on our annual trips to Wyoming, we drove right past the empty prairie land that would one day become our retirement home.
The trip west was full of eager anticipation. The trip back east to Illinois two weeks later, not so much.
Those annual trips worked wonders. Today, all three of those youngsters, adults now, live and work in Wyoming. (My daughter has lived in some of the great cities of the world – London, Durham, Gillette.)
Take some time this month to savor all that we have here in Wyoming, in what I think is the best month for savoring.
And if you've got any knots in your rope – and who doesn't? - now's the perfect time to work them out.
Dave Simpson can be reached at: DaveSimpson145@hotmail.com
