What a brave young woman to live by herself in the Wyoming wilderness! I wonder what circumstances brought about her solitary homemaking? This passage–a magazine interview–gives us a very small glimpse into what must have been a fascinating life.
A young woman in Wyoming writes: “This country is so different, so big, that the horizon alone seems to set the limit. I visited on one ranch that is fourteen miles from one end to the other. There are no green wooded hills here, but great rocky slopes and rushing water and great sandy flats with wonderful changing colors. . . . I do not think we miss the outside world as there is something about this country that, after a time, fills one’s whole thoughts and it is hard to remember that there is any other world than this.”
Do you not mind the deep changeless silence in those distant solitary places? “But there is no silence here,” she answers, “except on the high places of the mountain tops. Here there is always the roar of the river at the bottom of the canyon and the wind in the cedars all about me.”
But the Indians? Do you not fear that war-whoop? “It used to alarm me to meet an Indian out on the big flats, but I soon discovered that they will not even look at you as they pass.”
But how about rattlesnakes? In answer came this: “I never had any rattlesnakes in my bed, though I fancied I had one night. I got up, carefully lifted off the sheets, and found–the comfortable (an old-fashioned word for quilt) under me wrinkled up! There are not many rattlesnakes now–you see, we kill them.”
Are you not afraid to stay in your cabin alone on your lofty butte? “No, I do not believe that I am afraid. When I first came here the bigness of the hills frightened me, but now some of the best times I have are when I am walking over the hills and through the trees at night. I have a bull terrier and a collie that are always with me so I am not so much alone as it might seem. I have also a beautiful big Morgan saddle horse; I ride over the country alone and I have never been frightened.”
Reminds me of the Movie: Conagher.