Headed east to Brown Rock on two-lane Highway 20,
just off Interstate 25 in southeastern Wyoming, the wind
blows dust and tumbleweeds across the highway. The car
shakes.
It has been a wet year in Wyoming. Throughout the
state there's been a tinge of green where there's
usually gray and brown. Rain has been pouring for days
up north near Riverton. The Wind River is flooding, wearing
away firmly established chunks of land along its banks,
revealing long-buried fossils. Down in the south just
north of Cheyenne, there's wind as usual banging at windows,
shaking doors, wearing away the psyches of housewives
whose lives are governed by how strong the breezes that
blow across Wyoming.
My shoulder blades and neck tighten painfully under the weight of the two-hundred-mile
trip from the western part of the state where my daughter and I just spent a week. But the
journey has also given me time to think, to consider the big distance I've kept for 30 years
between me and Wyoming, the most sparsely populated U.S. state. That's where I grew up
on the cusp of the sexual revolution.
Papa helped turn me into an idealist. Mama instilled good common sense among other
things too numerous to mention.
The wide, open plains and high mountains of Wyoming shaped me into what folks here
call a rugged individual.
The divorce of Evelyn Duran Geislingen and Leonard Geislingen, my mother and father,
when I turned four forged the first craggy spots and created a large, empty space in my life.
Papa got into his pickup one day and drove away. I never saw him again until last year
when I knocked on his door and he opened it to me. I had not seen him for over 40 years.
He looked into my eyes and I looked back into his with the odd sensation that I was
standing in front of a mirror.
"Hello Katherine," he said as he reached out and pulled me to him.
"Papa," I cried as I leaned towards him.
Puzzled and perplexed, his mouth puffed out as if he was going to cry. His eyes carried
a type of sad wonder. When he stepped back and set those eyes in my direction, I felt like
he could see right through me. But maybe he was just trying to decide whether I carried any
of Mama in me.
He resembled the tin man from the Wizard of Oz only shorter and pudgier. He looked
like his bones might creak. As far as brains, I thought of the scarecrow, not for lack of
thought, but the slowness of movement that kept him from making the initial contact.
The deep brown eyes that looked into mine as I met him at the door that day stirred
some deep memories. My whole life began to unfold as he took my hand and led me into
the living room of his small two-bedroom tract house in Boise, Idaho.
As I drive along the highway to Brown Rock, I glance into the rear view mirror and see
the same red pickup that has followed me since I turned off the Interstate is still behind
me. A man in a cowboy hat and black glasses has eased his
pickup within two car lengths of mine and stayed put for the last few miles. I
particularly note the two guns on a rack on top of the pickup.
A streak of fear puts my mind on alert. I have always appreciated the tanned muscular
physiques of Wyoming's rugged male individualists. But I learned early that brawn mixed
with brute is not a safe combination. Wyoming is a man's state. Too many men here have
spent too much time doing masculine things like loading guns and killing deer. A lot of them
have never learned how to communicate with a woman. A woman alone is an open invitation
for some. I keep my eye on the cowboy hat and gun rack.
copyright 2002 by Margaret Benshoof-Holler.
