living a long way out

In Wyoming one of the deadly sins is leaving a closed gate open. If there's a closed gate in this wide-open place, it's closed for a reason. Another deadly sin is going for a walk without hunting orange on. Dun-coloured clothing is a death warrant in these racing deer-season hills.

Annie Proulx is a former Ucross resident. Some of her Wyoming stories were written here. I’m reading the Close Range collection and the other fiction writer resident is reading Bad Dirt. We discuss Annie’s character development and dialogue in hushed tones in The Depot hallway, in case she’s still lurking near, and then we skulk back to our computers. Hardly intimidating or emasculating at all, to write from a desk that maybe the prolific giant Annie Proulx sat at.

Other Ucross alumni: http://ucrossfoundation.org/alumni.html

To not write about cows is an increasingly futile endeavour. In a whole field of black cows, why is there one brown cow? Why is it that the one brown cow wears the bell? Whither the brown cow goes, all the other cows follow.

"When you live a long way out you make your own fun." Annie Proulx, "55 Miles to the Gas Pump," Close Range, NY: Scribner, 1999.
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