"Karen and I are both
fiction writers. We had many adventures
together during our six weeks in Wyoming. All of them started out more-or-less true but due to our constant
editorializing a few were pure
fiction by
dinnertime. Every few
days we'd head for the
hills. Our goal:
to see what we could see. It helped that we didn't
know where we were going. We really had to look around: Do you
think this counts as a
road? This could totally be a
road. Are these tepee rings? If I had a tepee I'd put it right here. We noticed things: Two prairie hawks dipping and diving around the Coal Creek's dry bends, "Look, there's
bird us," Karen said. We tried to blend in. When in Wyoming... We learned to wave at passing
cars. Most
cars that passed were trucks. Once a pickup truck slowed up and a
high-cheeked man in a flat brimmed hat and a handlebar moustache leaned over his shotgun and shell case to ask us: "You
walking cause you
want to?" We were. But if we had been
broken down somewhere he would have been our saviour."
J. R. Carpenter, "Wyoming is
Haunted,"
Carte Blanche, Montreal, 2008.
