It’s high season again in Dubois. There’s almost too much going on: Museum Day, the art show, the Day of the Cowboy, the square dance, the rodeo. The town is packed with strangers, there’s lots of traffic, and the joint is jumping.
But the one event on nearly everyone’s mind is …
… the Lava Mountain fire. To fire officials, it’s another “incident”, which seems far too benign a word. Nearly 600 acres have burned so far, not far from all those ranches about 30 miles west of town, on the way to the pass. And there’s no end in sight.
It began with a lightning strike 4 days ago. The first flames were too remote to reach in that forest wilderness. It’s too dense and hot for firefighters on the ground to approach the epicenter, so they’re hitting the edges from the air, while the ground-based firefighters focus on protecting structures that might be in harm’s way.
We see helicopters every afternoon, trailing buckets of water on very long lines, and fixed-wing aircraft that circle and drop orange clouds of retardant. (Why wait until afternoon? Because that’s when the wind blows up and the fire starts to move again.)
There’s no rain in the forecast.
Here’s the camp they have set up in the town park for the firefighters. The experts have descended from Montana and other places.
I saw a truck for rodent control, and wondered why it was there among the emergency vehicles. Do they try to protect the ground squirrels as well? The poor ground squirrels …
Smoke has already been a feature of our lives for part of every summer. Even fires from Idaho and Oregon send yellow clouds our way and make our noses tickle. This year, it’s closer.
In New York City, people adjust their lives to avoid crime. In California, they worry about earthquakes. Many people in other places somehow going on living with the fact of war or terrorism. Here, amid beautiful historic forests, we have to expect wildfires. This is our reality.
What effect does this have on us?
Last year, we pulled a lot of weeds and laid gravel around the house. Yesterday, we ordered 2 air purifying machines on the Internet.
We’ll need to adjust our schedule to account for the smoke that hangs in the valley in early morning, clears in late morning, and billows again in mid-afternoon.
Among other inconveniences, the fire has ruled out some of my go-to hiking trails west of town. I’ve always hiked in late afternoon, when the air cools. I’ll have to rethink that.
Yesterday morning, I had errands in town (miles farther east, away from the fire). Afterwards, the dog and I set off for one of my other go-to hiking haunts: Behind the town dump.
I believe the plateau beyond the landfill has the most spectacular views in the area. Turn in any direction, and the view is fabulous. You feel you’re on top of the world.
Someone told me that somewhere Dubois has been granted the distinction of having the nation’s best road to the dump. The road beyond, although rutted, is even better. It leads on and on for many miles. I’ve been briefly lost up there.
Here you see my dog in the foreground with some long-dead nonhuman remains. The landfill is in the background, at center. (It’s not really visible in this picture, but that’s where I saw it when I took the shot.)
Way out beyond the landfill you can see teepee rings, evidence of people who lived there many centuries ago. They circles are hard to identify among all the other rocks lying around. It was years before I could persuade a friend to take me up there and point them out.
I found yet another promising trail behind the dump. It led over the knife-sharp top of a ridge, and sank promisingly into the folds of the badlands. I couldn’t spare time to follow it very far yesterday. (A tempting prospect for the future.)
The badlands are always fascinating to explore. I love to follow the draws to the top, and to rest in the shade in the overhangs.
How I wish there was a way to capture depth in these images! You can’t see how high I am, and how far we will clamber down someday to reach the bottom.
My route home took me right toward the location of the fire (though not anywhere near it). From the highway, you’d have no idea there was a raging conflagration somewhere out there, dead ahead. Just billowy summer clouds, and that beautiful valley. This was at 1:45 PM.
© Lois Wingerson, 2016
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They could, and they tried.
Is it any wonder that one float in last year’s July 4 parade bore the title “Dubois Rising”? The metaphor was obvious–rising from the ashes of the 
Matt Strauss, Guardian’s program director for flight and ground emergency services in Fremont County (where many calls require airlifting), said that services will be much easier and quicker when ambulance calls no longer bring volunteers away from home. Paid staff on call from a permanent base will be answering emergencies from the center of town.
Sometimes you just have to chuckle. An acquaintance from New York City this week cautioned me against opening our bedroom window at night because of the risk from all those white supremacists out in the West.
But it still is a small-town store, or as Steve’s business card puts it, “Your friendly home-town grocer.” To survive, he has to meet two challenges: Competition from the larger supermarkets down-county in Lander and Riverton, and what he called the “Tale of Two Cities” problem.
We used to take hour-long trips down county with our big cooler to buy produce in Riverton. No more.
How do you know it’s spring in Dubois?
t was also troubling, because they were within feet of the highway. I pulled off to the shoulder and tried to motion passing cars to slow down.
Last Thursday, heading toward town for a meeting, I was startled to see several calves wandering toward the highway near town, spilling out from a road that led into one of the fields. Slowing, I could see that the gate had been left ajar.
The other, considerably smaller, bird was attacking the eagles repeatedly in mid-flight. Eventually the eagles descended into the land beneath the grove. We wonder whether they found the hawk’s nest, or just gave up.
Well, that headline isn’t entirely true. Unlike some of the paintings on display, the three-man art show held last Sunday evening at a local church was not exactly invitation-only.
Antolik told me he was up on Union Pass quietly working beside this pond full of lily pads when the moose suddenly emerged with her calf.
One of his bows was on display last Sunday, along with several of his masterful paintings of native crafts. As part of learning to paint them, as you can see from the beaded bag in this picture, he also recreates them.
Recently, I had the unforgettable opportunity to help study some of the bighorn sheep and mule deer in the Dubois area, up close. It was an incredible experience!
The crew used a helicopter and net gun to catch the sheep. Once the sheep were caught in the net, two muggers (yes, that is what they are called!) jumped from the helicopter to blindfold and hobble the sheep. They also wrapped them in a sturdy tarp for transport to the exam area.
Most of the sheep were surprisingly calm throughout the process, especially considering that no tranquilizer was used.
The collars on the ewes allow the biologists to track them and their lambs throughout the year and to monitor their health as well as their migration patterns.
As I said nine days ago, Mother Nature messed with our heads on March 20, giving us a balmy First Day of Spring.
It’s spring break week, and down time in Dubois. The snowmobilers are gone. Many of the restaurants have closed for a few weeks. Even some hard-core full-timers have gone south, including fearless wilderness-loving Becki with her two children, off in search of the sun.
“This is such a pain,” I heard someone say behind me. “Those people [from WYDOT] are always so grouchy. They really don’t like coming all the way here from Riverton.”
I needed to run some errands “down county” in Riverton, about an hour away. It was almost balmy spring, and a different experience altogether from the wintry drive over the mountain pass to Jackson a few weeks ago.
I’ve met a few of these distant neighbors, but I don’t have any friends among them. “The Rez” feels like foreign territory, which I suppose it actually is.
The most prominent landmark on the drive is Crowheart Butte. You can see it in this picture, rising from the valley floor. I have no idea how the butte came to be on that flat plain, but nearly everyone here knows how it got its name.
My mother, who grew up in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, often lamented the travesty our ancestors had done to the Native Americans. But I was a child growing up in the Midwest when she raised me. I never saw a Native American (to my knowledge), or a reservation. Her words meant almost nothing to me then. I understood them, but I did not.
This avid outdoorsman has the best of both worlds. He spends his free time fishing, hiking, and hunting in Wyoming, in the Wind River Valley, but spends some of his working hours as a consultant to the Fish and Game Department for a different state–South Dakota.
“Dubois is one of those places,” as he put it, “where a consultant has all the quality access and communication links to the world through the Web needed to successfully compete in today’s markets, while providing an outstanding life space which stimulates those invaluable creative talents needed to excel in this line of work.”
Time to leave town. I have to head over the pass to catch a plane. (As they say in Brooklyn, you gotta do what you gotta do.)
No more. Today, the highway is smooth, fast, and (as you see from the pictures) well cared-for even in the winter. We’re going all the way over the Continental Divide here, above 10,000 feet and back down. Thanks in large part to the interests of the snowmobilers, it’s going to be an easy trip today.
and Oftedahl Construction. And thank heaven.