The moose and the buffalo of Wyoming
My wife and I have friends who own a second home in Jackson
Hole, Wyo.
Actually, they’re more like Marice’s friends, but we come as
a package deal so I’m included, whether they like it or not.
They’re great people, kind and generous, and we have a
standing invitation to visit them when they’re escaping the Texas heat in the
far north.
Marice has joined them in Wyoming several times in recent
years, including side trips to Yellowstone National Park. She always brings me
back a little gift to remind me of all the fun I missed, including these tree
ornaments of a moose and a buffalo.
She loves Wyoming, with its clear, mountain air, glorious
views and invigorating hiking trails. She always bugs me to tag along, but so
far, I’ve resisted the temptation.
For one thing, I’m a
nervous flyer, even in pre-COVID times. I’m a lot like a friend of mine, who
professes to believe that only his constant stream of prayers directed
heavenward keep aloft the airliners in which he’s a passenger. Don’t try to
engage in cabin conversations with this guy. He’s got more important things to
do that idle chitchat.
For another thing, I’m afraid I’ll like Wyoming a little
too much.
I’m a third-generation Texan, a proud descendant of hardy
souls who fled other parts of the country to seek opportunity and a good tan in
the state’s wide-open spaces.
Not until recent years have I contemplated a life outside
the state. But Texas has broken my heart of late for reasons I won’t go into
here. It’s the holiday season, after all.
When I worked for the Dallas Times Herald in the late
1970s, several senior editors came from Detroit. Whenever a son or daughter of
Texas did something silly or stupid or dangerously deranged, they gleefully declared:
“Now that’s a TEXAS story!” and immediately assigned a reporter to document it.
Sometimes that reporter was me.
At the time, their enthusiasm for the weird and grotesque
was only a minor irritation. I chalked it up to their Yankee prejudices and
general lack of knowledge about the wonders of my home state.
But as I’ve gotten older, the toxic antics of our state
leaders and the increasingly bellicose nature of human discourse in our state
has made me think perhaps it’s time for a change.
I’ll never leave, of course. For financial, family and other
reasons, I’m probably a Texas lifer.
Even if I decided to pull up my extensive Texas roots and
high-tail it somewhere else, Wyoming probably wouldn’t be my first choice.
It’s too much like Texas, only colder and with better scenery. Oh, yeah, and
bears.
But Marice sings its praises with gusto so I’m pretty sure
I’d like what I see – and add fuel to the fire of my disenchantment with home.
In the past when
Marice got the itch to head for the high country, I always used work as an
excuse to stay home. Now that I’m retired, I’ll probably relent and let her
drag me off to paradise.
When I do, I’ll be on the lookout for a buffalo like the one
depicted in the lower ornament shown here. It’s not surprising that buffaloes
are associated in the public mind with Wyoming. But the vast bison herds that roamed
that state and the rest of the western plains – until they were hunted almost
to extinction – ranged as far south as Texas.
At one point, there were only 300 bison left in America from
the tens of millions that existed before folks in the east discovered buffalo
hides made great winter coats.
That’s when legendary Texas cattleman Charlie Goodnight stepped
in. Prompted by his wife Mary, he saved the buffalo from disappearing
altogether by fiercely protecting the private herd he maintained on his
Panhandle ranch. Bulls produced from the breeding program he began with that herd
helped restock Yellowstone’s few survivors of the plains slaughter.
And that, folks, is a REAL Texas story.
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