When I lived in Wyoming, my job often required that I drive across its lonely expanse in winter, which lasted September through May in a mild year. I had lots of time to reflect, as there were miles and miles where the only broadcasts on the radio were the cattle report or cowboy poetry readings. It always amazed me looking across the frozen, high plains, with its predominant forty mile an hour wind creating horizontal snowfall, how the pioneers survived. I had all the modern conveniences and I was still miserable during the dark months.
Interstate 80, which is one of the main arteries of the United States, linking San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, travels across southern Wyoming. This 400 mile stretch is obviously the weak link in the entire 3,000 mile journey. Interstate 80 rises to an elevation of nearly 9,000 feet near Laramie, but the mean is around 5,000 feet. I say this because there are times each winter that huge portions of it are impassable due to whiteout conditions. Gates are closed and all traffic stops. Motorists have the option of returning to the nearest town (of which there are few) or remaining in their vehicle. I have seen miles of tractor trailers parked waiting for the interstate to reopen. Every spring thaw they find motorists that elected to remain in their vehicles. And I80 is a major superhighway; you don’t even want to know about county and secondary road conditions.
Wyoming weather is extreme and unpredictable. With that in mind, consider piloting a Conestoga wagon across the prairie not knowing when a beautiful autumn day was going to turn to a deadly blizzard. I would have been a horrible member of a wagon train. I think I would prefer freezing to death to climbing into a fresh buffalo carcass to keep warm. They were an amazingly hearty people, surviving disease, weather, bandits, and Indians that did not wish to be colonized. I am not a pioneer. In spite of nearly 30 days in the Boy Scouts, I have absolutely no survival skills. I cannot start a fire without an excellerant. I could not track an animal on the beach. Every knot I have ever tied came loose on its own. I am allergic to everything that grows or blows. If I go more than eight hours without eating I become a one-man Donner Party.
My microwave stopped working the other day and it created a crisis that made me temporarily forget about my disappearing 401K. A lost remote control in my home is cause for sending out a search party. Lost car keys require the formation of a posse. As a frontiersman, I would have been considered a tenderfoot. I am all right with that.
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