As I headed towards the nowhere town of Dubois (say it like cowboys), the sloping hills of eastern Wyoming sprawled around me. Initially, they were exciting. They affirmed the adventure ahead.
I’d been driving through them for a few hours, though. Now they seemed endless and desolate as the gas stations became fewer and dusk colored the horizon.
It was my first time driving cross-country alone. As exciting as it was, it was also intimidating. Every joker at every gas station was a potential creeper. Every desolate stretch of highway that lacked reception was a place to break down.
It was mid May, but in Wyoming, that doesn’t keep ice from falling from the sky and bouncing on your windshield. It contrasted with the sunny, green east from which I came.
I tried to remind myself of all of the wool, down, and waterproof layers I had stuffed in my backpack, but worries about my preparedness still crept into my mind.
Silly Southerner. You don’t belong out here. You’re going to freeze, get hypothermia, fail as a field instructor, get sent home, and resort to rereading Lord of the Rings and learning to knit all summer.
“Yeah, I was going to spend the summer working at this camp in Wyoming,” I’ll say, “But I didn’t pack enough layers. I froze and almost lost my hands, they sent me home…”
“But hey, I just read about Tom Bombadil and his sweet yellow boots. He’s not in the LOTR movies, just the books, also, look at this scarf that I’m turning into a dishcloth…”
I’m not sure why I turn into a nerdy grandmother in my paranoid, over-the-top dialogues. And it’s not that I don’t adore Lord of the Rings, or that I hate the idea of learning how to knit.
But I felt that this new job and this unfamiliar place were a part of my becoming, a rite of passage into my 20’s.
There’s nothing like being responsible for a group of 6 wonderful, wild, and struggling kids, living with them in a tent for 18 days at a time, and leading them on adventures in the Wyoming wilderness.
It was a hard job. I didn’t do it perfectly. My time was not my own, and there were always the kids who were sent there against their will. They sometimes channeled their struggles into spitting on me, threatening to throw me off a cliff, throwing rocks, fighting one another, and attempting to run away into the Shoshone National Forest. There was a night of sleeping on the ground next to a kid who threatened suicide. There was a kid who begged for Swedish fish for three hours straight. Let’s not forget the 18-year-old I had to routinely follow to the bathroom to make sure he’d washed his hands, the kids that screamed at each other because they couldn’t agree on what type of cheese to pack for the camping trip, or the girls that stayed up till 2 a.m. hissing foul words at one another.
There were the times I had to go cry behind a bush so my campers wouldn’t see that they’d broken me a little, before I’d fully grown the thick skin and the eyes to see that like most everything in life, it wasn’t about me. It all came from a place of hurt.
It was also one of the more rewarding experiences of my life, with games and laughter, weirdness and wildness, love and care, and rambunctiousness of the purest form. There were ropes and rocks, horses and mountain trails, marshmallows and fires, canoes and lake swims. There was doing the Makerana, building forts from sticks and logs, throwing hatchets, and doing Mad Libs.
There was the girl that made me a bracelet, who cried when she had to go home and begged for me to be there for her next season. There were the boys who jumped into the freezing lake with me, the same ones who got so excited about learning to start fires with twigs and sap. There was the time a camper helped me write a song, and there were dance parties under the pavilion. There were camping trips to Yellowstone, the Tetons, and Sinks Canyon, horsepacking trips up Whiskey Mountain, and I’ll never forget my coworkers who became my dear friends.
I fell in love with the wildness of Wyoming, with its endless evergreens and sprawling mountains. It was a summer that grew me in so many ways.
The kids I was there for also stole my heart. They make it easy to give your all to them. Watching them grow is a blessing, and you forget that you haven’t showered in a couple of weeks.
Even as I drove towards Dubois with all of my self-doubt, I knew I had to do it. So I swallowed the worries and stared at the mountainous horizon.
I drove for a few more hours, eyeing my gps every so often. I’d been on this two-lane highway for some time. The gps said I had 72 miles till I exited.
Time passed. The desolation grew. Every so often I’d pass another car, but the traffic had lessened. I hadn’t seen a gas station, much less a building, in quite some time. The only signs of life were the cows in distant fields. I’d lost reception a while ago, so I’d turned from Spotify to a fuzzy oldies station that somehow found its way through the nothingness.
Something wasn’t right.
I looked at my phone, eying the downloaded route. Still, 72 miles.
What? I eyed the screen to see that the icon that represented my Subaru wasn’t moving forward, even though I was going full speed ahead. It was just frozen.
I tried to refresh it. The screen went grey. “Take a left,” said the robot lady. Worry filled my chest. The left she’d told me to take was a dirt path that seemed to go into the hills.
Surely this isn’t it?
I turned off, stupidly wondering if the directions would be made clearer, bouncing to the rhythm of the potholes as my stomach churned with nervousness.
No. This is so stupid.
Oddly enough, the radio lost its static. Super Freak by Rick James came through as the hills got bigger. A black heifer strolled in front of my car, giving me a judgemental stare as though to ask, “Girl, whatchu doin’ out here?”
Rick James started singing.
That girl is pretty wild now.
The girl's a super freak.
I stopped the car in wake of the cow and busted out laughing.
I hated to admit it. “I am so lost,” I said aloud, to myself and God.
Of course. My first solo trip and I get lost in the middle of nowhere. Made sense. Sounded like something I’d do. I couldn’t help but sit there and laugh at myself for a few minutes as I waited for the cow to move.
We just stared at each other, the cow and I. I finally honked and she reluctantly strolled away, as if rolling her eyes.
“What do I even do now?” I asked God. I felt this assurance of His presence and the warmth of my own laughter, but I also felt a knot in my chest as I saw the sun inching towards dusk.
I fiddled with the gps. I thought the route to Dubois had been downloaded, but it was useless as the screen remained blank.
Great.
I could keep going west, but I had no idea where it would lead. For all I knew, I had passed the exit. I figured the best option would be to backtrack. I had no idea where the exit was, but at least the nearest town of Rawlins was a few hours east.
Either way, the sun was setting. I didn’t love traveling in the middle of nowhere in the dark. It didn’t help that I had no idea where I was.
“It would be really cool if I get some directions from someone,” I said to God as I got back on the highway. There were no cars in sight. I saw a deserted rest stop. I stopped, looking for someone or something that might give me a clue, but the windows of the building were black and the door was locked.
I kept going. I didn’t feel panicked anymore as I accepted the possibility of parking on the side of the road for the evening, or driving the long way back to Rawlins.
It was nearly dark when I saw the next rest stop. There was an RV parked in the lot. I pulled in a few feet away from it. Should I ask them where I am? They were the only people I’d seen in a while.
Maybe they weren’t creepers? I looked through to see an old man in a baseball cap in the front seat. A pretty grey-haired lady sat beside him. They reminded me of my grandparents who go on adventures with their pull-behind. That felt assuring.
I grabbed my atlas and walked towards their door. The man looked at me, puzzled, as he rolled the window down. “Can I help you, miss?”
“Yes, sir. I am very lost. Can you show me where I am on my atlas?”
He chuckled like my grandpa would. “Yeah. Where are you headed?”
“Dubois.” He laughed at me. “Hmmmm. Dubois is hardly a town.”
“So I’ve heard.”
He explained where I was on Highway 287. I’d needed to get onto 26, but I’d missed that exit by about an hour or so. I was probably zoning out to a Gillian Welch song, I thought, rolling my eyes. He made a dot with his pen a couple inches away from the exit. “We’re about right here.” He explained that I needed to head towards Lander to get to Dubois.
“What’s a little girl like you doing out here by yourself?” asked his wife, sounding just like my grandma.
“I’m headed to my summer job. What are ya’ll doing out here?”
They were from Denver. They were heading to Riverton, WY to meet their grandchild.
“Aw! Well,” I said, feeling the need to hit the road. “Thank you so much. You two were an answer to my prayer.”
The road to Lander was long, stretching through more nothingness. I started to see snow on the ground and the road grew icy.
When I got to Lander, I knew I was about an hour from Dubois. Relief washed over me. It was the first time I was ever happy to see the golden arches of McDonald’s or the green and orange of a 7-Eleven. They reminded me that I wasn’t lost in the middle of nowhere. I stopped at a gas station to use the bathroom.
A pretty girl about my age was mopping the floor. “I like your cowgirl boots,” I told her. “Thank you!” she smiled. “Where you headed?” she asked me. “Dubois,” I said. She laughed. “Ronny, this girl’s going to Dubois!!!!” She hollered as though I’d said I was going to Atlantis.
Ronny, a large, dark haired fellow in western wear looked up from behind the counter. “Shoot. Haven’t heard anyone say they were going to Dubois in a while.” He explained that he was from there. “Not a whole lot going on there.”
“Well, I’m going to be going on there.” That made him laugh.
We kept talking, and I told them about getting lost. I felt thankful to tell someone, even a stranger. “Shoot,” said the girl. “Yeah, that’s not a great place to get lost.”
“Watch out on the way to Dubois, you might see some grizzlies along the road this time of year,” said Ronny as I headed out the door.
That’s when I knew I was headed to the right place.
So I thanked the Lord for 4-wheel drive, good gas mileage, Rick James, and grandmas and grandpas. I made it to Dubois in the middle of the night, and I had myself a summer.
