This morning I sat in a chair overlooking a little reservoir, holding a book in my hand, but not reading a single word. Listening to everything going on around me. A bald eagle suddenly swished right above me, so close that I could see it’s feathers bristling. Probably going after the fish that just jumped out of the water. In my chair I could hear cows, and horses, and swallows, and pelicans diving, and geese gathering their goslings. And of course the breeze always makes a certain sound in Wyoming. I breathed in the smell of sagebrush…..
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I’m what you call a social introvert.
Pretty decent in social situations, but cannot live without time to shut off, shut down and tune out. Totally. No phones. No nothing. I have to breathe and I have to venture beyond my comfort zone. I need time in the car to listen to music. I need to stop whenever the hell I want and eat whatever I want. And I’ve taught my son to be the same way. Though unplugging for him is harder… well because he’s 12.
And yes, if you know me, you probably also know that sometimes I’m hard to get a hold of. Mainly because my phone is off. Totally. And I’m pretty unapologetic for that side of my personality.
I’ve had a couple months of screen time. And scheduling conflicts and rain and baseball and summer chaos full of friends and family and food and noise. I needed the noise be turned down a decimal. So while my husband went fishing in other beautiful vistas, I took my Dino Dude to Saratoga. One of my favorite places on earth. I breathe there. I have the most fond childhood memories there. (I lived there for several years when I was a kid) and I always run into someone I know there.
I found an unusual place to stay on Airbnb…. A sheep wagon.
I’m an outdoorsy girl. I love this kind of stuff. I can definitely live without a toilet or running water. And I can be mom and do this too.
We ordered food from the car and picked it up in Laramie on the way over the pass. Saving dessert for later, so we could enjoy it with a view at Lake Marie, which was surrounded by more wild flowers than I have ever seen there. We went straight to the ice cream shop when we arrived in Saratoga, because we know that Lollipops has the best bubble gum ice cream out there, Instagram worthy, and I would drive 2 hours just for that. We swam in the pool that I grew up in. Though it’s changed and there isn’t any Def Leppard playing over loud speakers (pool people… there really needs to be music at pools….) the water is the most awesome pool color there is and it’s the warmest cold pool around. We played in the river in the warm spots that get crowded in the summertime. Dino dude trying to catch snakes, I tried to convince him not to. Then we headed to the wagon on the prairie.
It was awesome. Just what we needed. You have to drive slow to get to it, otherwise, hitting an antelope on the way there in going to make your trip problematic. You pass Old Baldy and pass a grove of cotton woods that you can only dream of on a summer day in a Country Time commercial and then there’s a there’s ranch. With a sheep wagon. Equipped with warm quilts, oil lamps, a fire and a view of the three mountains I remember as a child out my front window… and a cow dog that I’ve convinced lives there just to entertain you. We spent several hours of doing nothing. Which is easier for me than my son…. but again, he’s 12. We did nothing until it got to dark to have the candle lit and flashlight on. We cuddled in had the breeze put us to sleep.. which took longer for me as watching the stars come out, with the window to the wagon wide open was much more important than sleep.
Peace. Peace of my sleeping boy next to me. Peace of the stars. Peace of all the quiet noise. It’s just what I needed.
We rose early. Said goodbye to the wagon and headed to the warm river. Had our morning coffee and hot chocolate there. Calm and quiet before all the tourists showed up, and headed back over the mountains in the rain. I drove. He slept.
It was perfect.
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