Have you ever felt the Winds of Wyoming? Have you ever heard their song? Their melancholy cries. Their hushed, soft whispers. Have you ever felt the Winter zephyrs? Their vicious, stinging bites. Or the respite in the Summer season, as their gentle breezes, ease the harsh sunlight? The winds of my homeland are known far and wide.
I have felt the winds of Wyoming most every day of my life. I live on the hills of the prairie river valley that my ancestors once roamed through freely. In bison hide tipis they lived. Not bound to a single spot. Shifting forever like the gusts. And for thousands of years they weathered the storms of these lands. Different drafts. Different breezes. And yet, the very same wind that runs through my hair. The same flurries that kiss my cheeks. The Wind River Rez. That’s where I have lived. In my home. My old wooden shack on a hill. And apart from my dog, my very best friend, I have always lived here alone.
The night that it came, I awoke from the wails of the gusts and the gales. They pounded my doors and my shack. Though I tried desperately to return to my slumber, the persistent and raucous drafts denied me that pleasure. I laid there with an ire for the mistrals whose songs never ceased. Every night for the previous week I had been subjected to the noise. I was bitterly cold. When I awoke my toes were numb. The ancient, faulty wood stove that I used to heat my small cabin was no match for the torrential winds that broke through the cracks of my log walls. I pulled up my thick wool blanket, the last shield against the fury of the windstorm. The howls grew louder, and louder, and louder. As I looked through my windows, I saw the trees, their branches and leaves, ripped and fully torn off. They flew every which way. A particularly heavy limb was ripped from a cottonwood tree, and it shot directly through the windshield of my old trusty Ranger. Pierced clean through. I knew then that this was no simple windy night. It was a cyclone on its way directly to me.
Now I panicked. I picked up my jacket, and slipped on my slippers. I grabbed Old Washakie, my aged bloodhound, by his collar. His yapping barely sounded through the slapping of the tree branches shattering against my walls. We hid away in the only room in my cabin that could possibly shelter us. In my cramped bathroom we listened to the thralls. And no sooner as we entered, the cyclone went silent. A silence which deafened the air. At first I was still. Expecting the shrill wheezing gusts to fill my ears again. But only a faint ringing remained. My curiosity was claimed by the tranquility that hung all around me.
Hesitantly, I stepped outside, and outside again. My hound followed as I monitored the land around my cabin home. And that’s when I saw it; the great, white colossus, whose gaze now rested on me. As we locked eyes, every nerve in my body lit up. The dread then seeped into the recesses of my very soul. I tried to escape, but it caught me. I reacted too late to run back into my home. Its wickedly thin fingers completely encased me, and lifted me ever higher into the air. My canine growled and barked as the entity examined my weak, fragile carcass soon to be. As it stared at me, I studied it closely. The last thing I’d ever see. The titan stood tall as towers in the wide empty plain. Its pale, white skin was twisted and turned like the strands of a rope. It had protrusions that were black and blunt. And though they hung in the spot where tusks would be, they were an exact copy of the crowns worn by the prairie pronghorns. I looked down below its gaunt face at the similarly slender frame of its body. It wore a skirt of eagle feathers. Its great feet were actually the rough scaled claws of a hawk, with talons that measured the same size as my still grounded bloodhound.
It lurched down to grab him as well. He ran for the cabin, but he too was a prize to the thing. And then it extended its long white appendage, with both me and my dog in the palm. Surely to drop us and be done with it, I thought. I was so terrified and utterly dreadfilled that my body refused to react. I was frozen for so long until Washakie nudged me under the arm with his nose.
The colossus did not kill me. Instead, it showed me a vision. The view of the prairie at night. I witnessed the hills. I witnessed the river, her streams, and the trees along it. I saw the red clay cliffs of the badlands. The tufts of sagebrush, so wild and free. I saw it all together. Thousands of years, battered and weathered, by the winds of the great white beast. Now gentle plains hills rested, under the distant mountain crests. Snow capped peaks touched the heavens above. With an ocean of rolling earthen waves, locked in place, and breathtaking to behold.
Then the great, pale giant whistled a tune that carried over the grassland. It attracted herds of bison and pronghorn, and flocks of ravens, meadowlarks, and eagles. Families of coyotes and jackrabbits gathered at its feet. Calm. Without any violence. Without any disobedience. Even Washakie sat at attention in the entity’s palm. I crossed my legs and waited. For what I did not know.
Then the winds began to blow. They grew wilder and more powerful. The cyclone returned. It shifted and churned; everywhere but around the colossus, who kept us all safely in the eye of the storm. My shack wasn’t spared. The winds tore it bare. Its remains littered the land. The relentless, uncaring gales left only the bones behind. And then I was back down, touching the ground, and the entity walked in a line. To the East the great thing wandered. The creatures of the prairie dispersed. Washakie and I stood there, amazed and afraid of the entity that had pitied and spared us. I never again saw it, and doubt I ever will.
I know now what I didn’t before. The beauty of this home that I had long taken for granted. The home of my ancestors. And my home as well. I would rebuild. I would travel to the towns. I vowed to spread the message. And that dear reader is why I ask…
Have you ever felt the winds of Wyoming?
And if so…
Have you ever met their source?