The Coyote and the Rattlesnake, Reflections on the West

Our summer in Yellowstone has come to an end.  Yesterday morning, we packed up the van and said goodbye. Goodbye to Geysers & Grizzlies, to lumbering Bison, to mighty Elk. To the Absaroka & Teton Mountains, the Yellowstone river, and the lush greens of Hayden and Lamar valleys. Goodbye to Lake Yellowstone, to living in a Caldera and atop the largest magma chamber on the Earth. And to all the people who shared this amazing summer with us.

As we drove away, I reflected upon the past three summers we have spent in the West. First in the desert of West Texas, then the mountains of the Sierra-Nevada, and finally this summer in Wyoming and Montana. It was never our plan to go out "West" each summer, and yet each year inexorably, we arrived on it's doorstep. Bags packed, and camera ready. Drawn there by some unknown force.

A recent visit to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in nearby Cody, Wyoming confirmed that we weren't the only ones affected by this "lure" West in the last few centuries.

As you enter the hall devoted to the life of William F. Cody (AKA "Buffalo Bill"), a quote on the wall reads:

"(I am) Going back west of the Mississippi and spending my pile out there in the country which an American statesman once said was fit only for the coyote and the rattlesnake.  That's my home country and that's the place I love. Do I want to go back there? You bet your life I do."
                                                                                                                           William F. Cody

I thought it would be fitting to share some photos from the museum celebrating the
west, as we drive away from yet another summer in this glorious land. These are some of the paintings, photos and sculptures that "spoke to me" during my visit.  I hope you enjoy them as well.



Buffalo Head (Good Morning), ca. 1905
A.D.M. Cooper, Oil on Canvas

Elk, n.d.
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
Oil on Paper

Morning Glory Pool (1987)
M.C. Paulsen, Oil on Canvas

Lower Falls of the Yellowstone (2006), Oil on Canvas
Kathy Wipfler (b. 1955)

Ropers (2013), acrylic on canvas
John Hull (b.1952)

And So, Unemotionally, There Began One of the Wildest
 and Strangest Journeys Ever Made in Any Land (1923), Oil on canvas
W.H.D. Koerner (1878-1938)
 

Silver Tip Grizzly Bear-- Rocky Mountains, Alberta, ca 1923, Oil on canvas
Carl Rungius (1869-1959)

Tumbleweeds (1999), oil on canvas
Clyde Aspevig (b. 1951)
 

Galisteo Junction, (2010, oil on panel)
Woody Gwyn (b.1944)

Testing the Air (1997), bronze
T.D. Kelsey (b.1946)

A Contemporary Sioux Indian, 1978, oil on panel
James Bama (b.1926)
 

Buffalo Bill, n.d., wood, pigment and earthenware
Peter Vandenberge (b.1935)

Sacagawea
By Harry Jackson

 

Giddy-yap!