The Final Leg

Driving south from Jackson, Wyoming, I passed a herd of cattle coming down the highway toward me.  It’s one of the unexpected pleasures of backroad travel, which I’ll always do instead of interstates, whenever time allows.  It seems nowadays that getting there is not the goal it used to be. 

A poem by Lois P Jones

     (written today)

She eschews interstates
preferring instead

the slow gate of the back road. This time
a herd of cattle stops her jeep

and not just any heifers, these beauties
are as black as a Teton night, their muscled

bodies caught in a chiaroscuro of motion
and power. She says it’s not

about the end, but the distance. Not about
the tip of the peak but the sediments

“laid down in the lake long ago.” Forget
about those preplanned itineraries where

tourists line up like logs to catch the stream.
Take me to Death Canyon, she says

then bends at the edge of its precipice
into the maw of its name.

I came to Fossil Butte National Monument, a place of exquisitely preserved creatures with no admission cost.  Here, 52 million years ago, a lake full of fish and amphibians flourished in the Eocene sun, now seen in the Green River Formation.  “Here she goes again,” I hear you say, “Off on another geological rant, which she wants us to like.”  Yes you are right. 

Did you notice the white layer of rock above the red sandstone in the above picture?  Of course you did, and you want to know why I think it’s important.  Well, it’s 350 feet thick and represents the accumulations of sediments laid down in a lake long ago.  See, in the close-up, that the limestone is layered, not bulky as in other limestones I’ve shown you from other trips—the Mojave Desert, for example.  No, this limestone is layered and contains treasures.

See how it splits apart, reveals fish and frogs and creatures similar, but different, from animals we see alive and edible today.  Meat we eat is similar to meat they ate 52 million years ago. 

Here are just two of the hundreds of species of meals you could have had back then, except that no human existed then.  

With that in mind, and hungry for a fish dinner, I came to the town of Kemmerer, Wyoming.  There I found the first JC Penny store, the Mother Store, and figured I had seen enough very old things for one day.