This photo os of a dirt road and mountains.

10 Signs It’s Spring in Wyoming 

Deep Map of Place

In Wyoming, spring can feel more like a series of allusions and suggestions than an actual season. March and April in particular seem to be uncertain if they belong to winter or are the start of something new. Thus, I always look for assurances that spring is here, even if the forecast calls for the imminent arrival of more snow:

1. Red-winged black birds: In March, the red-winged black birds begin calling from the trees, power poles, and fences at the barn where I keep my horse, Scout, which is in the Little Laramie River valley. I also hear them and sight them along the Laramie River where it winds through town. With a trilling whistle that sounds like “okalee” or “conk la ree,” these birds summon spring. https://youtu.be/hrgGTvzuA1I?si=Dx28kLfGA53i4L0Q 

2. Wearing Sandals in 45 Degree Weather: If the sun is out and the temperature rises about 40 degrees, we Wyomingites convince ourselves it is shorts-and-sandal weather, or at least sandal weather. Are my toes cold? Of course, but I can imagine the insinuation of warmth.

This photo is of a juniper tree in spring.

3. Summer is Already Booked: In a state where many of us love to be outdoors as much as possible, we also are forced to cram twelve months of warm-weather activities into about four. By mid-April (if not sooner), my email and text threads are full of inquiries and responses regarding summer plans, and my calendar reminds me that there just aren’t that many weekends in June, July, and August.

4. Whispers of Green: In our yard, the cinquefoil and flax are among the first plants to start showing a little green. It creeps up from under the gray-brown thatch of dead leaves left from fall, tiny shoots of new growth, and I have to search for it at first, bending low to the ground as if to hear a secret.

5. Wedding Invitations: Especially if you’re somewhere in the age-range of 25 to 35, or if your kids are, you can bet your mailbox will be full of wedding invitations this time of year (see #3.). Winter weddings in Wyoming are beautiful, but not as common as summer nuptials thanks to wind, bitter cold, and blizzards that close major roadways.  

This photo is of a meadowlark singing from a fence post.
Photo by Jeffrey Hamilton on Unsplash

6.  Meadowlarks: This year, I heard my first meadowlark on April 3rd. These yellow-bellied, brown-backed, fence-post and sagebrush perchers are my favorite bird, and their fluting, plaintive whistle reminds me of time spent on the Laramie Plains and in the Red Desert as well as of my father and grandfather, who also held a special affinity for their song. Though they’re the state bird of five other states (Montana, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Oregon), they will always call my heart to Wyoming in spring. https://youtu.be/fRgU4xS06sM?si=ewoeoRV1bebpe4ba 

7. Ill-Planned Excursions: Desperate for nicer weather and an opportunity to get out “into the hills” (as my father always put it), the first run of sunny, low-wind days always tempts me to go for a drive, hike, ride, or run into higher country, which usually ends when I encounter enough snow to force me to turn around. (I am learning though — when I was in my twenties, these adventures resulted in getting stuck more than once.)

8. The Horses Start Shedding:  I used to warn them that more snow was sure to come, but it turns out that shedding is triggered by longer daylight hours more than rising temperatures. There is something deeply satisfying about picking up a brush and combing loose hair off a horse’s neck until it begins to pile around your boots. Then, there’s the moment of placing your palm against a soft, sun-warmed, summer-sleek hide.

This photo is of a horse watching cattle.

9. Nocturnal Ranchers:  Once calving starts, the early-rising ranchers I know start monitoring heifers and cows around the clock. Spring is the season of renewal, and no one understands that better than those who live close to the land, whose days are shaped by its cycles. As wobbly-legged calves emerge into pastures and fields, the lowing of their mothers joins the medley of an awakening land.

10. Riparian Air: It comes unexpectedly, those first hints of water against warm stone, twining through growing things, carried on a warm breeze. Can you smell the color green? It is the scent of spring.

Picture of Red Desert, WY at sunset

Holding the Larger Shape: Writing & Rewriting with Help

Author Update

I sat at the dining room table with my seven-year-old son, helping him complete a worksheet on reading comprehension. His task was to answer questions about the plot and details of one of Arnold Lobel’s Frog & Toad stories. 

Thinking of those answers came easy to him — he has loved books and movies since he was tiny. Every night, he helps me make up a story about characters based on his stuffed animals and favorite literary and film heroes. The result is that he has a good sense of how stories work. He would read a question, mull it over, then tell me what he thought. 

Yet, writing those answers down was hard work. I watched him labor, sounding out the syllables, placing his finger between each word to space them just so, shaping the letters. He worked through mistakes and frustration, using his eraser often and looking to me with his mouth pinched when he couldn’t spell a word he felt he should know. 

My role was to simply to help him hold onto his previously formed ideas while he struggled through the steps of constructing each sentence. If he got lost between one word and the next, I would repeat back to him what he had already figured out, what he had spoken to me moments before. I could see the larger shape when he could not.

He finished the worksheet, took it back to school, and earned a sticker for putting in extra effort. He was satisfied, motivated to do more optional worksheets for the rest of the Frog & Toad adventures. In other words, he’s tucked away that experience and has moved on.

But I am lingering still, thinking about how difficult it can be to write even when we know the story we want to tell. How hard it is to find the right words, to marshal them into the correct order. How challenging it is to stick with it when we begin to forget why we started to begin with.

Which is why I decided to start working with a writing coach and developmental editor to help me finish the latest (and, hopefully, the last) revision of my novel. She is talented and smart and has a brilliant eye for story. She is helping me rediscover the big picture as I roll up my sleeves and begin the scene-by-scene and sentence-by-sentence work. 

Sometimes that is what we need most, someone else to sit at the table with us, to hold space for the ideas we can only find inside ourselves, to repeat them back to us when we get lost.

An Update and a Request:

  • Due to the demanding nature of the revision process for my novel, I have decided to start sending out my newsletter posts once a month instead of twice a month. I look forward to continuing to share my writing and my creative journey with you!
  • A friend of mine was recently in a major car wreck near Laramie. She was seriously injured and is recovering, but she will not be able to return to her work as a horse trainer for some time. If you would like to help her and her family out during this difficult time, please visit their GoFundMe page. Thank you for considering!
This is an image of a mountain stream.

Grief

Deep Map of Place

Grief is like a stone dropped into a slow autumn river. First, its entry, the splash, the circular ripples reverberating out and out and on. Then, the repose. Water moves around it, yields to its edges, creates new eddies, turns it now and again. It rests amongst other rocks, shifts in texture and even shape with passing currents and years, becomes part of the stream itself, bits of sifted silt refracting sunlight, settling to bedrock.

Picture of Red Desert, WY at sunset

A Dog with a Job: A Meditation on Jobs, Callings, and Passions

Author Update, Lessons from Animals

One of our dogs, Snips, is a border collie-corgi mix, or a borgi, and she is an exuberant soul. When she wags her stumpy tail, her entire body wiggles. She knows she is not supposed to jump up on people but sometimes cannot contain herself. She is eager to assist in any activity at any time — I work from home, and if I get up to get a drink of water, she usually hops up from her pad and follows me into the kitchen to see if she can be involved. She loves our older dog, loves our cat, loves my husband, loves my son, loves me. 

But she probably loves playing fetch more than anything. Every morning, one of us throws the ball for her for about fifteen minutes, and we repeat the routine each evening before dinner. She is always eager to get started, staring from us to the back door until we put on our coats and go outside.

Once we get out the ball, she becomes so immersed she ignores everything else, even our neighbors’ dogs coming to the fence to say “hello.” She is built for this game, too. Though she is long-bodied and short-legged, she is muscular and athletic and boasts quick bursts of speed of which her quarter horse friends would be envious. She often catches the ball mid stride or with spectacular air-borne leaps.

Maybe saying that she “loves” fetch isn’t quite right. A friend of mine once described working dogs like border collies, Australian shepherds, and blue heelers as “dogs that need a job.” Snips definitely fits this bill, and since we live in town and don’t have a herd of cattle in our backyard, we started playing fetch with her as a way to fill the gap.

Watching her, I’ve begun to wonder if it is more than a job. One might use the term “obsession.” Even after an eight-hour-day of hiking during backpacking trips, she’s game — she hunts up sticks and tosses them at as us the minute we take of her pack and continues to do so until we acquiesce. She only really rests after it gets too dark to play, and then only if she has gotten in a solid fetch-session. 

Fetch is the thing that fulfills her like nothing else. Though I risk anthropomorphizing her (more than I already have) by doing so, I think of it as her calling.  Would it be if she had the opportunity to work cattle as she’s bred to do? I’m not sure. But I believe dogs know love and joy, and I believe I see it in her face every time she plops down, panting and grinning, after playing fetch.

I’ve been meditating on passions and callings and jobs of late as I continue to reestablish and reimagine routines that were disrupted when my father died and then during the holidays. I’ve been thinking about how I actually spend my time and how I want to spend it. I am learning from watching Snips play fetch. I wouldn’t enjoy running wind-sprints after a ball in the backyard (though, man, I’d be in great shape if I did), nor would I be fulfilled by doing so. But I am realizing that I am lucky that, like Snips, I know what my calling is. 

I think each of us has something like this, something that draws us. We can’t borrow it from someone else but must find it for ourselves. Even once we do, we then have to insist, as Snips does by trotting to the door every day, that we get to do it regularly. 

This is where I fall short too often — I feel the pull to write, the need to, and I know that if I do, I will feel the same satisfaction Snips does after fetch. But it is easy to think I don’t have time. Unlike my dog, I tell myself, I have to deal with “real life.” She doesn’t have to answer emails, run errands, or file taxes. 

Then I remind myself that Snips only asks for one or two fifteen minute sessions of fetch each day, that fifteen minutes is enough. That, like Snips with a ball, once I get started writing, I don’t want to stop.

This image shows a borgi dog focused on playing fetch.
This image shows a woman backpacking with her dog.
This image shows a boy playing fetch with his dog .

Woodstove: A Poem

Deep Map of Place

Perhaps a meditation on past and present,
the grain of rounds leading to the stroke
that splits them clean. Is tracing the knots
and whorls like reading
a fortune of how they come
apart and how they cleave together?

Or perhaps a meditation on form
and function, the swing of the maul
both power and grace. You feel it,
rising and falling like your breath
in the cold, the slide of sinew and muscle
under your coat, the wood warming already your skin.

Or a meditation on enough and plenty,
on stocking and stoking the rack,
on tending a house until a sense of home
fills the air. The radiance of flame, different
than the blow of a furnace, releases all
the years of growth, like branches reaching skyward.

And how that means generations,
your father’s swing and motion now your own,
becoming our son’s as he carries
an armload inside and helps me lay the fire.
Which is all to say, a woodstove and its heat are simply
beauty in the end, and love.

I initially wrote this poem as a Father’s Day gift for my husband, Rob, and he later had a version of it tattooed on his leg along with an image of the log cabin in which he grew up. Todd O’Hare of Rolling Tattoo in Laramie did the ink. His work is fabulous (and I would know – he’s done about ten tattoos for Rob and one for me, so I get to enjoy his art every day.) Check him out here: https://www.rollingtattoo.com/todd-ohare.

The Correct Lead: Meditations on a New Year

Author Update, Lessons from Animals

One of my favorite “people” is actually my horse, Scout. She is an eight-year-old buckskin, Quarter Horse mare. My dear friend, M., gave her to me as a gift when she was a yearling, right after my beloved gelding, Tucker, died. With lots of guidance from M., I started Scout myself, and I’ve done all of her training since. She is a gentle, generous horse, and she has never bucked and rarely spooks unless a duck flies out from under a bridge. (She is not a fan of birds in general.) We’ve done a fair amount of trail riding around Laramie, Riverton, and Lander, and in the winter, we are lucky to have access to an indoor arena at the barn where I board her. I’ve learned a lot over the last seven years with Scout, most certainly more than she has learned from me. 

When you start and train a horse yourself, you see your own strengths and limitations mirrored back to you every time you handle them. As many a trainer will tell you, horses don’t lie. So, I am proud that Scout stands quietly while being saddled, takes the bit willingly, and is more likely to walk up to a flapping tarp to inspect it than she is to shy away from it. On the other hand, she grows anxious and tense when I ask for a lope in the arena.

She’s heavily “left” handed, meaning she prefers to pick up her left lead any time she lopes. When a horse lopes, their legs on one side will stretch farther forward than on the other, determining the “lead.” When you ride a circle, being on the “correct” lead means the inside front and back leg are the ones leading. If you’re riding down the road and decide to lope for a bit, it doesn’t really matter what lead the horse picks up, but if you’re riding in a circle, being on the wrong one makes the horse less balanced and the ride far rougher. In show competitions, riders are penalized if their horse is on the wrong lead. It is usually easier for a horse to pick up the inside lead, but they don’t always do so.

Scout likes to be on the left lead, even if I’m not riding her and she’s going to the right in the round pen. We’ve worked on this issue for a long time, and I’m afraid the result is that I get too heavy in my hands and overly strong with my legs when I ask her to lope — I pick up on my inside rein too much, cue her too hard with my outside leg, and if she picks up the wrong lead, I’m too fast to gather my reins and slow her down. The result is that she throws herself into a fast lope rather than picking up an easy one. She’s nervous, anticipating the tug at her mouth and the touch of my spur. 

On the other hand, if I am patient, if I am gentle with my cues, if I give her time to settle into the lope and find her own cadence, she calms and softens. As we practice lead departures in this relaxed, easy manner, she begins to gain confidence, and we both build the muscle memory and trust needed to move forward into more advanced maneuvers. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lesson from Scout as we enter the new year, with all of the associated pressures to set goals, be productive, and generally improve in all areas of our lives. The most obvious resolution for me is to double-down on my writing, especially after setting aside the revisions of my novel following my father’s death, during the holidays, and while I’m teaching a four-week winter break class at the University of Wyoming. But instead of setting ambitious deadlines and hard targets for word counts and hours spent at my desk, I’m trying to give myself the time and space to listen to characters and the story, to let the novel lead me into the rhythm it requires to move forward. So, perhaps this is my goal for 2024, to be softer and far more patient as I decide what patterns, habits, and aspirations I want to foster. Scout will let me know if I’m getting off track. After all, horses don’t lie.

Picture of Red Desert, WY at sunset

Honoring My Father

Author Update

The last month has been a hard one for my family — my father, Ken Stebner, passed away on November 10th. I am trying to learn the lessons grief has to teach me, but my creative energy has taken a big hit. To honor my father, I want to share with you his obituary, which my brother, Dan, and I wrote together.

Kenneth Edward Stebner, 1944-2023

Kenneth (Ken) Edward Stebner, 79, of Rawlins passed away on November 10th, 2023 in Laramie. Ken was born in Laramie on April 5th, 1944 to Charlie and Mary Stebner. He led a life defined by deep connection to family, enduring friendships, and rich experiences.

He grew up in Laramie, sharing many adventures with his older brother, Ron Stebner, his younger sister, Marilyn Stebner Kite, and many close friends. After graduating from Laramie High School in 1962, he went on to earn a B.A. in History from the University of Wyoming in 1968. He took full advantage of the college experience, enjoying his time as a Sigma Chi and founding member of the Turtles. He served his country as a member of the Army during Vietnam. Upon his return from his tour of duty, he used his G.I. Bill benefits to attend law school with his sister, Marilyn, wishing to continue serving the citizens of the state of Wyoming. He began his career in law in 1975 at legal services on the Wind River Indian Reservation and went on serve as a Deputy County Attorney in Sheridan County. After a brief stint in private practice, he was appointed to the bench as a justice of the peace in Carbon County in 1982 and began a distinguished career in the state judiciary, serving as a county court judge and then as a district court judge for the Second Judicial District, which includes Carbon and Albany Counties, until his retirement in 2004. 

Throughout his life, Ken’s heart always belonged to Wyoming’s wild places, especially the Snowy Range, the Red Desert, and the Wind Rivers. He met Karey Huff, his wife of 46 years, in Fremont County, where they began a life filled with adventures hunting, fishing, and backpacking. Ken and Karey raised their two children, Dan and Ann, in Rawlins and in those same beloved wilds. They continued to share his legacy with their own families, with Ann marrying Rob Steele in 2009 and Dan marrying Stacy Sewell in 2015. Ken was grateful to spend time in the country with them and, later, with his three grandchildren, Stebner (Ann & Rob) and Bess and Charlie (Dan & Stacy). His family survives him and will honor his memory by “going to the hills,” as he always put it.

A celebration-of-life service will be held at a later date.

In lieu of flowers or gifts to the family, memorial donations can be made to a fund in his honor:

The Judge Kenneth Stebner Memorial Fund
University of Wyoming Foundation
Marian H. Rochelle Gateway Center
222 South 22nd Street
Laramie, WY 82070

Picture of Red Desert, WY at sunset

Creativity and Micro Art #2

Author Update

As I’ve worked on revising my novel, I’ve been turning to visual art and poetry to exercise generative creativity. Visual art results in more concrete progress than what I’m seeing on my novel right now and lets different parts of my mind work. The focus on line-by-line writing and the weight of each word required when writing poetry helps hone my focus before I turn to revising the novel. I’ve got some poems in progress that I look forward to sharing, but my most complete project right now is my latest “micro art” piece, a colored pencil sketch of my horse, Scout. I get some of my best perspective on life while looking through her ears.

Here’s wishing you a happy Thanksgiving and many outlets for your own passions and creativity!

Picture of Red Desert, WY at sunset

Regeneration and Revision

Author Update

The seed of my current novel came to me in the form of a dream in the fall of 2009. My husband, Rob, and I had just moved to Moscow, Idaho so I could attend the MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Idaho, and we were driving back to visit family. It was late—we left after he got off of work—and I fell asleep in the car. The dream was like watching a movie, like I’d walked in during the middle of a film. A barn was burning. Someone was trapped inside. I wasn’t in the dream, nor was anyone I knew, but it felt real and clear and stunning. I started taking notes and brainstorming that night when we arrived at  Rob’s parent’s house. For the next three years, I worked on the novel here and there, but it took a backseat to the essays and coursework I was completing for my MFA—I was studying non-fiction and didn’t think I could dive into writing a novel while also honing that craft. After graduating in 2012, I began to work on the novel in earnest.

Which means I have been working on this manuscript for over a decade, a fact that floors me. I have pages of notes and outlines, pages of cut material, pages of rewrites. Sometimes, I wonder if this is even the same book that I started all those years ago. For instance, that burning barn? It’s not even in the current iteration. I have heard that the human body regenerates all of its cells every seven to ten years, which would mean that I am not the same person I was when I started, that my novel and I have both “turned over” at about the same rate.

The truth about cell regeneration is more complicated than the cocktail party factoid that claims “every seven years, you replace all your cells.” Some cells, like skin cells, regenerate every few weeks, while others, like skeletal muscle cells, take more like fifteen years. Some cells, like spinal cord cells, never regenerate. And, of course, as we age the rate of cellular regeneration slows. 

But this complexity actually makes the comparison to my novel and its many revisions more apt. Some sentences have been removed and replaced, as have some paragraphs, scenes, chapters, and even whole characters. Others have changed in some way but still retain fundamental characteristics. The overarching structure remains, and my three main characters still resemble their younger versions, just like I do. 

Like all of us, a decade has brought a great deal of change my way, including starting a career, shifting careers, birthing my son and raising him, buying and renovating a house, selling that one and buying a new one, and so on. But I still value the same things, mainly connection with loved ones and the sense of verity I find most profoundly in Wyoming’s wild places. 

And, at its core, that’s what my novel is about, at least to me. Which is what I’ve been trying to capture on all the pages I’ve written trying to find its truest shape. I do think I’m close. I will not spend another decade working on this book—it is time to regenerate what needs turned over, then let what I have learned carry me forward into new projects. Ones that will grow and change as I do but which I hope will always reflect my own deepest core, the part of me that will remain even after all the cells that compose me have gone on.