The view of the War
Memorial Stadium, seen by westbound drivers barreling down
Interstate 80 just east of Laramie, Wyo., died of obstruction in
August 2007. The view was 57 years old.
It had long been
lauded by both newcomers and old timers as the thing that could
raise goose bumps as travelers whooshed down Telephone Canyon on
their way into town. Even better at triggering adrenaline than
thundering semi-trucks and the now-outlawed triple trailers,
nothing could excite a wheel-gripping motorist slaloming the
switchbacks like the unfurling Laramie Valley, with its grassy
plains, sparkling river and scattershot town. In the center of that
town stood the University of Wyoming, with its tombstone-shaped
dormitories ringing the football-shaped War Memorial Stadium.
It was the view of the stadium itself that said, “You’ve
made it to Laramie.” In many developing towns in the West, views of
parkways, bluffs, hillsides, rivers, mountains and even homey
manmade structures, long comfortable and familiar, are being
blotted out by the new. Some may call it progress, but it can be
hard to say goodbye.
I first saw the view during my
initial visit to Wyoming in 1988, when I came to hike in the
storied Wind River Mountains. A flatlander, I was on my first trip
to Wyoming. As I drove west on Interstate 80 across Nebraska I
could sense the earth rising under my wheels and the treeless
scenery putting the land in the word “landscape.”
Coming up the geologic gangplank from Cheyenne, I elevated toward
the crest of the Sherman Mountains and said howdy to Abraham
Lincoln — represented in bronze at the highest point of the
highway. A brief moment en pointe at the 8,640-foot pass, then the
plunge toward the valley. The walls of Telephone Canyon squeezed
high and tight, and seeing what lay beyond was like peering through
a keyhole in a granite door. I remember every moment of that first
plummet down the summit.
Switchback one: Compulsively
checked the rearview mirror for looming truck-grills.
Switchback two: Resisted the urge to stomp on brakes and remembered
my mountain-driving lesson to tap, tap, tap on the pedal.
Switchback three: Lost the Nebraska radio station – No more
pedal steel from Rodney Crowell and his band.
Switchback
four: Wondered what this death trap would be like in winter.
Switchback five: There it was, my first glimpse of the
entrance to the real West. The secret door swung open into the
Laramie Valley, dominated by the view. It was so beautiful I almost
drove off the road.
I discovered the Wind Rivers on that
trip but I don’t remember the hikes the way I remember that
drive. The view, even more than the Winds, kept calling and
eventually I repeated my trip, this time searching for a job and
place to live in Laramie. Then I drove that summit often. I saw
plenty of truck grills in my rearview, stomped on brakes lest I hit
an elk, left the radio off and found out to my horror what
Telephone Canyon was like in winter. But every time I saw that
view, the thrill was the same as the first.
Alas, now,
the view is gone, vanished, the victim of progress. These days when
motorists approach Laramie through the tight canyon they see a new
view — the university’s just-built conference center, hotel
and shopping complex. Sure, the stadium still stands, but the vista
that says you’ve arrived in Laramie is gone.
In a
so-far unchanged nook of Laramie, about a mile as the crow flies
from the stadium, stands my home. It sits on the crest of a high
hill, and the view from my second-story bedroom in summer is of the
tops of tall cottonwoods and poplars. In winter, after those trees
lose their leaves, I see open sky and the neighborhood across a
park. But this fall, when the last stubborn leaves vacated the
trees, I noticed something new in the clearing. There was the face
of the conference center, with its hotel and stores and
restaurants, shimmering in the season’s low sun.
I
wonder what the hotel charges for a meeting room? It seems an
appropriate location to hold a wake for a view I cherished –
one that endured for 57 years.
Julianne Couch is
a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High County
News (hcn.org). She writes in Laramie,
Wyoming.
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