“The nights were cold, and, if you woke up… you would hear the coyotes. … You could sit in the front of the cabin, lazy in the sun, and look across the valley. … You remembered the elk bugling. … You remembered how this country had looked when you first came into it … all the hunting and all the fishing and all the riding in the summer sun and the dust of the pack train, the silent riding in the hills in the sharp cold of fall going up after the cattle on the high range. … It’s a good country.”
In this excerpt from “The Clarks Fork Valley, Wyoming,” which ran in a 1939 issue of Vogue, author Ernest Hemingway was reminiscing. Written a year after his final stay, this essay contained his reflections on the five months he spent at the L-T Ranch in Wyoming, at the edge of Yellowstone National Park and close to the high-elevation community of Cooke City, Montana. Visiting first in 1930 at the suggestion of a friend, Hemingway soon found the ranch to be a retreat where he could write and avoid the outside world. It was a place, according to Robert Haskins, author of the article “Paradise Lost,” that was “as close [to paradise] as he ever found.”
What Hemingway considered his summer home intermittently from 1930 through 1938, is now — more than 80 years later — my home; my family having acquired the L-T in 1964. And since my first visit in 1989, it has also been my escape: the place where I can find balance and peace. While much time has passed, amazingly — as Dave Dolese, a ranch hand who worked during Hemingway’s visits, said — “The L-T really hasn’t changed in lots of ways since the ‘30s. Of course, the [Beartooth] Highway affected the wildness, but it has continued to hold on to a lot of it. In the evening at sunset, we often marvel at how wonderfully empty the valley really is — a refuge from an often too-crowded world.”
Since my family’s arrival, cabins have been refurbished and modern amenities added; some paths have been paved and ATVs can often be heard on weekends. Yet, the same mountains soar above treeline, the sagebrush continues to grow uninhibited, and wildflowers delight every summer; grizzly bears still roam, the wind rustles the trees, and snow coats the landscape for a good portion of the year. The L-T, at its essence, remains unaltered and has become a place where I, a budding writer, have come to feel connected to nature, to the desire for remoteness, and to Hemingway himself, his spirit still present on this land, an inspiration to those who traverse it….
The above is just the start of a longer story. To read the article in full, visit Big Sky Journal. And if you’re planning a trip out west, don’t forget to check out the Beartooth Pass. It’s guaranteed to be unforgettable!
