Culmination

We found it!  But it took awhile.

I knew that the 1833 rendezvous, from which the Walker Expedition departed, met where Horse Creek and the Green River flow side by side in the same alluvial plain.  I located the watercourses on my map and drove through the plain they share, which lies southwest of Pinedale, sandwiched between the Wyoming Range and the Wind River Range.  But I found no marker memorializing the spot of the rendezvous.  I found Rapper’s Point, a national historic landmark overlooking the area in which the trappers met, and I found the historic site of Fort Bonneville, the fort and trading post near which the trappers had their rendezvous.  But I couldn’t find the site itself.  Discouraged with my maps, I looked across the plain to some hills on the south side.  I decided to drive up there so that I could at least overlook the rendezvous site, even if I couldn’t pinpoint it.

 Sign to overlook of Green River Valley.

 Site of Fort Bonneville.

On the way, I passed through Daniel, a tiny town whose only apparent commercial establishment had neon beer signs in the window.  I was thinking about stopping in for a burger after checking out the hillside when – there it was! – I passed the 1833 rendezvous site.  It was marked on my BLM map with an ambiguous picnic-table symbol.  I turned around on the two-lane road and drove into the site.  A gravel road led into a thick grove of cottonwoods and willows.

And that’s about all there was.  The gravel road made a loop on about two acres of land.  The cottonwoods and willows obscured any view of the plain.  There was a plaque, a whitewashed wooden outhouse, and a more dilapidated whitewashed wooden outhouse.  I inspected neither.  No picnic tables.  Duke and I got out of the truck and walked as far as we could without getting on private land – which didn’t take long – but I couldn’t see Horse Creek or the Green River.  Duke may have smelled them; I don’t know.

I stood next to my truck trying to think of how to properly commemorate our thousands-of-miles journey to this place.  Duke, who doesn’t worry about such things, sat on the gravel and waited patiently while I considered the question.

I decided to run around the circle.  I needed to acclimate to the altitude anyway.  So Duke followed me on my sprint around the gravel loop, stopping occasionally to pee on trees, then catch up, which he does easily.  I ran all the way around the gravel loop, then stopped at the camper.  I stood with my hands on my knees, breathing hard.  It wasn’t much of a commemoration, I thought.  But Duke’s bowels are stimulated by physical exertion.  He left an brown monument of our presence.  It was of impressive height, and shimmered in the slanting sunlight of evening.  We looked at it awhile.  Thinking it sufficient, we loaded into the truck and continued to the hillside for which we’d originally aimed.

I’m typing from that hillside now.  The valley below is beautiful, and with all of the cottonwood trees and grass it offers, the trappers likely had plenty of firewood and grazing.  The proximity of Fort Bonneville likely added security.  I’m tempted to say that the state of Wyoming ought to have done more to memorialize the spot, but – really – what were the trappers but a bunch of roughnecks getting drunk and trying to make a buck by overexploiting our natural resources?  So maybe not.

I think I’m going to go get that burger.  I wonder if the oilmen are still in town.

The hillside where I stopped to write.  In the bottom-left, see Horse Creek.  The 

Green River flows in on the other side of the plain.

Horse Creek.  To take this picture, I drove down a dirt road with houses on either side.  When I
stopped the truck and got out with my camera, a little blonde-haired girl waved at me from 
a window.  I think the sunken Jeep in the creek might be hers.