![]() ![]() ![]() I'm not turning around.Ībove the reservoir, where eroded pillars of lava rock reach like giant, twisted fingers more than one hundred feet high, the valley narrows and it's slightly less windy. My truck shudders in a crosswind gust I'm guessing tops 60mph, and I grit my teeth. I've made the 120-mile trip from Billings, up the Clark's Fork of the Yellowstone River, past Heart Mountain - once an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War Two - through the town of Cody, passing close to the famous rodeo grounds, driven through the long tunnel just downstream of Buffalo Bill Dam on the North Fork of the Shoshone, into this river valley and headlong into the teeth of the windiest day of year. It's not much of a day to take pictures, but I learned a long time ago that waiting for perfect weather in the Rocky Mountains will keep a man indoors more days than is healthy. Tall grasses along the river, which for ten thousand years have drawn elk, deer, and bighorn sheep out of the mountains this time of year, lie flat, prostrate before the screaming wind. High above, on the peaks of the Absaroka Beartooth Mountains, similar trails of snow twist from cornices, streaming in the gale like clouds. The mud flats at the mouth of Buffalo Bill Reservoir on the North Fork of the Shoshone River are ripped skyward, a virtual haboob sailing east over the half-open lake. It's unseasonably warm for February in Wyoming, but the wind cuts out of the west at more than 50 miles an hour as though Nature is attempting to balance herself.
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