After feeling like an outcast among cowboys, a Wyoming writer considers who the outsiders really were.
I grew up in the rural West, a beautiful-yet-desolate place of proud independence, all-enduring grit, and hard-to-crack personalities. The culture could be intimidating, if you let it. I lived in town, in a comfortable, not-too-big house in a well-respected neighborhood, within walking distance of my dad’s small engine repair and retail shop. Many of my classmates lived far outside of town, down dusty, unpaved roads, miles from the nearest house. They had this Wyoming life figured out, I always thought. They were the definition of the grit and hardship that chiseling a life in such unforgiving country required.
I never really talked to them, these ranch kids whose lives were so different from mine. Part of me held a high respect for them — because, to me, they were undaunted by the work, the weather, the untameable land. I was the same, yet I could never admit it.
Until I started talking to a longtime local rancher. And I realized, we are more alike than we are different.
There is a certain brag worthiness to saying you’re from Pinedale, Wyoming. When I was growing up there, it belonged to the least populated county (Sublette) in the least populated state. My mom liked to say that Pinedale was the farthest town from a railroad track in the country. (When I researched “farthest town from a railroad track in the United States,” for this story, Google’s AI overview quickly informed me: “There is no single ‘farthest town from a railroad track’ in the United States, because the answer depends on how you define ‘farthest’ and what type of track you are measuring from.”)
The roads stretched on, narrow and hemmed in by solid walls of plowed snow that spanned miles. My high school mascot was the Wrangler, a cowboy who takes charge of the horses, and our number-one rival was the Big Piney Punchers. Only recently did I learn what a puncher is: It’s one who “punches” — or drives — cows from one location to another.
Yet even as I claim Pinedale as my hometown, I know I represent just a sliver of the tough-as-nails, self-reliant culture that comes with living in the rural West. I was scared to death of horses. I had never been invited to a branding (and if I had, I would likely have declined). Telling people where I grew up still generally brings an excited or intrigued reaction. But the truth is, I never really felt like I fit there.
There was, while I was growing up, an unspoken divide between the “townies” and the ranchers. As a townie, I always felt less-than, not tough enough. I respected the sun-up-to-sun-down work of the local ranchers from afar, but I never wanted to be one.
I had never been invited to a branding (and if I had, I would likely have declined).
Yet it wasn’t until I was an adult that I understood there is another side to the story. It had never occurred to me that, just as I struggled with how exactly I “fit” into the rural Wyoming lifestyle, a rancher might, too.
“My [family’s] story is the opposite of yours,” said Ann Noble, who grew up in the more populated Rock Springs, 100 miles south of Pinedale, and married a longtime Sublette County rancher. Ann learned the ranch life and raised 4 girls — all of whom run big equipment and “know how to pull a calf.”
“The rancher-townie divide was very much a part of our lives [as our kids were] growing up,” Ann said. “We raised ranch kids. They were made to not fit in with the townies.”
Her comment caught me off guard. How is it that I felt like I didn’t fit in with the rural Wyoming lifestyle — but that her family, the very ranchers who I thought carved that way of life — didn’t either?
The sharp divide between the ranchers and the townies has existed for generations. But — as I came to learn in my visits with Ann and my own family members — it’s not a divide that clearly defines winners and losers. Instead, it’s a deep-seated story about people trying to eke out a living in hard and desolate country.
As a townie, I always felt less-than, not tough enough.
My grandparents grew up working on Sublette County ranches — my grandpa as a cowboy, my grandma as a cook for the ranch crews. Ranch wages were poor at best, even with room and board included. They continued to pursue ranch work after they were married but couldn’t make ends meet. In the winter, little snowdrifts would appear here and there throughout the cabin they were given to live in. The cabin’s roof had so many holes they could never seem to patch them all before another snowdrift escaped through.
At a loss for what to do, my grandpa came to town looking for work. He walked into Isaac Trucking and asked for a job. The head mechanic hired him and taught him the trade.
By the time my dad was born, his parents were living in town. My dad, by default, grew up a townie.
Ann’s husband, Dave, grew up in my dad’s generation, a rancher. They attended the same school. My dad excelled as a track star. Dave went out for the high school basketball team, but he quit after his dad’s nightly trips into town from the ranch to pick him up became too much for the family.
“Townies could just walk to practice, or walk to school,” Ann said. “But if [your cows are] calving, it’s [ranch work] 24 hours a day.”
The divide has grown sharper with each passing generation. But back in the 1930s and ‘40s, the local school calendar was built around haying season. “[The townies] were very much attuned to the lives of the ranch kids because they were all tied in together,” Ann said.
“Townies could just walk to practice, or walk to school. But if your cows are calving, it’s ranch work 24 hours a day.”
Ranch kids would stay in town for the week to attend school and then ride horses back home on the weekends. Ranchers depended on students and teachers to help with haying during the summer months.
In the 1960s, my dad remembers staying the night at the home of his rancher friend, Louie, and helping Louie’s family punch cows before dawn.
“I remember Louie’s sister screaming,” he told me. Louie’s sister had been awakened in the middle of the night by her father threatening to use the electric cattle prodder on her if she didn’t get out of bed to start the ranch work. “Louie whispered to me, ‘We’d better get up before he gets to us.’”
There is that Wyoming brag worthiness. A story worth telling.
My go-to tales about growing up in rural Wyoming center around turning the hubcaps to 4-wheel drive on my 1991 Ford Ranger during blizzards and hanging snowpants to dry next to the wood-burning fireplace in our kitchen. The guy next door left his diesel truck running 24/7 through the winter months for fear that if he turned the motor off, it would never start again.
The question pulses just beneath the surface: Who are we and where do we belong?
The Nobles’ four daughters represented the third generation to attend Pinedale High School, in the 2000s. Of the 60-plus kids in her graduating class, the oldest daughter, Meredith, was one of two who hayed every season. She drove her dad’s beat-up old pickup to town for school each day, parking alongside brand new $45,000 diesel pickups that the townies (many whose parents worked in the gasfields south of town) drove.
Meredith had discovered long-distance running, and, like my dad, she excelled at it. She became the star of the Pinedale High School track team.
Then, the Nobles’ top ranch hand hung himself during spring calving season, leaving Ann and Dave in serious need of help. Meredith gave up her top spot on the cross-country team to help with spring calving. The coach was livid; her absence from the team wrecked their shot at going to the State cross-country meet.
“It was unbelievable rejection,” Ann said. “There was no support for [Meredith] choosing her family and her ranch.”
Recently, Dave attended his 50th high school reunion. The reunion was at Stockman’s — one of Pinedale’s oldest and most established restaurants. The ranchers sat at the bar. The townies sat at tables.
“They were still hanging out in their cliques,” Ann said.
*****
I knew, even as I was growing up, that I would leave Pinedale when I turned 18. As a townie, I lived on the fringes of the gritty, fiercely independent way of life necessary to succeed in such a far-flung place. While I respected the people who doggedly worked the land and its livestock, I knew I would never be one of them. I wanted an easier way of life, a tamer place. I knew there was a wider world to explore.
It took a long time for me to come to terms with it, but looking back, I can confidently say that we all possess different gifts. My gift is not that of a hands-on rancher, but rather that of a storyteller — of tilling memory and nurturing conversations to pull out stories that help make sense of the world and our places within it.
The ranchers in Sublette County are doing that in their own ways — making sense of the world and their places within it. And I think for all of us, the question pulses just beneath the surface: Who are we and where do we belong?
