Draconian environmental laws

Do Only Real Americans Live in Wyoming?

By Ron Ewart
Monday, December 28, 2009

Dawn was breaking over the Circle P in Western Wyoming. The Sun had not yet broken above the East horizon but the growing light cast an eerie orange glow on last night’s fresh snow that had put an ermine blanket on the Tetons.

A few puffy clouds lingered at the top of the peaks but would soon disappear from the Sun’s rising heat. The sky was not yet blue. The trees on the hillside had already turned to several shades of yellow and orange but appeared in dark, grey tones because of the low light. Winter was just around the corner.

The valley below the ranch house was still shrouded in a low ground fog. A horse’s rump without any legs and a hundred fence-post tops in a row appeared above the fog, like a pastel picture only half painted.

John Portal stretched his arms into the air as he drank in the morning scene from the picture window of their ranch house. As he slowly lowered his arms, Jenny, John’s wife, still in her robe, snuggled under one of his arms in a sideways hug and shared the beauty of the new day that was just now presenting itself to the Portal’s of Wyoming. John and Jenny could but linger for a short while in the rapture of the moment. There was much work to be done before the Sun would set again on the Circle P. Jenny broke away from their hug to wake up their two children and then headed for the kitchen. John started towards the bathroom to shave and get dressed.

John and Jenny were both fifth generation ranchers. John had inherited their thousand-acre spread from a long-line of independent, self-reliant, tough pioneer stock Portals, born and bred from the days of the old West. John and Jenny met in high school and a bond between them was forged almost instantly. Jenny was the daughter of another fifth generation Wyoming rancher. Both were the product of the American free spirit, who daily stared adversity directly in the face and pressed forward, no matter what was in their way.

Smoke was already billowing from the stack on the bunk house. The cowboys of the Circle P were getting ready for a long day in the saddle. A good portion of the herd was in the upper pastures and had to be brought down to the lower valley. The upper pastures would soon be covered in several feet of snow and they could lose part of the herd should they delay the drive much longer.

Not one person on the Circle P was giving any thought whatsoever to what was going on in the Capitol of Wyoming, much less Washington DC. There was a job to be done, a nation to be fed and no one in either Capitol would or could help John and Jenny with that job. If anything, the people in those capitols, with their “fingerâ€