Place Where The Spirits Dwell

Back in 1981ish I lived and worked in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was dull for an 19 year old and I was motivated to seek out adventure or create my own.

One weekend my friend Patty Pickles and I felt like chocolate chip cookies, and rather than shop at the Cheyenne supermarket, we decided to drive to Denver on a cookie run. I had the cutest little 1979 Mazda RX7... with little flip up lights.

Before leaving, Patty and I cut shapes out of heavy black cardboard and duck taped our makeshift "eyelashes" onto the flip lights of the little car. We "fluttered our eyelashes" at everyone we passes all the way to Denver and back with our back of Chips Ahoy. Laughing all the while.

Another time we drove half way to Laramie very late at night to Vedauwoo (vee-dah-voo) which we had been told was an Indian word for "place where the spirits dwell."

Patty and I climbed to the top of the huge rounded granite boulders and spent the night sleeping on our backs with the massive, starry sky completely blanketing even our peripheral vision. We were so far out that even the modest lights of Cheyenne or Laramie couldn't be seen. Just blackness and more stars than I could ever have imagined.

I will forever have the view of that night sky vividly in my memory from the place where the spirits dwell.