Chuck Wagon at Moose, Wyoming

Moose (Before)

Teepees lined up in a circle fire pit in the center. Black smoke on the inside of the teepee. Smells of dinner coming from the big cast iron pots. The food was BBQ chicken, stew, beans, bread—cowboy food. Nothing that special, but it was the setting that made it great. The Grand Tetons were beautiful in the distance, looking like the Himalayas.

“Grand Teton Sunset” Photo by TomKellyPhoto, shared with CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 License on Flickr.

Chuck Wagon at Moose, Wyoming (After)

“Eureka! I’ve found it!” shouted my nerdy cousin, as he saw the first teepee several miles from our destination. He never missed an opportunity to practice his vocabulary.

As we piled out of the green Country Squire station wagon, the rich and familiar smells of cowboy food made us happy to have arrived at the circle of teepees.

Each teepee, as tall as the peak of a two-story house, had a fire pit in the center. The supporting beams were as big around as one-pound coffee cans. They reached much taller than the white canvas tent, and stuck out the top at varying angles and lengths. Most of these teepees had picnic tables inside, hewn from rough lumber, where us children would always choose to eat our dinner. (How often does one get to eat a meal in a life-size teepee?)

The other teepees were for cooking the food. The food and family tradition were why we made this annual stop on the road connecting the national park jewels of Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. Inside the main grub teepee, the big black cast iron cooking pots were so large I could have crawled inside an empty one. Tonight, however, they were filled with warm and hearty food—BBQ chicken, meaty short ribs, thick stew, pungent baked beans, and soft, buttery bread.

When the weather was agreeable, as it often was late in summer in northwest Wyoming, the adults ate outside where additional picnic tables lined the freshly mown ridge. The backdrop for this breathtaking dining room was the Grand Teton range, the Himalaya-like mountains that rose out of the plateau in the near horizon.

After everyone had their fill in this all-you-can-eat (and we did) chuck wagon smorgasbord, groans and sighs of fullness and contentment filled the station wagon. We wedged ourselves back in and continued on the road to our next destination.

Note: I haven’t thought of this place in decades, until I saw today’s prompt from Kate (below and here). When I searched for the teepee chuck wagon in Wyoming, I learned that they are still doing their thing in Moose, Wyoming.

 Tuesday Quick-Write:

Write for two minutes to describe a very specific place.  If you’re just free-writing, it can be a place that you love, or have visited, or a place that frightens you…

Anyplace is fine. If you want to relate this to your work-in-progress, choose a very specific setting within the piece and imagine yourself there.

When your two minutes are up, stop writing.

Now…if your place is real and you can go there, go there now.  I’ll wait….

If it’s far away, find a picture of it. If it’s not a real place, put yourself there in your mind. Now write for one minute about each of the following:

  • Everything you SEE – Pay attention to big things and tiny things. Search for concrete details.
  • Everything you HEAR – Be specific. Don’t just say “a scraping sound.” Say a “high-pitched, raspity-raspity-screeeeeaking noise.”  You can make up words if you want. If you aren’t in the place, try to find a video. Or guess what you might hear.
  • Everything you SMELL – Especially pay attention to the smells that surprise you. If you’re not in the place, pictures can help you smell. Look carefully…what would that dumpster smell like?
  • Everything you FEEL – Weather, wind, things that land on you or brush against you. Again – pictures help you imagine if you’re not there, and if it’s not a real place, try imagining images and then assigning sensations from a similar place that might be real (desert, tundra, etc.)

Now, go back and rewrite that descriptive paragraph. Include your best tiny, surprising details, and work on senses other than sight. Better?  More vivid?  This is a fun activity to do with kids, too. Have them write about the playground or gym or cafeteria; then go there and hunt for sensory details!