Heather: Seriously, if you had told me three and a half years ago that I would be putting on a sheepherders festival, I would've been like, "I don't think so."

Nichole: Okay, so tell me more about that.

Heather: Well, so I have a varied career in Wyoming. I've done a lot of different things, and three years ago, I came to work for the museum. Um, by trade, an artist and a designer. Um, and so I came here, and they're like, "Well, we do a sheepherders festival." Well, I like to go big or go home, and so there is a huge event, I don't know if you've ever heard of it, called Trailing the Sheep in Idaho. Who knew? Here we go. Right?  Not my world. And it, I mean, it's like a four or five-day long festival of Basque folks, and they come out from everywhere, trail the sheep, huge groups of sheep. And so I used that as my jumping-off point. But [today], there were 30 ewes and their lambs that trailed in from three miles away down Achida Road.

We had to shut down streets, and when they came in, the Lander Pipe Band was standing there serenading the sheep. It was, I mean, you're like... So the rock pile was a landmark for ranchers to be able to find the railroad, and so here we are standing in this field, we have lots of Scottish immigrants.

We have Basque immigrants in this area. And you're like, "I think we're actually hearing history," 'cause here come the sheep and, and the Scottish ballad is being played, and you're like, "God, I'm gonna try not to cry." So yeah, it's a very niche-y event. But this, I mean, when it started, it was two sheep wagons.

That was it. So this is what we have now. I know, I know. It's kind of exciting. And lots of things for people to do and so, yeah.

Shelby: That's amazing.  

Note: This was recorded live at the Sheepherder’s Festival in Gillette, WY and includes background crowd noise.
The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.