Dave: My grandmother moved up here in 1929 as a single mom with her two daughters, who were 10 and 8 years old. They were pretty much on their own—though of course, they had help—but I want to focus on my own association with the land.

In the early '70s, around 1972, my grandmother had given 40 acres on the east end of the homestead to my aunt, and then my aunt gave me 5 of those acres. In the fall of 1975, I came up here and we cut logs for the cabin. We had to ski down to the cabin area in the snow to cut and stack the logs, then let them sit through the rest of the winter.

In the spring, we started working on the cabin. First, we needed a foundation. We brought in a mixer, hauled in gravel—everything by four-wheel drive. It wasn’t easy. Pretty rough going.

We started peeling the logs, and my mother came up to help. She was peeling logs and said, “I can’t believe this. When they were building this place, I ran away to avoid peeling logs—and now here I am helping you do it.”

By the winter of 1978, I was living in the cabin and working at Hogadon Ski Area. None of the roads up here were plowed at that time, so I had to ski out about a mile and three-quarters just to get to my truck, and then drive into town for work.

Nancy: Forgive me if this is a dumb question—was it cross-country skiing that you were doing?

Dave: Yeah, cross-country. I’d ski down to the parking area near the old East End Road—also called the Crimson Dawn Road—around the Green Corridor area. I’d leave my truck with friends, near the Hazeltons’ place. That was my daily commute: ski down, then drive to work.

One time, right before Thanksgiving, I was with some friends. We got caught in a huge snowstorm. About a third of a mile down the old road, we saw a guy with his truck all chained up. He said, “This is as far as I can go.” I said, “No problem,” and kept skiing.

I got to my cabin, and by the next morning, snow was halfway up the second-story windows. I was listening to the radio, and they were reporting that everyone was accounted for. And I thought, “How do they know that? No one’s even checked on me.”

Jan: At that time, the cabin had no running water, no electricity, and no phone. We didn’t get a phone until the summer we got married, which was in June 1980. We’ve been married 45 years now.

That first year of marriage was eventful—Dave broke his leg skiing at Hogadon, going too fast with fancy skiing. They plated his leg with steel, and we got married while he was still in a cast. In August, after the cast came off, he was back on the snowmobile.

I was looking for a teaching job and ended up getting one in Glenrock—just a week before school started. So I was driving back and forth 20-some miles from a cabin with no running water or electricity.

Nancy: That’s quite a commute!

Jan: It was intense. Once winter hit, we realized we needed “snow homes,” like Garrison Keillor used to say. I had friends in Casper and Glenrock I could stay with when I couldn’t get home. We snowmobiled in and out, hauling water and gasoline for the generator.

Then I went to grad school at the University of Wyoming, and Dave was also working on his master’s in math education. Eventually, we got jobs in South Dakota and had to leave.

But one story I want to share from that first teaching year in Glenrock: the school I taught at—Oregon Trail Elementary—was built during the boom years of oil, coal, and uranium. It sat right on top of the actual Oregon Trail. During parent-teacher conferences that first year, the custodian noticed a noise coming from my nearly empty filing cabinet…

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.