How did they do it?

A couple weeks back, I was in the town of Elk Mountain and a snow squall was making my departure back to Hanna seriously questionable. I guess I have to acknowledge, my trusty white Mazda is not exactly the most snow worthy vehicle. 

Leaving town, I almost got stuck twice but my trooper of a car pulled through. Driving up WY 72, the road surface was white and I had a feeling it was going to be a harrowing drive.

I wasn’t wrong.

Because I know my car is not suited for travel in serious snow storms, I do my best not to venture out in them. Unfortunately, this day, the weather report didn’t have this storm on their radar, so to speak, otherwise I wouldn’t have been on the road.

I started to get the feeling, after leaving Walcott Junction, about three miles towards Elk Mountain on Interstate 80 that I had made a mistake being on the highway. The interstate went to one cleared lane about 15 miles from Elk Mountain. It was slow going and even trucks were creeping along. There were no speeding trucks on this day.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I got to the Elk Mountain exit. 

It was a little too soon. 

I took care of my business in Elk Mountain fairly quickly and as mentioned barely got out of town. I usually enjoy the scenery to the I-80 junction from the bucolic little town, but today it was close to a white out.

As I left the junction, I could see it wasn’t getting better. The roads weren’t clear at all. There was probably about 4 inches of snow on the road and I knew it was a matter of time before the roads would close.

So off I went.

I never went over 25 miles an hour until the end of my 11 mile trek. I lost control of the car about a dozen times and a lot of prayers were coming from this little white vehicle.

The crazy thing is, about a quarter mile from Hanna on WY 72, there was no snow. The road was fine. The snow squall missed Hanna entirely.

The frightening journey really got me to thinking.

Not about how I wished I was living in warm climes—that has certainly happened often enough—but how did the pioneers survive. Especially the ranchers.

I understand how Hanna townsfolk pulled it off. After all, they were mining coal and were supplied by trains coming through. I don’t say it wasn’t tough, but the hardy people who lived here, many came from cold regions in Europe prior. There is a reason so many Nordic bloodlines are still evident in the names of residents of this former coal town.

I remember Nancy Anderson giving a speech about how ranchers from Leo made their way to Hanna to work at the mines in the winter.

How? What were these people made of?

I had similar astonishment when I was visiting Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia province in China. Although it has a strong agriculture industry, it is similar to Wyoming in that winter lasts about six months.

In fact, Yinchuan’s landscape around the city—it is about 2 million people—reminded me very much of Carbon County. It has a couple rivers running through it but the desert is very close and there is a dry feeling once a person travels a few miles out of the city.

Yinchuan has a very famous historical site known throughout the country.

The Western Xui Imperial Tombs Museum is about 20 miles outside the city where it is the burial site of nine emperors. There are also another 254 tombs of other nobility Western Xia Dynasty that was founded by the Tangut ethnic group. These tombs are the largest cultural representation of this culture. Ghengis Khan wiped them out in 1227. Ironically, Ghengis Khan died here.

This is not an easy city to get to and it is fairly unique for China. It has hundreds of mosques, and the downtown looks to be Russia circa 1950 with its block buildings. I visited in January and it was cold, cold, cold. I was grateful that when visiting the grounds of the Imperial Tomb Museum it was sunny and a balmy 20 F. The night before had been in the minus degrees.

How did a civilization spring from such harsh climate? This civilization that I saw 1000 year old tombs meant somehow people learned to live in perilous cold. Ghengis Khan almost took over half of the civilized world and the place I was walking around in that day was the site of his demise. It was interesting looking at all the artifacts from this time period along with the displays, but my mind kept going back to the question, how did they pull off a civilization, conquered or not.

There are plenty of other cold places in this world that man has been able to survive and make a home, but honestly, before the advent of electricity, how did they do it?

Texas just proved that, without electricity, the cold kills. 

Yinchuan and Wyoming are not the only places I have found myself wondering how generations of people survived. My folks living in Vermont and Maine gave me a taste of cold weather often and those folks who settled there had to be tough. Especially the fisherman from Maine.

I do have a bit of German and Scottish blood in my veins, but I am pretty sure the Mediterranean side of my genetics won out. Humidity and heat are no problem for me. The cold is a very different story, but even acknowledging my lack of “cold” blood, I really am amazed at the people that settled this state.

I have always said it takes a special type of person to live here in Wyoming. It becomes my mantra when the weather changes to cold and the winds become a force to reckon with.

I can cope with winter because I have a car instead of a horse to get around. My house has electric, gas and fireplaces. Actually the fireplaces have wooden stoves, so I do know have a little idea of how pioneers survived, but what about the ones that didn’t have stoves. Was it a big fire place that had big pots?

Well, whatever the people of the generations did before to settle this land, it is a testimony to the human spirit. 

I find it inspiring.

And since we have another six weeks plus of winter to go, I will take all the inspiration I can muster.