Bio: Dude, 1959+. Descriptor: Riding horseback from Phelps Lake with a full moon. How the White Grass Barn spoke to me. Games on horseback with the kid wranglers. Being in Kuwaiti and knowing I had to go back to the Tetons/White Grass for myself.
Deborah’s Story: My family came from Coconut Grove, Florida. My first ride with the “kid wrangler” was usually to the Phelps Lake overlook. On the full moon of (I think) each month the ranch had permission for a cook out down on the Phelps Lake beach and we would ride back to the ranch in the dark. It was magical for all including we kids! First visit was July,1959 for a month.
THE WHITE GRASS BARN Deborah Wilson Lopez I recall the day I proudly wore the horseshoe nail curved round to fit my finger. You made it as I watched in the hallowed tack room where the dudes were not allowed. How many times I climbed the ramp and found inside a darkened warmth unsensed since long before when I was in my mother’s womb a sacred place; familiar yet precious. Sound of stamping hooves Steam rising off hard run horses Scent of fresh hot dung and Sweet hay-making in the upstairs loft. I wanted so to buy this barn and move it from its dying home to some other site to have and hold as if those memories could be caught and made real once again. I recall passing by the barn at night, the big doors shut as if tucked in by loving hands; I wondered at the cold of crisp Wyoming nights, unlike the tropic clime from which I’d come so far to feel a part of this barn’s brief history.
Sometimes the kid wrangler would have us little ones play a game on horseback on the morning or afternoon ride. The game I recall the best was that the wrangler would start off placing a twig on a tree, balancing it on the needles, for instance. The next person in the line had to retrieve it without dropping it and place it in turn somewhere else. It could be placed high or low. The next person had to observe closely so that they knew where to reach to get it.
I mentioned that we began visiting White Grass in 1959. We usually stayed for a month and we did not go EVERY year but every summer that we were able. My dad died in 1976. The following year I met Farouk, a Kuwaiti who had attended UC Berkeley. We married in 1978 and spent some time in Kuwait. I was amazed to discover that the video footage used on Kuwaiti TV during the call to prayer (television broadcasting was interrupted 5 times a day) and during “Allah Akbar” chanting by the muezzin, footage of beautiful natural places was shown as “heaven”. Imagine my shock at being on the Persian Gulf half way around the world and seeing the Tetons! I called my mother and said “we have to go back to White Grass!!!” And we did. My marriage to Farouk was short-lived. At the point when I realized that it was truly ending, I was relieved to join my mom at White Grass for 3 weeks. It was that trip on which I met my now husband, Manuel, at the ranch. He had been invited to the ranch for dinner by mutual friends. The rest (as they say) is history.